universally. The want may not in every case, have been fittingly and adequately satisfied. But the want was there nevertheless. That it has discovered itself in every form of state polity, cannot be denied. It is a mere matter of history. The facts demonstrate it; and if as Archdeacon Paley writes" what is universal is natural”—then, the want the need, thus experienced by all the nations of antiquity, was not accidental or adventitious, but one which had its origin in the arrangements of nature. Indeed this is the actual state of things. The defect was inherent in them, as in all political constitutions. And thus, again, state-churchism is found to be as natural and necessary on the one hand, as it has been proved to be moral and obligatory on the other. Hence the primæval and The patriarchal go universal practice of the nations. vernments blended the two elements-the religious and the political;—as did all the great nations and empires, whether Assyrian, Persian, Median, Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Gothic, or Keltic. And what is still more remarkable is, that the same phenomenon presents itself in regions the most unconnected and remote. For in Peru, in Mexico, in China, in India, in Thibet, in Japan, and in Polynesia, the governments are as before, politicoreligious. The constitution of the church with the state, is in short a practical necessity. And indeed none have been as ready to acknowledge this truth as atheists themselves, who have industriously represented religion as "the fiction and imposture of civil sovereigns, crafty law-makers, and designing politicians." Cicero informs us that "there were some who declared the whole belief respecting the gods to have been feigned by wise men for the sake of the commonwealth."* In the lines attributed to Critias the same atheistic opinion is asserted. "Time was when the life of men was disorderly and brutish, when the will of the stronger was the only law; when there was no reward to the good-no penalty to the wicked-after which men instituted civil and penal laws. Thereupon the notion of a god was introduced.”... "and thus" he concludes "it was I think, that mortals. were first persuaded to credit the existence of some sort of deities.” Plato thus records the opinions of these philosophers. The Gods, they first of all declare to be such, not by nature, but by art and by the laws only; and hence it comes to pass that these (the gods) are different to * "Si qui dixerunt totam de diis immortalibus opinionem fictam esse ab hominibus sapientibus, reipublicæ causâ."-De Nat. Deor. lib. I. cap. 42. + Ἦν Οτ ̓ οὐδὲν ἄεθλον οὔτε τοῖς ἐσθλοῖσιν ἦν, Οὕτω δὲ πρῶτον οἴομαι πεῖσαι τινα Θνητοὺς νομίζειν δαιμόνων εἶναι γενος Sextus Empiricus records these as the words of Critias one of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens. But their authorship is uncertain. tarch and Eusebius refer them to Euripedes. Plu different peoples; accordingly as the law-makers may have severally determined."* Sextus Empiricus declares yet more expressly how "some have said that the first rulers of mankind.....................contrived the supposition of there being gods."+ And Benedict Spinoza in his Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus states, that religion was expressly contrived “for the preservation and strengthening of government." But the accusation is really a concession. Religion is found to be the principle of cohesion in bodies-politic. Its value as an engine of state-an arcanum imperii, is acknowledged. No form of rule has been able to dispense. with it. The atheist declares it to have been invented to such an end; but forgets that while he is making an assertion which he cannot substantiate, he is at the same time acknowledging by implication the value and importance of religion as perhaps the strongest vinculum of every form of human society. So that a politico-religious form of government is found to be requisite as much in fact as in theory. In theory the union of the two elements is a duty, in fact, a necessity. o * Θεοὺς εἶναι πρῶτον φασὶν οὔ τοι τέχνη, οὐ φύσει, ἀλλά τισι νόμοις, καὶ τούτους άλλους, ὅπη ἔκαστος συνωμολόγησαν νομοθετούμενοι. De Leg. lib x. p. 666. † Ενιοι τοίνυν εφασαν, τοὺς πρώτους τῶν ἄνθπωπῶν προστάντας......ἀναπλάσαι τὴν περί τε τῶν θεῶν ὑπόνοιαν Advers. Mathem. lib. viii. p. 251. κ.τ.λ. But the same truth may be discovered from other points of view. The duty of the government to provide for the religious wants of the people is included in that other duty of conserving their highest social interests. "Salus populi suprema lex est," was the doctrine of the XII. Tables. But, that the Salus populi-the good of the people (le bonheur public of Bentham) must include the conservation of the religious well-being of the nation is become almost as much an axiom in politics as in ethics. The good of the state in general, and of the citizens in particular, supposes and presupposes the mental and religious, not less than the animal and material prosperity of the people. * For religious culture lies at the foundation of all the cultures. It is necessary alike to the permanence and progression of society. Education without it is power without principle. The figment is long since exploded that men need only to be enlightened. For, as is well known, the worst forms of vice and cruelty are compatible with the highest degree of a non-religious civilization. The religious principle is the only force which can hold the other social forces in equilibrio: Society would fall asunder without its intervention. Without religion society neither could nor would consist a single hour. Mere sociality considered as a brute instinct, would by itself prove utterly insufficient to hold together the political fabric. For there are dissociating as well as consociating forces ever in operation. And in combination these dis * Pufendorf, De Off, lib II., c. 11, § 4. D ruptive, repellent, and segregating powers, are more influential than the mere instinct already alluded to So that the less the quantity of religious influence in a state, the less is the force of cohesion. Or, to change the figure, religion is the vis vitæ of society considered as an organic growth. As it is enfeebled,-in an exactly corresponding degree, do dissolution and decay ensue. Man is naturally inimical to all government. He is impatient of restraint. And, no merely social instincts can constitute any number of men into a body-politic. Hence, then, religion-that principle which alone can curb the incipient savagism of the human heart, must be admitted to be an indispensable element of the public good. And hence the duty incumbent upon every governing body of making adequate provision for the religious education of its subjects. "The most true and holy doctrines"-writes the learned Montesquieu, "may be attended with the very worst consequences, when they are not connected with the principles of society." Now there is a great political truth in this observation. It makes it evident that it is not enough merely to place the written documents of the Faith in the hands of the people; unless at the same time the State supplies along with such documents a class of men qualified by their education for the work of their judicious interpretation. Even the doctrines of christianity may be so expounded and explained as to be made subservient of the most revolutionary designs. Indeed this |