THE STATE RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH. THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH. BY W. E. GLADSTONE, ESQ., LATE STUDENT OF CHHTSTCHURCH, AND M.P. FOR NEWARK ev oXov TOUTO 8jf lltktirntfoov riyr,etirta,i V. 28. CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 53 as a permanent institution not less legitimate than any other, and the formal view of the slave as an animate machine, opyavov g/*\|/y^ov ;* the prevalence of the law of force, indicated, among other signs, by the relative depression of the female sex; human sacrifices, the devouring of human flesh, the indifference of public law to all private misery and misfortune : these and the like features of ancient society supply us too abundantly with the materials of proof that the sense of a general brotherhood was at an end for all prac- tical purposes, even though it might charm (and there how rarely) the sensibilities of the theatre ; that the bond of amity between man and man, as such simply, as creatures having common faculties and a common form, was absolutely broken. If, as com- pared with the inferior animals, he had more power of discerning the rights of his brother, so also he was better able to perceive or imagine rivalry of interest, to sustain more longsighted and deliberate enmity, to add fuel to the flames of his anger or desire. There was indeed a law that in various degrees bound father to son, Spartan to Spartan, Dorian to Dorian, even Greek to Greek ; but there was no law that bound man to man, or nation to nation. And we find only the partial reconstructions of primitive obligation, in the several divinely ordained forms of a common life, constituted by the union of men into bodies. Such then was the general law and office of human association. 21. And this law of mutual association was itself * Arist. I'ol. 54 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. so deeply impressed upon the human heart, that, though too weak for practice, yet, as respected at least its domestic form, none doubted that it was to be re- ferred to our nature, and not to any device of the conscious understanding ; while, even as regarded the larger form of political society, the noblest of the heathen minds perceived that it was either referable to the same source, as Juvenal ; Mundi Principio inchilsit communis conditor illis Tan turn ananas ; nobis animum quoque ; mutuus ut nos Affectus petere auxilium et praestare juberet ; Disperses trahere in populum, migrare vetusto De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere sylvas ; * or at least essential to the general well-being, as Aris- totle.f 22. I say, then, that the action of the usurping principle of self-direction was repressed and restrained in mankind chiefly by the knitting and blending to- gether the lives of men in domestic and social organ- isations. It is no figure but a reality which is indi- cated by the phrase, a common life. It truly means no less than this, that a portion of our individual life becomes subjected to the laws and conditions of a more general life, and therefore in so far ceases to minister to the selfish appetite, and is redeemed from the dominion of the usurping principle. It is placed under a law whose seat is external to the mind and will of the individual, and which is not referred mainly or singly to his independent pleasure or advan- * Juv. Sat. xv. 148. t Arist. Pol. iii. v. CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 55 tage. Indeed, wherever common life, in any form, is established, then, in the same proportion as it prevails, there must be an actual surrender of the individual will. That which is thus sacrificed is thrown into a common fund, and unity of being, instead of diver- sity, is to the same extent established, as to everything that gives to being its interest, dignity, or value. And thus natural association in its several forms does in some small measure redress the original evil, and pre- pares for its fundamental and complete redress; by taking something away from self, it prepares for re- storing it to God. 23. Nor does the establishment of this common life attain the negative good alone of abstracting some of the food of the rebellious and self-regarding appetite. It does not throw these energies and sympathies, of which it prohibits a particular exercise, to waste, but, as will presently be stated more at large, augments their power. He who has to care for his family or his country, and who has learned to identify himself with their interests in thought and in deed, feels that the weight upon him is greater than that of any merely individual concern, and exerts himself with more of general vigour, than if he stood an isolated savage in the forest. Self does not now supply either the exclusive subject-matter of his action, or its uni- versal end. By means of association, the relations of kindness and of justice, and the ideas of right and reciprocal duty, take definite form in his mind. He is still individual, but he is not isolated ; the lives of 56 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. his fellow-creatures have become by fellowship por- tions of his own ; he lives, he hopes and fears, he suffers and rejoices, he loves and hates, in them and through them, as well as in his single capacity. The poet does but clothe in bolder language those truths of which all have a partial consciousness when he declares his friend animce dimidium mece.* The sym- pathy with such an one is as true as that of the body with its members ; and the loss of such an one as real a withdrawal of something belonging to the proper and plenary measure of its existence. 