Page:History of Freedom.djvu/384

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ESSA YS ON LIBERTY

transitions to opposite extremes. In the religious \vorld ill weeds grow apace; and those communities \vhich strike root, spring up, and extend most rapidly are the least durable and the least respectable. The sects of Europe were transplanted into America: but there the impatience of authority, which is the basis of social and political life, has produced in religion a variety and a multiplicity, of which Europe has no experience. vVhilst these are the fruits of religious liberty and ecclesiastical independence among a people generally educated, the Danish monarchy exhibits unity of faith strictly maintained by keeping the people under the absolute control of the upper class, on \vhose behalf the Reformation was introduced, and in a state of ignorance corresponding to their oppression. Care was taken that they should not obtain religious instruction, and in the beginning of the eighteenth century the celebrated Bishop Pontoppidan says, "an almost heathen blindness pervades the land." About the same time the Norwegian prelates declared, in a petition to the King of Denmark: "If we except a fe\v children of God, there is only this difference between us and our heathen ancestors, that we bear the name of Christians." The Danish Church has given no signs of life, and has shown no desire for independence since the Reformation; and in return for this submissive- ness, the Government suppressed every tendency to\vards dissent. Things were not altered when the tyranny of the nobles gave way to the tyranny of the crown ; but \vhen the revolution of 1848 had given the State a democratic basis, its confessional character ,vas abrogated, and whilst Lutheranism was declared the national religion, confonnity was no longer exacted. The king is still the head of the Church, and is the only man in Denmark who must be a Lutheran. No form of ecclesiastical government suitable to the new order of things has yet been devised, and the majority prefer to remain in the present provisional state, subject to the will of a Parliament, not one member of which need belong to the Church which it governs. Among the clergy, those who are not Rationalists follow