For aught I know, they may do so as frequently and as
fervently, or more frequently and more fervently,
Than we do; but
there is a rowdiness, if I may be allowed to use such a word, in
their manner of doing so which robs religion of that reverence
which is, if not its essence, at any rate its chief protection. It
is a part of their system that religion shall be perfectly free,
and that no man shall be in any way constrained in that matter.
Consequently, the question of a man's religion is regarded in a
free-and-easy way. It is well, for instance, that a young lad
should go somewhere on a Sunday; but a sermon is a sermon, and it
does not much concern the lad's father whether his son hear the
discourse of a freethinker in the music-hall, or the eloquent but
lengthy outpouring of a preacher in a Methodist chapel. Everybody
is bound to have a religion, but it does not much matter what it
is.
The difficulty in which the first fathers of the Revolution found
themselves on this question is shown by the constitutions of the
different States. There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of
the New England States were, as things went, a strictly religious
community. They had no idea of throwing over the worship of God,
as the French had attempted to do at their revolution.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 492 of 538
Words from 131055 to 131304
of 143277