24. It is this corrective to the spirit of self-regard which mainly separates between the human race, as it exists apart from revealed religion, and devils. We have no reason to suppose that the fallen spirits differ from the self- worshipping man in respect of his adopting as his law of action that which is inwardly attractive to himself, for the reason that it is thus attractive. But he who has truly learned to love, in so far differs from the lost angels, that he has found a ground and a motive of conduct extrinsic to himself. 25. Nor is it only in the relations of the family, the race, or the nation, that a common life is established among men. There are many narrower and specific forms in which it exists, as those of the client with his Roman patron, the burgher to his borough, the artisan to his guild, the landlord with his tenant, the em- ployer with the employed. Wherever the principle has been vigorous, man has run a glorious career; * Hor. Od. i. 3. 8. CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 57 wherever it has been torpid, he has left nothing to imitate, nothing to lament. It was the real and en- during praise of feudalism* that it marked, though unequally, all the gradations of society by corre- spondent classes of reciprocating duties, definite enough to be undeniable, and yet not so precise as to be capable of a mechanical and prefunctory discharge. Not only between the private person and the nation, but between each man and those immediately above and next beneath, a subaltern law of association was in force. Protection on the one hand, and obedience on the other, each to be rendered at all hazards and to all extremities, formed the noble, though imper- fectly realised, idea of medieval society, and exhibited in the liveliest manner the theory and practice of a common life. And while this conception is travelling, through many stages of progressive deterioration, to the state in which its elements are to be material pro- duction on the one hand and consumption on the other, those lineaments indeed become more and more faint, but yet not indiscernible. 26. If there lurk in our minds the suspicion that this is after all a vain attempt to embody the mere phantasms of the mind, that a joint or common life is either a form of language to which no reality of nature corresponds, or at best an arbitrary and con- ventional device, in such a suspicion I read partly indeed the result of national habits and pursuits un- friendly to speculation, whether sound or fanciful, but * Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. pp. 321, 322. 58 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. in great part also the confirmation of one of the most sinister symptoms of our own time, namely, its tend- ency to detach social relations from the control of the affections, and to trust for their regulation to law or to economical influences alone ; to the former, in- deed, mainly for redressing the more glaring abuses that result from the uncontrouled dominion of the latter. If we had more fully realised our human brotherhood in practice, if we had more faithfully acted upon the sacredness of these our secondary rela- tions of duty, it would be a simpler lesson to learn the great truth, that all those considerations which separate our individual life from the dullest forms of vegetative existence, and render it a matter of serious and rational concern, do also as strictly attach to those modes of common life of which we are partakers by virtue of our social constitution in its various aspects. 27. Association, then, by setting before us duties to be done to others, enlarges the province of our ordi- nary practice : by establishing within certain bounds one law for all, it provides that such law shall be in- dependent of, or exterior to, each ; and by intertwining our affections one with another, as well as by attach- ing them to the forms themselves of our fellowship, it gives us the conditions of disinterestedness, and sup- plies us with extrinsic ends upon which action may terminate, instead of reverting within the isolated sphere of the single being of the agent. 28. It is by looking to the state of the world before the Advent, and beyond the circle of the earlier reve- CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 59 lation from God, that we may best estimate the func- tion and the moral power of that fundamental law under which God willed us to be socially constituted ; because we may then arrive at it by measuring the actual state of the world with what it must have been had no bond of family, of race, of patriotism, existed among men, and had the selfish appetites in conse- quence been left to grow by indulgence from day to day into impenetrable obduracy and unmitigated ra- pacity. Yet, even under the benignant influences of the kingdom of the Redeemer, these secondary in- fluences have been of no less, nay of greater, value, only their beneficial effects have been less conspicuous, because generally blended with those higher results, which the principle of a spiritual life has produced. Yet even this principle, adapting itself to the frame of our nature, is tabernacled in the fellowship of the Catholic Church, the communion of saints. 29. I have endeavoured to show the great moral designs of the fundamental forms of social organisation, which are certainly in the nature of reasons for at- taching to them Divine sanctions. I shall now further attempt to prove that the general doctrine of collective forms of religion, apart from purely individual devo- tions, has a ground not less in the actual and peculiar wants, than in the capacities and purposes, of human association. 