Hence Dr. Miller says, in language equally sensible and temperate: "It appears to me that religion in these meetings is less an affair of the understanding, conscience, and heart, than of display and excitement, of weeping and physical sympathy. These produce the same effects on the spiritual and moral nature, that strong drink does on the bodily nature; a brief season of over-excitement is followed by weakness and disease."

Nothing," writes Dr. Beecher, "is so fearful and untameable as the fire and whirlwind of human passions, when once excited by misguided zeal, they seem to be sanctified by conscience, and when the vain thought arises that men mistake and persecute us because we are serving God. This state of things must lead to division in the church, although many at first do not venture to oppose it. Excesses of a similar kind in the time of Cromwell threw back true piety for centuries; in America they prevent the different denominations from approximating and becoming reconciled to each other. Ignorant and fanatical teachers force the well instructed and judicious into the back-ground; and a general confusion and relaxation of church discipline cannot but ensue. If a victorious army should traverse our native land and lay it waste, or a fire destroy all around us, it would be a blessing in comparison with the moral devastation which a pretended, unregulated revival of religion would produce; for physical evil soon passes away, while moral unsoundness sinks deeper and endures for a greater length of time."

After this worthy clergyman, let us hear also a layman, whose official station unhappily enables him to give indisputable testimony on this subject. In the course of eleven years, there have been placed under the care of Mr. Woodward, superintendant of the Insane Asylum at Worcester, 148 patients who had lost their reason in consequence of religious excitement. He says in respect to this: "The Bible itself will seldom drive à man mad. Its promises are opposed to its threatenings, and its simple and clear teachings show plainly the way to forgiveness and peace. It is the newly hatched doctrines of men, proclaimed by ignorant, misguided people, that now distract public opinion, break the bands which hold society together, and set men in motion without chart or compass to seek, as is pretended, the heavenly inheritance. When the firm principles of religious faith and

*Sprague's Letters on Revivals, p. 265.

† Similar results are exhibited in other lunatic asylums, for example in Columbus, Ohio. Of one woman it is said, "her insanity occurred during a revival of religion." A second was deranged "after attending a religious meeting, at which there was unusual excitement." A man "became violently deranged during his attendance of a protracted meeting." The insanity of another man was also connected with a camp-meeting. Report of 1839, p. 21; 1841, p. 43; 1843, pp. 66, 71. Report for 1842, p. 41; 1841, p. 53.

hope are cast aside, the usual forms of worship forsaken, and fanaticism is allowed to rule, then weak and excitable minds become perplexed and even insane. The effort to grasp something ineffable and inconceivable exceeds the power of the human faculties, and shatters and destroys them. This is not religion, but her opposite; it spoils the offering she brings instead of improving it, and lowers instead of elevating the moral and religious standard of a country. True religion must exhibit itself in the life, the whole life, and not in feverish excitements, the sallies of a sickly fancy, zeal without knowledge, and words without deeds."

Opinions of such weight and experiences of so bitter a kind have not remained without effect. After these misguided persons have rushed heedlessly onward to the utmost verge of error, they bethink themselves of returning; and it is to be hoped they will not again be led to imagine, that religion can be improved and ennobled by fanaticism.

If we reflect on all that has been said, it is plain that there is no lack of religion in America, but that there is danger of falling into erroneous practices through excessive zeal for religion. The tolerance exhibited by the laws of the land, and the equal manner in which they look upon all denominations, have indeed weakened and concealed the radical elements of bigotry and fanaticism, but have by no means rooted them out. Thus, one is shocked that a merchant should post his books on a Sunday; and another, that a clergyman should on that day speak of the affairs of his congregation.* A third takes offence at organs and church music; a fourth calls it a remnant of Popish trumpery, if the words Laus Deo are placed on the organ, or an I. H. S. on the pulpit. It is remarkable, but by no means uncommon, that the Americans themselves place side by side the highest commendations and the severest censures respecting their religious condition. For example, while one maintains that so much virtue, faith, and morality, never before existed in the world as is now to be found in New England; a second is shocked at the Unitarians and Universalists; and a third describes the earlier condition of the country as worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrha. Thus he says: "Neglect and contempt of the Gospel and its ministers, a prevailing and abounding spirit of error, disorder, unpeaceableness, pride, bitterness, uncharitableness, censoriousness, disobedience, calumniating and reviling authority, divisions, contentions, separations and confusions in churches, injustice, idleness, evil speaking, lasciviousness, and all other vices and impieties abounded."†

*Duncan, i. 223, 242.

† Quincy's History of Harvard University, ii. 47.

He who proves too much, proves nothing. All really sensible Americans are as far removed from vain self-admiration as from cowardly or misanthropic despair. True culture is the best remedy against fanatical extravagance, narrow sectarianism, and the dark spirit of persecution. But reading, writing and arithmetic do not constitute the sum of true knowledge, or bear evidence of its possession; any more than the mere reception of certain dogmas infuses the life-bestowing essence of religion.

To genuine knowledge and genuine faith much more belongs than is taught and practised in the school-room and in revivals. Without self-control, disinterestedness, self-denial, reverence for the laws, and genuine philanthropy, all the wisdom of schools and churches is only sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

It has been repeated a thousand times over, that in the human heart all is good,-or, all is bad; and yet our immediate consciousness tells us that each of these dogmas is false. A scientific and religious education which is founded on either of them, will never fully accomplish its task.

