This System, Besides Aiding
The Natural Restlessness Of The American Character, Gives Rise To A Good
Deal Of Spurious Religion, And Shortens The Lives And Impairs The
Usefulness Of The Ministers By Straining And Exhausting Their Physical
Energies.
To the honour of the clergy of the United States it must be observed that
they keep remarkably clear
From party-politics, contrasting in this
respect very favourably with the priests of the Church of Rome, who throw
the weight of their influence into the scale of extreme democracy and
fanatical excesses. The unity of action which their ecclesiastical system
ensures to them makes their progressive increase much to be deprecated.
It is owing in great measure to the efforts of the ministers of religion
that the unbending principles of truth and right have any hold upon the
masses; they are ever to be found on the side of rational and
constitutional liberty in its extreme form, as opposed to licence and
anarchy; and they give the form of practical action to the better feelings
of the human mind. Amid the great difficulties with which they are
surrounded, owing to the want of any fixed principles of right among the
masses, they are ever seeking to impress upon the public mind that the
undeviating laws of morality and truth cannot be violated with impunity
any more by millions than by individuals, and that to nations, as to
individuals, the day of reckoning must sooner or later arrive.
The voluntary system in religion, as it exists in its unmodified form in
America, has one serious attendant evil.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 443 of 478
Words from 120182 to 120445
of 129941