30. Let us then consider whether it be not true that, together with those beneficial effects of association which have been specified, there are not others of an 60 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. opposite character, which require that it should pos- sess additional guarantees against abuse ; and whether, as this participation in the several forms of joint life is a fundamental law of our condition, we be not morally obliged to make the requisite provision against the dangers which it involves. 31. I have said that incorporation establishes rela- tions of justice, and even of mutual kindness, between the body and its members generally ; and also between one member and another. But it does not provide for the recognition of such relations between one who is within its precinct and others who are not; nor be- tween the society itself and persons out of the society; nor between the society and other societies ; nor even effectually between the society and particular members of itself. Incorporation establishes an a$>o), a sense of honour and shame, a responsibility, one to another, among the partners in that common life which it has created. But the whole of their extrinsic action still remains unregulated, and the whole, also, of that of the society itself. Nor is there any tendency whatever, inherent in the nature of incorporation, to quicken the perceptions of moral obligation in the members or in the body, with reference to those who are beyond its pale. Thus, then, while it begins well, and, in order to its own organic completion, lays a powerful repressing hand on the action of selfish appetite, and provides for the continuance of that pressure within itself, yet, as extrinsically regarded, it will have brought into exist- ence a new power which may itself be greedy, unjust, CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 61 and aggressive, and may perpetrate for the community more and grosser evils than would have been com- mitted by the feebler means of its members as indi- viduals. 32. Reverting to another aspect of the general nature of combination among men, let us observe that it is calculated to produce the following results : a maximum of effect from given means ; a great compli- cation of interests ; an endless diversity of reciprocal influences ; a subdivision, and with the subdivision a great waste and diminution, of that sense of individual responsibility which is felt by private persons in their capacity as such. The first, by economising the appli- cation of resources, by setting each man to do that for which he is fittest, and by enabling one man to do the same thing for many. The second, by taking out of each man's immediate province the execution of a large part of that which belongs to his own wants, and making him a co-operator in joint labours and a sharer in joint proceeds. The third, by providing for the in- termixture a"nd contact of man with man, in every mode of sympathy, interest, and obligation, to the greatest possible degree. The encroachment of society, by its circuitous influences or by its positive acts, on the in- dividual, varies under different forms of civil polity. Under despotism, a particular person ; under demo- cracy, the mass, override and subjugate his will. But, besides these cases of vicious excess, in every form, from the very nature of society, he must have many extrinsic forces mingling with and modifying his own 62 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. agency, and thus greatly complicating the rules of his moral life. Their shades, numerous enough and al- most indiscernible when our action is wholly in the individual sphere, and when all our motives are self- derived, are multiplied as by a new set of factors when we come to act in societies. The fourth, because, whenever blame is shared by a plurality of persons, each becomes conscious, as it falls upon himself, that it affects his neighbour also ; and that principle of self- love which with most persons is paramount, is forth- with tempted in every one to shift the burden, and to ascribe more to those around him, and less to himself, than the equal share. And as this is done by all, much of the blame due to acts confessedly evil is, as it were, unappropriated, and falls short of its mark. And where many unite to do wrong, the conscience is staggered as by an appearance of authority, and we are tempted to believe it right, or to insist less upon its wrongfulness. In these methods does combination, firstly, enlarge the power of the creature man; se- condly, increase his liability to be affected by conduct which he cannot control ; thirdly, impair and obstruct his sense of moral responsibility. 33. What has been said may, I trust, suffice to bring into clear, if not full view, the urgent necessity which exists for some provision to meet the increased demands of the collective life in general; to guarantee us, as far as may be, against the increased abuses which will attend the increase of the moving power of human life, by combining therewith an enhanced CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 63 moral sense, deriving new strength from new and suit- able principles, against the idola fori * which society engenders, and the delusions which they weave around us ; against the heavy visitations to which, in commu- nities, we become liable through conduct of others over whom we have no control, and to secure to us the realisation of the beneficial effects of civil union ; lastly, to preclude the fatal operation of that tendency to diminish responsibility and to impair the strength (so feeble at the best) of the principle of individual mo- rality, which we have seen to belong to combination as such, and which, if it be not counteracted by the application of some auxiliary principle over and above the principle of individual morality, may, of itself, or rather must, as it seems, poison the very sources of action and of life. This remedy has been recognised by the common, the almost universal sense of mankind, as being found in collective religion. 