When we see in America three or four clergymen, excluded from their former communion, in connection with half a dozen laymen, set up a new church of their own, and at the same time maintain that they alone possess the truth; and when they put forth the assertion, that this church of their forming must be universal and include in it all believers; it is scarcely possible to restrain our scorn and contempt for such arrogance and vanity. And yet this may be viewed in another light. The multiplicity of sects which springs from the exercise of free judgment, shows a due sense of the nature and value of the rational liberty that belongs to every man; for the real indestructible Christian nature undergoes innumerable transformations in the human soul without injury to the objective truth that lies at its foundation. The image which the eye of a man beholds in the kaleidoscope, and whereby his imagination is excited, has subjective truth springing from the object; and no one has a right to assert that it is not there and cannot be there. Equally absurd is it to declare, that this individual conception is shared by all mankind alike.

Jefferson's Declaration raises men from outward compulsion to outward freedom; but for the higher cognition of an inner natural tendency towards and necessity for an infinitely diversified development, next to nothing has hitherto been effected; still less is any thing done or likely to be done for discerning unity in multiplicity, or for preparing the way to a reconciliation and a

Six clergymen form "God's church," and "it is the bounden duty of all God's people to belong to her, and none else."-" Universality is likewise a prominent attribute in the church of the first born." Rupp, Pasa ecclesia, pp. 175, 178.

more exalted peace. As long as one sect merely tolerates another, so long of course will it strive after its subjugation. The impossibility of accomplishing its desires will alone prevent this, and not good sense and charity. Although the application of the fire and the faggot would now, thank God, meet with insuperable difficulties, still the orthodoxy that politely shrugs its shoulders at the thought of heretics is not yet wholly extinct. The Catholics hold fast either secretly or openly to the doctrine, that to them alone it is given to impart salvation; while the smallest Protestant sect calls itself Catholic, and declares that the whole Catholic world is out of the pale of Christianity! All establish some test of orthodoxy, and condemn every thing that does not fit this Procrustes' bed. Contrary to the spirit and letter of the Constitution, Clay, Polk, Frelinghuysen, and Dallas were arraigned for their religious convictions, and subjected to a catechetical examination; while a sort of creed or test-oath was demanded of them, although every one well knew beforehand that all the zealots would never be satisfied with it.

The hope that the Bible and biblical Christianity would re-unite those who had prematurely separated is unfortunately not yet fulfilled, and the book of peace is but too often made a magazine of war. Thus says an American paper: "The mournful events which we all lament may be traced with mathematical certainty to their real source, namely, to the conduct of the clergy, who for the last fifteen or twenty years have excited and inflamed the religious bigotry of their followers."-In another report it is stated: "The Bible does not yet exert its healing influence even in the bosom of the church. What violent, bitter, and obstinate controversies take place even among members of the same denomination! There is a spirit of fault-finding, of censoriousness, and slander among brethren, which lays more stress upon some one small and scarcely visible point of difference than upon a hundred things of importance in which they agree.† There must be some remedy for this moral disease, and that remedy is the Bible. Let the Bible, with its triumphant, softening, purifying, and elevating power, exert its proper influence upon the human heart; and these contentions will cease, and Christian mildness, love, and good will take their place!"

It is fortunate that no church party can prop itself up by the aid of a political one, and become blended therewith: still I consider that the United States have far more to fear from the fanati

* Report of Young Men's Bible Society, Cincinnati, 1837, p. 28.

"They will argue as if their soul depended upon the decision of the north or northwest side of a hair in polemics." Olive Branch, p. 22. It was a dread of such views and influence that caused Jefferson and Girard to exclude clergymen from their institutions at Charlottesville and Philadelphia.

cism that glows under a flimsy covering, than from the impetuous spirit of democracy which is constantly unburthening itself; nay, it is in this very ardor for political liberty that the best remedy against ecclesiastical tyranny is to be found. All the sects which at certain periods were predominant, have fallen into disputes among themselves (for example, the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Methodists); and this has lessened the danger, and enlivened the activity of the separate parties. Still a truly Christian understanding, an exchange and mutual correction of thoughts and feelings (a most praiseworthy example of which I met with at Charleston),* would operate more beneficially than all the never ending still beginning controversies professedly undertaken for the honor of God.

Unfortunately in several countries of Europe, and even in Germany, where a commendable interest is taken in religious and ecclesiastical affairs,† the elements of a manifold tyranny have been set in motion, and the flames of fanaticism kindled anew; and all this under the pretext of honoring God, advancing the pure and only truth, improving the life of ecclesiastics, and the like. An arrogant, domineering dogmatism forgets country and nationality, Christian morals and Christian love, and puts arms into the hands of hatred and persecution. Thus we are in the fairest or rather the worst way to fall into the scandal, the audacity, the destructiveness, and the brutality of another thirty years' civil and religious war.

*See my Letters.

† It has been anxiously or perhaps maliciously asked, What is the government to do in reference to the recent movements of the German Catholic Reformers and other Protestants? It should undoubtedly give free scope to development, and neither restrain nor promote it by positive laws, nor suffer it to be done by the clergy through secular means. Every other mode will fail of the end, and produce more evil than good.