gion of the one, though doubtless sincere, and, so far as it went, beneficial in its influence, was a religion that clung to forms, and to an imposing ritual; the religion of the other was at the farthest possible remove from the Church of Rome, both in form and spirit, and professed to be guided by the Scriptures alone.

Such in its grand origin was American colonization. But widely different has been the subsequent history of those English colonies, from that of England herself. The former carried out to their legitimate extent the great principles of civil and religious liberty, which they had learned in England, in the school of oppression and of long and fierce discussion. The latter, after rushing on for a time in the same career, carried those principles to such a length as to subvert the government, and plunge the country into all the horrors of revolution and misrule, ending, at last, in the despotism of a military chief. The former went on gradually improving the forms of popular government which they had originally adopted, in the face of all the efforts of the crown of England to destroy them. The latter provoked, by the wildest excesses, a revulsion, from which, even after the lapse of two centuries, she is still suffering. The former, although never were there subjects more loyal to a crown, or a people more sincerely attached to their fatherland, were compelled, as they believed, by the unkind and almost unnatural course pursued by that fatherland, to sever the bonds that bound them to it, and to establish an independent government of their own. The latter has had to fight the battles of liberty over and over again, and has not even yet obtained for the people all the rights which are considered, in America, their proper inheritance from the hand of their Creator.

I speak not here of the form of government. The founders of the American colonies, and their descendants for several generations, were monarchists, as they would doubtless have been to this day, had they not been compelled, while struggling against injustice and oppression, to dissolve their political connection with the mother-country. In all essential points, colonial freedom differed not from that which an independent existence has given them; and the people of the United States enjoy at present little more liberty than what the fathers of the Revolution maintained that they ought to have enjoyed under the British Constitution and Crown.

5

CHAPTER XI.

HOW TO OBTAIN A CORRECT VIEW OF THE SPIRIT AND CHARACTER OF THE RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES.

THUS, too, if we would have a thorough knowledge of the spirit and character of the Religion of the United States, we must study the history of religion in England first, and then in those other countries whose religious institutions must have considerably influenced those of America, in consequence of the numerous emigrants from them that have settled there. Indeed, it is very certain that the religious institutions of America have been hardly less affected than the political, by colonists from Holland, France, and other parts of the Continent of Europe, as well as from Scotland and Ireland.

Men of speculative habits may indulge many plausible à priori reasonings, on the kind of religion likely to find favor with a people of democratic feelings and institutions; but their conclusions will probably be found very much at variance with facts. M. de Tocqueville presents a striking instance of this in the first few chapters of his second work on Democracy in America.* A purely abstract argument, or, rather, a mere fanciful conjecture, might, in this case, interest by its ingenuity, and even in the absence of facts be believed as But when this anthor proceeds to establish an hypothesis by an appeal to facts, it is hard to say whether he is oftener right or wrong. Take one or two paragraphs. "In the United States," says he, "the majority undertakes to furnish individuals with a multitude of readymade opinions, and thus to relieve them of the necessity of forming their own. There are many theories in philosophy, morals, and poli

true.

* Both of M. de Tocqueville's works, entitled "Democracy in America," unquestionably possess great merit; the earlier publication, however, is much superior to the later. But the author's great fault is, that he puts his theory uniformly before his facts, instead of deducing, according to the principles of the Baconian philosophy, his theory from his facts. The consequence of this fatal mistake is, that, having advanced a theory, and shown by argument its plausibility, he immediately goes to work to support it by facts, and, in doing so, often distorts them sadly. For the object for which he wrote, that of arresting the progress of Democracy in Europe, by reading lectures from American Democracy as from a text-book, his works certainly correspond to his purpose. But, however able they may be, it is absurd to say that his volumes give a just view of American institutions on all points. On many subjects he has said some excellent things; and, indeed, no other foreigner has come so near to comprehending the spirit of our institutions. But no man ever will, no man ever can, understand them perfectly, unless he has imbibed their spirit, as it were, with his mother's milk.

tics, which every one there adopts without examination upon the faith of public opinion; and, upon a closer inspection, it will be found that religion itself reigns there much less as a doctrine of revelation than as a commonly-admitted opinion."*

Now, Democratic as America may be, it would be impossible to find a country in which the last assertion in the above paragraph is less true: for nowhere do people demand reasons for every thing more frequently or more universally; nowhere are the preachers of the Gospel more called upon to set forth, in all their variety and force, the arguments by which the Divine revelation of Christianity is established.

Again, he says: "In the United States the Christian sects are infinitely various, and incessantly undergoing modifications; but Christianity itself is an established and irresistible fact, which no one undertakes either to attack or to defend."

Again: "The Americans, having admitted without examination the main dogmas of the Christian religion, are obliged, in like manner, to receive a great number of truths flowing from and having relation to it."t

Now hardly any assertions concerning his country could surprise a well-informed American more than those contained in these paragraphs, nor could M. de Tocqueville have made them, had he not been carried away by certain theories with respect to the influence of Democratic institutions upon religion.