34. This joint, or common life, is what is ordinarily intimated by the phrase, the personality of societies; by which it is represented and carried into action. That phrase becomes applicable, when the community of law, sentiment, and interest, belonging to the com- mon life, assumes the determinate form of incorpora- tion, and becomes subject internally to a deliberative regulating principle. It is not any mere metaphysical or theological abstraction, nor a phrase invented for the purpose of discussion, but a reality, having its own * Novum Organon, aph. xxxix. 64 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. palpable exponents in the persons of those who are in their several departments the organs of the societies, and in every member of them according to the sphere of action which each may fill in virtue of his member- ship. Now I am to argue, that the powerful and separate moral agency which is thus established, re- quires the application to it of a consecrating principle of religion, as the moral agency of the individual re- quires to be consecrated by his individual worship. Wherever in the universe there is power, connected with that moral and reflective consciousness which is the condition of agency, it both is the property of God, the King of that universe, His rightful property, however for a time withholden or abused ; and it can only be as it were realised, it can only fulfil the laws under which He gave it, when it is used for the pur- poses He has ordained, and in the temper of mercy, justice, truth, and faith, which He has inculcated. But these principles never can be truly, never can be permanently, entertained in the human breast, except by a continual resort to their fountain above, and the supply of the Divine grace, sought and obtained through a solemn worship. And this reasoning ap- plies to moral agency as such, whether it be public or individual. 35. These general positions are alike tenable, as I apprehend, whatever theory we may adopt as to the origin of political power. If it be founded on the consent and will of the majority, that consent and will must themselves act subject to the obligation to sane- CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 65 tify its exercise. The function of choice in the legis- lature is yet more clear, where government is founded on paternal principles, and the fiction of popular sove- reignty is discountenanced. So, also, is it to be observed, that the conclusion we have reached seems properly to belong to pure Theism, and capable of being supported in argument even without reference to the more peculiar doctrines of Christianity ; although it be undeniable that but for the revelation of the Gospel it never could have been clearly contemplated by the human understanding. But before it can reach to its minuter forms among the details of our conduct, it must be compared with many considerations. We are met at once by the fact, that while our duty as creatures to the Creator requires that all our acts should be done with regard to Him as their centre and to His law as their rule, the structure of our mind seems physically to preclude the possibility of maintaining without interruption a conscious reference to Him even while, nay, it may be even because, we are earnestly seeking to obey His will. Ought, then, all the combinations of men, by which new personalities are created, and a common life composed ; ought all these, or, if not all, ought any of them, to be specifically consecrated by solemnity of religion appropriated distinctly to themselves ? 36. In order to the successful pursuit of this inquiry, let us endeavour to examine strictly into the nature and degrees of personality in societies. Now, although it be true that there is generally in societies a real and VOL. i. F 66 THF STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. substantial personality, care must be taken to keep the idea which the term conveys distinct from that of in- dividuality. The latter signifies not only actual unity of life, but that unity attended with universal indivisi- bility ; whereas, moral personality, while it implies unity for certain purposes, is compatible with divisi- bility in the subjects whose composition goes to form that unity. This personality is recognised by the laws of every civilised nation, and by the law of nations, under which bodies of men associated for the purposes of religion, of learning, of government general or mu- nicipal, of science, of art, even of economical and material improvement, are regarded as persons, are dealt with, that is to say, as being in every practical sense agents, with the liabilities of agents ; as dis- charging the functions, and as bearing the character, of individuals quoad certain purposes. 37. But, it will be asked, how do we see that to this limited and qualified individuality, religious re- sponsibilities can in any case belong ? I answer, be- cause it may fulfil these three conditions : the first, to be living ; the second, to be active ; the third, to be moral ; therefore it is capable of, and subject to, reli- gious responsibility. 