Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/711

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEIV OF SOVEREIGNTY 695

to free belief and expression of opinion, were introduced into the structure of religion. The state, by extracting the coercive sanctions from the priesthood, constituted itself the structure within which the religious principle operates. In these and other ways the religious motive has been separated out from dependence on external sanctions and penalties, and has been compelled to rely upon its own peculiar psychic and persuasive sanctions. No longer able to enforce its doctrines through coercion, the church now seeks converts through preaching, con- version, and persuasion. The religious revivals of both Protes- tantism and Catholicism of the past one hundred and fifty years, the missionary societies, the charitable and reformatory work of the church, are witness to the increased emphasis and deepening of the religious principle when once differentiated in its own proper institution. The state, through its laws of property and its creation of ecclesiastical corporations, determines the coer- cive structure and organization within which the spiritual life of religion moves and breathes. By thus insuring to all believers certain partnership rights in the external means and machinery of worship, and removing therefrom the individual caprice of a priesthood, the state has freed religion from the supremacy of those who rise by mere diplomacy, shrewdness, and manipulation of church machinery, and has transferred it to those whose spiritual and personal preeminence commands in its own right the devotion and cooperation of the community of believers. The spiritual defect in all combinations of church and state has been the dominion of the priest and the ostracism of the preacher and teacher. The church as a purely persuasive institution is the field for the gifts of the preacher.

The state has increased its bulk and complicated its struc- ture by the increments of coercion extracted from the church. The confiscation of monasteries, the secularization of charities, the rise of direct taxation, ecclesiastical laws adjudicated and enforced, all have occurred as a result of the transference of dominion from the private control of ecclesiastics to the public control of those who share in sovereignty.

John R. Commons.

Syracuse University.

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