M. de Tocqueville does not forget that religion gave birth to AngloAmerican society, but he does forget for the moment what sort of religion it was, that it was not a religion that repels investigation, or that would have men receive any thing as Truth, where such momentous concerns are involved, upon mere trust in public opinion. Such has never been the character of Protestantism, rightly so called, in any age.

* "Aux Etats-Unis, la majorité se charge de fournir aux individus une foule d'opinions toutes faites, et les soulage ainsi de l'obligation de s'en former qui leur soient propres. Il y a un grand nombre de théories en matière de philosophie, de morale, ou de politique que chacun y adopte ainsi sans examen, sur la foi du public; et si l'on regarde de très-près, on verra que la religion elle même y règne bien moins comme doctrine révélée que comme opinion commune."-Démocratie en Amérique, Seconde Partie, tome i., chapitre ii.

† “Aux Etats-Unis, les sectes Chrétiennes varient à l'infini, et se modifient sans cesse; mais le Christianisme lui-même est un fait établi et irrésistible qu'on n'entreprend point d'attaquer ni de defendre."

"Les Américains, ayant admis sans examen les principaux dogmes de la religion Chrétienne, sont obligés de recevoir de la même manière un grand nombre de vérités qui en découlent et qui y tiennent."-Démocratie en Amérique, Seconde Partie, tome i., chapitre i.

Nor is this distinguished author nearer the truth when, giving way to the same speculative tendency, he asserts that "the human mind in Democratic countries must tend to Pantheism."* But enough: all that I have wished to show in referring to M. de Tocqueville's work, in many respects an admirable one, is, that the religious phenomena of the United States are not to be explained by reasonings à priori, however plausible and ingenious.

No: we must go back to the times when, and the influences under which, the religious character of the first colonists from England was formed, and then trace their effects upon the institutions that were established by those colonists in the New World.

It is interesting to investigate the history of Christianity in England from the earliest ages: its propagation by missionaries from Asia Minor; its reception by the Celtic races; the resistance made by the British Christians, in common with those of Ireland and France, to the claims of Rome; the conquest of England by the Saxons, and the advantage taken of that event by Rome to subdue the native Christians, whom it accused of heresy; the conversion of the AngloSaxons to Christianity, and their subsequent dissatisfaction with the Romish hierarchy; the Norman Conquest, and the efforts of the popes to take advantage of that also, in seeking to establish a complete ascendancy over the British and Irish Christians; the witnesses to the Truth raised up by God from the ancient Anglo-Saxon churches; the influence of Wickliffe and other opponents of Rome; and, finally, the dawn of the Reformation. That event, there can be no doubt, was connected, in the providence of God, with the long-continued and faithful resistance of the ancient churches of England to Error. Some remains of Truth had doubtless lain concealed, like unextinguished embers beneath the ashes; but the clearing away of the accumulated rubbish of ages, and the contact of God's Word, sufficed to revive and make it spread anew throughout the nation.

But the grand means employed by God in preparing a people who should lay the foundation of a Christian empire in the New World, was the Reformation. To their religion the New England colonists lowed all their best qualities. Even their political freedom they owed to the contest they had waged in England for religious liberty, and in which, long and painful as it was, nothing but their faith could have sustained them. Religion led them to abandon their country, rather ' than submit to a tyranny that threatened to enslave their immortal minds; and made them seek in the New World the freedom of conscience that was denied to them in the Old.

They have been justly accused, indeed, of not immediately carry* "Démocratie en Amérique," Seconde Partie, tome i., chapitre vii.

ing out their principles to their legitimate results, and of being intolerant to each other. Still, be it remembered to their honor, that both in theory and in practice, they were in these respects far in advance of all their cotemporaries; still more, that their descendants have maintained this advanced position; so that the people of the United States of America now enjoy liberty of conscience to an extent unknown in any other country. Persecution led the Puritan colonists to examine the great subject of human rights, the nature and just extent of civil government, and the boundaries at which obedience ceases to be a duty. What Sir James Mackintosh has said of John Bunyan might be applied to them: "The severities to which he had been subjected had led him to revolve in his own mind the principles of religious freedom, until he had acquired the ability of baffling, in the conflict of argument, the most acute and learned among his persecutors." The clear convictions of their own minds on this subject they transmitted to their posterity, nor was the inheritance neglected or forgotten.

The political institutions of the Puritan colonies of New England are to be traced to their religion, not their religion to their political institutions; and this remark applies to other colonies also. Now, if the reader would know what the religious character of those Puritans was, let him peruse the following eloquent eulogy upon them, from a source which will not be suspected of partiality to their religion, whatever opinions may be attributed to it in relation to their political principles.

"The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring vail, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. Hence originated their contempt of earthly distinctions. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but His favor; and, confident of that, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If their names were not found in the regis