38. Let us then inquire narrowly what it is that renders the individual, properly so called, a capable subject of religious responsibility. It is plain that it is not merely his individuality ; for a man is not more nor more truly an individual than a brute, and yet a brute is not bound by a religious responsibility. May it not CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 67 be something which he has in common with the great moral person of a society of men ? And if it be some- thing which characterises him in common with such a complex person, then it follows that the complex person is as capable of the religious relation as the simple one. 39. Imagine the spark of life, under any form in which it merely exists, and discharges no function be- yond that (if it be one) of self-maintenance. By the very terms of the hypothesis, there is nothing here but the bare stationary unit, incapable of movement either forward or retrograde, of growth or of decay, of reflection or of habit. Here there is individuality, but no capability of religion. 40. Now, again, imagine that spark of life endowed with power, enabled not merely to be, but to act, to move, to grow, to advance, to decay, to recede ; pos- sessing that which we term a vegetative life ; indi- viduality remains, and something is added, but we have not yet filled up the conditions of moral respon- sibility. 4 1 . Once more, add something further to the last predicament, and suppose a power not only of expan- sion and contraction in the life itself, but also of ex- trinsic action, of affecting for detriment or for advantage other lives elsewhere situated ; and suppose that the being whose action was now endowed with this fertility, this capacity of production, should not only exercise the capacity upon other objects but upon himself, should mould and modify his own being, not by mere growth, but through the medium of action, by the formation of F 2 68 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. habits, that is to say, of modified states of his own nature, arising out of his acts ; we have now an active, as well as a merely vegetative individuality, but we are as clearly as ever wanting in the elements of the cha- racter of moral agency. 42. One stage in addition, and we have done. Superadd to the foregoing conditions a capacity of re- flection, that is to say, of intelligence and consciousness, whose reach shall embrace the whole sphere of action to which the given powers are applicable ; a faculty of perceiving the law by which means are adjusted to ends, and the higher law by which ends are chosen and rejected ; and a free function of choice, of adop- tion or refusal, upon the view either of ends or means; and we have now all the conditions which are requisite to fill up the conception of a moral person, a being morally responsible, the subject upon whom, if there be truth in our fundamental conceptions of right and wrong, may be justly administered a system of reward and punishment, of praise and blame. 43. Now there is no one of these conditions which is wanting, I do not here say whether or not in all combinations of men, but in that peculiar combination which we term State. No one doubts that a State lives in the first and lowest form which I have de- scribed : no one doubts that it is capable of progression and retrogression in physical or in intelligent power : no one doubts that it is capable of producing great results, great moral as well as great material results, great results of positive good and evil, whether upon itself CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 69 at large, or upon its individual members or subordi- nate combinations, in its dealings with them as ex- trinsic persons, or upon other combinations of the national and independent form ; that not its reputation alone, but its actual health and its future conduct, are affected by its past conduct. And clear as it is that the sphere of action of the State is one full of the most essentially moral matter, it is perhaps of the whole ca- talogue of conditions the one less than the rest sus- ceptible of doubt, that a State as such is at least as deliberative as an individual : at least as capable, by its nature, of discerning right and wrong, since it may and by its nature ought to command the very best perceptions of right and wrong, which are found among men, to be enlisted in its service ; at least as free in the use of its organs to do or not to do, since it owns no human superior. 44. Therefore I say that the necessary conditions of moral action attach to personality with the qualified or rather limited unity which it implies, and not to individuality as such, which, though it has absolute unity, need not include moral elements ; and that all these conditions are fulfilled in the idea, in the reason- able theory, of the nature of a State. Thus much respecting the need of religion in com- binations of men, and the capacity of it in States, by way of establishing affirmatively the principle, that a national religion ought to exist, provided the subse- quent considerations regarding the proper organ for choosing and defining it, and the right instrumentality 70 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. for its profession and propagation, can be practically adjusted. I have endeavoured, in short, to show, that it belongs properly to a nation as such. 45. But does it belong to all combinations of men ? Those characteristics of combination, which have been specified above, are general, and not limited to the po- litical form. There are many other kinds of combina- tion among men, from the nation and the family downwards, in a descending scale of dignity and im- portance. And it may be truly alleged that in these subordinate combinations there is collective power wielded by individual agency, which is one of the foregoing