divine service on the Lord's Day, when it is not physically or otherwise impracticable; but, if the act is to be religious, he must go freely, not by coercion. The support of religion is undoubtedly a high duty: but every man must give "according as he purposeth in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver."

All these positions are very clear from our present standpoint, and were doubtless seen dimly in the days of American colonization by many sound and penetrating minds.

But the grand error was in a religion established by law. It was not that the English people, who had been born and bred Episcopalians, should be Episcopalians in Virginia. It was most natural that the forms of service to which they were accustomed in England should be preferred in the New World. It was doubtless so far healthful and wise as the free action of choice preferred those modes of worship; just as other modes, adopted in other colonies, were best suited to their habits of thought and feeling. At least, it was not the province of civil law to forbid nor to enjoin these forms. To establish Presbyterianism by law in Virginia, thereby excluding the right of the people to become Episcopalians, and to build up there the institutions of their venerated and beloved church, would be a grievous wrong, but no greater than to ordain Episcopalianism as the only lawful religion of New England or any other portion of the land.

GOD'S METHOD.

It may be deemed strange that God did not so far overrule the prejudices of man as to secure freedom of religion in America from the first. This, however, is not the divine. method. He allows the tares and the wheat to grow together. He shows his own sacred regard for human freedom in suffering the wrong to exert its power until hope of reform

is

gone, and the time has fully come for restraint or retribution. Then his judgments are conclusive.

It is, moreover, by grappling with error that truth reveals and augments its power. There were the asserted prerogatives of spiritual despotism, but the instinctive demand for the rights of conscience rising up firmly against them. There was the coerced attendance at church, but the gospel of liberty rolling out from the pulpit. There were the pomp and display of ceremonial worship, but the pure word of God saying to the people," Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up." There were legal exactions. of tithes, but the revelation showing the moral value of free, liberal giving. There was worldly conformity; but there was also the new life, in all its purifying exalting power, quietly working from within, under the agency of the Holy Ghost, seeking to develop to the gaze of men the great transformation and complete emancipation of the race designed to realize the purposes of God in the creation.

Let these two forces exist together in the trial period of a people. Let them exhibit their wrong and right, their vileness and purity, in contrast. Let them grapple till the superior power of the true and the good shall appear. Give them time. Evil is exceedingly tenacious in this world. Its eradication must be the work of ages. God is the example of patience and active energy, and "God is never in a hurry.” Through the vast cycles of time, he maketh the wrath of men to praise him, and the remainder he doth restrain. Even we have lived long enough to see how wise and safe is this great plan of Providence, and to know what dispositions he would make of the attempt to establish a church by law in the sphere of the future Republic of liberty. There was no need of violence in resisting this usurpation. The periods of preparation and independence would not end till it was utterly overthrown by the action of power silent as the laws of gravitation, but omnipotent as the arm of Jehovah. The great privilege of free worship would then be all the more valuable for the contrast; while the success of the right, in its own vindication and independent development, would

be a sublime spectacle to angels and to men.

In the mean

time, grave responsibilities would attach to the leaders of oppression, against the will of God, now becoming so clear and emphatic in its revelations.

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH.

We must mention here one more restriction of human

rights, the most intense form of despotism known among men we mean American slavery.

The spirit of this ancient wrong to humanity was inherent in the British aristocracy. Essential caste elevated the privileged classes above the common obligations of society, and imposed corresponding burdens upon laborers. The relations of employers and employed, landlord and tenant, were, to a large extent, those of master and servant; and this bondage, as the effect of inevitable dependence, descended to succeeding generations.

It was

The laws of " indented tenants" adopted in this miniature and pretentious aristocracy were slavery in essence. simply an invention to avoid labor, and obtain for gentlemen the avails of labor without just compensation. I wish therefore distinctly to deny that the slave system was forced upon the South by the cupidity of dealers in human flesh and souls, and affirm that it was most evidently of English origin. It is hence easy to see how naturally the imbecile natives were subjected to unwilling and unrequited toil, and reduced to cruel slavery.

It is also easy to explain the fact, that when Las Casas, from blind philanthropy, sought to mitigate the horrors of Indian servitude by simply changing the victims, the slavedealer had no difficulty in finding a market. Continental despotism in the West-India Islands and elsewhere was not left to enjoy a monopoly of this nefarious traffic. Hence, when twenty negroes were brought to Jamestown, in August, 1619, by a Dutch trading-vessel, to be exposed to sale

like brutes, it was "by the free consent and co-operation of the colonists themselves," who purchased and held them, "not as indented servants, but as slaves for life."

True, it had come to be the general conviction in England and upon the Continent, that Christians ought not to be reduced to slavery; but captives in war and accredited pagans were not included in this exemption. It may thus be explained how English traders in captured victims could have immunity from punishment in Christian lands, and how even sovereign princes could assert claims to the enormous profits of the slave-trade.

The development of this system of flagrant injustice was very gradual, and is not to be traced here, as it belongs to another part of this work; but we desire sufficient attention to it now to show the startling fact of another powerful accession to the strength of despotism in the great representative colony of the South.

Hildreth, i. 119.

CHAPTER V.

RELIGION AND CIVIL LIBERTY IN VIRGINIA.

"Not democracy in America, but free Christianity in America, is the real key to the study of the people and their institutions." - GOLDWIN SMITH.

Ir would seem that a hard problem had been raised, — hard for man, but not too hard for the solution of Infinite Wisdom. With what intense interest do we now inquire, How will God himself release these fettered minds? How shall the rights of man emerge from this sea of oppression? Let us not be in haste. It is God's question, and he takes time.

Let us turn our attention to the gradual development of those principles, which, during this preparatory period, were quietly to assert their vitality and rights, and ultimately reveal their power to constitute and maintain a free republic.

In all the history of colonization thus far traced, we see the evident hand of God. He overruled the plans of men in rejecting such colonists as were not adjusted to the purposes of freedom. He chose the nation and the race of men suitable to found an empire. Romanists were not allowed the ascendency in the land appropriated to the future "United States." Protestantism included freedom of conscience, and would ultimately assert the rights of man in church and in civil government. God, moreover, suffered the vileness of immoral adventurers to destroy them, and steadily brought forward the representatives of virtue and piety. England was a religious country. The Reformation, under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth and Edward, had asserted the rights of conscience so far as to throw off the incubus of