Page:The Relation of the Sunday-school System to our Christian Patriotism.pdf/18

18 gorgeous, gloomy, or fantastic forms of those dark ages, when the ruffian noble, the bigot priest, and the royal fool, trampled on the neck the conscience and the heart of the many; but such exceptions must be few, far fewer than instances of the reverse. No impression can be made upon the people generally. Place by the side of the most stately cathedral, furnished with all the appliances of idolatrous pomp, a plain meeting-house with the simple gospel in its pulpit, and we need not fear for the result. The multitude may enter the gorgeous pile, gaze curiously at the novel exhibitions, listen to the skilfully adjusted music; but when they wish to worship God, it will be under the more lowly roof, where the mercy of the homeless Nazarene is offered to the poor, and their own voices can exult in the hallelujahs of praise, or falter out the accents of contrition.

It is notorious that civil liberty sprang from Protestantism; it is equally certain that civil liberty will uphold Protestantism. Neither Protestantism nor civil liberty can attain their full strength, so long as the religion of the masses is under the control of the few. Only where, as among us, the state leaves the church to its independent actings, the energies of both may be symmetrically developed. As inevitably as that truth must triumph over error, and the Spirit of God over sin, the victory is ours, if we wield manfully only those weapons, which the King of mercy, peace and love has appointed for the armour of his sacramental host. To question this result, is to doubt that God reigns.

From such reasoning, the assertion is repeated, that