arguments : and that there is in them, or in many of them, common advantage and loss, common acting and suffering, as well as in that great combina- tion under which organised aggregations of men are usually called nations : and hence it is inferred, that if it be right to argue, from these characteristics of col- lective power and common acting and suffering in po- litical societies, for a national profession of religion, it is equally right to argue, from similar characteristics, that such inferior combinations cannot be legitimately constituted without an analogous profession : and the popular reasoning of the day proceeds in this form, that, as it is manifestly true that a common profession of religion is not required in these combinations, despite of the existence of those characteristics, so neither need it be required as a condition of the right constitution of a State, which, as is taught in some systems of opi- nion, existing only for external and material ends, CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 71 ought not to embarrass itself with a matter which has come to be of the utmost intricacy from the subsisting divisions of opinion, and which lies entirely beyond its natural province. Is then religion beyond or is it within the natural province of all combinations alike ? or of some more and some less ? and why of this more than of any others? 46. Of course it is readily to be conceded, that all combinations ought not to contemplate all purposes : that the intrinsic superiority of one end to another is no reason for employing means adapted only to the inferior end in the pursuit of the higher: that all combinations of men have in their degree the attri- butes of personality and power, common acting and common suffering : and yet that not all are alike bound as combinations to profess a specific religion. Which among them are so bound, and which are not, is the ulterior question, requiring to be determined by an examination of the nature and of the degree of that personality, that power, that common acting and com- mon suffering. For instance, the personality may be (a) constant and sustained, or it may be intermittent ; it may resume activity only at long intervals, and during the intermediate spaces may have no more than a poten- tial existence : (>) it may be temporary and occasional, or it may be permanent. The power may be (c) indefi- nitely great or indefinitely small. The functions, about which the community of acting and of suffering sub- sists, may be (d) applicable to few, or many, or mosc, or all: may be (e) grounded in natural ordinance, or in hu- 72 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. man convention and allowance : may be (f} narrow, determinate and calculable in amount; or may be overreaching, comprehensive, unlimited, and entirely transcending the range of all foresight and distinct reasoning: may be ( xarao-xsu^j/ 7nxaXa>ju,e0a.t Or Cicero in his " Laws," Nunc ibidem ab eodem (sc. Jove) et a caterisDis immortalibus sunt nobis agendi capienda primordia.^ These were men of theistical schools. But who can avoid being * Sat. ii. 149. t Rep. iv. J De Legg. ii. 4. 140 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. struck by^the circumstance, that others of a more hard and dry, of a sceptical, or a rationalising or utilitarian temperament, are found in the same category. Thus Polybius finds the distinctive character of the Roman polity and the cause of the greatness of the city in the peculiar prominence and power of its religious institu- tions.* Thus Sallust connects the ancient purity and freedom with the solemn worship and strict regard to the gods, the recent corruption with its decay through the ingress of luxury, f Thus, even Horace, contrast- ing the excess of selfish expenditure in his own time with the noble character of ancient Rome, sets down among the features of the latter a care for the worship of the national deities strangely opposed to the existing neglect.J Thus Aristotle places religious institutions among the first essentials of a State ; cov oivev av 130. With respect to the practice of Christendom, it has been notorious and all but universal. Dante indeed wrote Ahi Costantin ! di quanta mal fu matre Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote Che da te prese il primo ricco patre ! || But it was with respect to the fabulous donation of that emperor to Pope Sylvester, not to his actual support of religion. The authority of practice, from that period to this, is altogether in favour of the general principle that religion should be professed and supported by the * Polyb. vi. 56. t Bell. Cat Praef. J Compare Od. ii. 15, with iii. 6. $ Pol. vii. 7. || Inferno, xix. 115 CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 141 State. Even in the United States of America, the only country whose constitution repudiates the prac- tice of lending direct aid, we find an attestation of the position, that the acts of government require to be sanctified and offered up to God by a collective wor- ship. The meetings of her federal legislative body are opened with prayer. It is, I believe, true, that such prayer is offered in rotation by ministers of all persua- sions indiscriminately, entered upon a roll or list; Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Baptist, Unitarian ; I know not how much wider may be the range ; I do not ask how far this heterogeneous wor- ship satisfies the commands of that word which pro- claims the doctrine of " one body, and one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling ;"* but I highly value the acknowledgment, rendered but the more conspicuous in the midst of such anomalies, that, where civil society and government exist, there should be attached to them a religion. 