Page:The Relation of the Sunday-school System to our Christian Patriotism.pdf/24

24 other difficulties which lie deep in our national policy. By our wise national and State constitutions, religion is most properly left unregulated by law, while every citizen is protected in the rights of conscience. Free from partiality to any particular creed, our political system allows to all the equal and best privilege of being let alone. The theory is just, better for religion even than for the State; because never did a civil government grant more than protection to Christianity, without demanding in return an influence over religion far more hurtful to its purity than the most bitter persecution. If the secular power be permitted to sustain the altar, it will soon control the ministers of the altar, and substitute strange fire for the heaven-kindled flame. As we would deprecate such oppressions as those which characterize false forms of Christianity, we should avoid the slightest acknowledgment of any right in the State to act for the seeming advancement of our own religious views. Religious liberty and the rights of conscience have been purchased by too long a struggle and too much expense of blood and argument, now to be lightly ventured. Hence candour must acknowledge, that though there have been and may be exceptions, there is a real difficulty in the way of bringing evangelical religion (and no other is worthy the name) to bear upon our public schools. The infidel, the Papist, and other dangerous errorists, have far more than a pretext for opposing the power of God’s pure word upon a theatre common to all. Whatever may be the honest purposes of Christians, they will find their philanthropic zeal in this matter plausibly, obstinately and often successfully met. We lose time, perhaps moral power, in