Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/116

96. Finally, the higher the feeling of power in man, and the more free and unimpeded its manifestation, the more willingly does he seek to discover some internal bond to lead and direct him; and thus he remains attached to morality, whether this bond is to him a feeling of reverence and love for the Divinity, or the earnest and recompense of his own self-consciousness.

The difference, then, appears to me to be this:—the citizen who is wholly left to himself in matters of religion will, or will not, interweave religious feelings with his inner life, according to his individual character; but, in either case, his system of ideas will be more coherent, and his impressions deeper; there will be more perfect oneness in his being, and so he will be more uniformly disposed to morality and obedience to the laws. On the other hand, he who is fettered by various restrictive institutions will, despite of these, entertain different religious ideas or not, subject to the same modifying influences; but, in either case, he will possess less sequence of ideas, less depth and sincerity of feeling, less harmony and oneness of being, and so will have less regard for morality, and wish more frequently to evade the operation of the laws.

Hence, then, without adducing any further reasons, I may safely proceed to lay down the principle, by no means a novel one, that all which concerns religion lies beyond the sphere of the State's activity; and that the choice of ministers, as well as all that relates to religions worship in general, should be left to the free judgment of the communities, without any special supervision on the part of the State.