131. And this authority we draw from the conduct, not only of those who have known and loved Christi- anity, but of those who knew it not, or who knew and hated it. The Church, by the mouths of all her doc- tors, has taught the religious duties of the State, and the advantages resulting from the connection. It is difficult for those who walk with her not to feel, in a case of such magnitude and vital import to the pur- poses of her mission, the weight of her sanction. But it receives corroboration from an opposite quarter. The vigorous common sense of Napoleon perceived the * Eph. iv. 4. 142 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II. necessity of public religion in France, in order, not to the maintenance of the physical life of the nation, but to its elevation towards a moral tone. And Julian the Apostate was sufficiently informed by the experience even of a single generation, to outdo Constantine in the opposite direction. History informs us* that he adopted the systematic organisation which the Church was then acquiring, and brought the powers of the State to bear, by a religious establishment, upon the restoration of Paganism. But all men, it seems, at all places, and in all times, of all characters and creeds, have been mistaken in that in which almost alone they have agreed ; and the State ought not to be, and cannot be, religious. Never, surely, was there so old an error exploded by so new a truth. I would seriously urge that the historical evidence upon the present subject approaches nearly to that universal testimony, of which Aristotle,f a mind that flinched from no investigation through servility, has so wisely said o yaq TTCMT* SoxsT, TOUTO stvai o vaipwv Tatj-njv ryv 7riv ; "f Sometimes admitting the universally pervasive power of the supreme Deity : A Jove principium, nmsae, Jovis omnia plena.J And Deum naraque ire per omnes, Terrasque tractusque maris coelumque profundum. $ Sometimes seeming to grasp clearly the combined character of the Creator and Father of men. Hue enim pertinet, animal hoc providum, sagax, multiplex, acutum, memor, plenum rationis et consilii, quern vo- camus hominem, praclara quadam conditione genera- turn esse a summo- Deo. \\ Inter bonos viros ac Deum amicitia est, conciliante virtute. Amicitiam dico ? * Plat. Timams, 8. f Plat. Alcib. Secund. $ 23. J Virgil, Eel. iii. 60, from Aratus, Phaenom. v. 1, U &tt *{x*tiirta- Cf. Cic. de Repub. i. 36. $ Georg. iv. 221. II Cic. de Legg. i. 7. VOL. 1 M 162 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III. Imo etiam necessitudo et similitudo. Quoniam quidem bonus ipse tempore tantum a Deo differt, discipulus ejus {Binulatorque et vera progenies ; quern parens ille magnificus, virtutum non lenis exactor, sicut severi patres, durius educat Bonum virum in deliciis non habet: experitur, indurat, sibi ilium praparat* It has been thought that Aristotle affords an exception to this general rule, and that in his Ethics he attempts to construct a system of human practice without refer- ence to deity. But in truth it is far otherwise. His ethical system is avowedly an introductory one, and it terminates in the exact adaptation of the human to the Divine life.f 17. And as of science, so also was religion the life of art. If I further cite in this place its pervading all the systems of civil government, as a proof of its being the first instrument of human culture, it is not in ignorance of the fact that State religions were frequently imposi- tions deliberately palmed upon a credulous multitude. In truth the argument is, as we have seen,J hereby strengthened. For here, according to the supposition, were governors, themselves void of all belief in the my- thological worship which they upheld, yet sedulously impressing it upon the people ; why this but from the experience of its results ? of its power in part by the images of beauty and grandeur to humanise the rude minds of men ; in part by the solemnities of the oath, * Seneca, De ProvidentiS, c. i. f Eth. Nic. b. x. c. vii. viii. J Ch. ii. $ 115,116. $ Polyb. b. VI. C. Ivi. V eturni rijf KO.TO. rir fyxe* trifrtut ruftutri TO a#j*v. CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 163 to maintain the cementing influence of a reverence for truth ; to attract veneration to the person of the ruler by his participation in sacred offices ; and thus to con- solidate the social body, as well as through terror to restrain from crime. Even this last was a great though negative instrument of civilisation ; it was the best and only one which, while Paganism reigned, was appli- cable to the masses of men. It tended to check dete- rioration at least that would otherwise have been accelerated, if it did not guarantee actual improvement. I rely much, therefore, even upon those accounts of the origin of religion which, as that of Polybius,* for example, represent it as introduced into States for the purposes of kingcraft or of social order; because, however unhistorical in themselves, they afford at least the important witness of their authors to its power and necessity as an instrument of general cultivation. There is also a still lower theory of its first reception, that of Capaneus in Statius, Primus in orbe deos fecit timont which has been expanded by Lucretius J and the whole Polyb. D. vi. C. Ivi. I/M/ yi ^tj S*ai/-/ rtv raur TiTmtiKtyni. ii ft\t yaa nt fitfttf aJjo nXiT'.u^.a. fVia.ya.yCii, 1tn( tvilv r\i a,itt.y*.eut( i raieuros Toorof. !!( Ji fan r).rit!<>s itrri llMffor X.HI TXtift; ifiluftltn -raoa.ion.ut, loyr,t aXaysa, tvftev fiiauv' XliVir<, rttf a.1r l >.t>t; Qifcatt x.a.\