rences of a simpler and nobler theology, but have lamented that the freshness of religious enthusiasm always decays in the second generation. Some even have elicited from this a "law" of nature that the stage of languor follows that of excitement; or that the era of commentators follows that of men of genius. The existence of this "law" may seem plausible from the side of total unbelief; but it is difficult to understand what intelligent theory of the phenomenon can rightly recommend itself to a devout Evangelical or to any earnest Protestant. The phenomenon is not confined to our sects, nor to the ignorant and excitable. Neither in Geneva, nor in Scotland, nor in England, nor in Protestant Germany, could a second and third generation sustain the religious warmth of the first; nor indeed is it denied by Romanists that learning is the fertile mother of heresy. Assuredly, if religion be a deep and noble principle, rightful and reasonable to man, then a particular form of religion must be involved in some very essential falsehood, if its vigour and vitality are uniformly undermined by accessions to its knowledge, or by the tranquil advance of experience. A true religion can but strike its roots deeper with cultivation of mind and increase of wisdom. That must be a fundamental fanaticism which thrives only upon action and excitement, and wastes by calm examination and learning. Alike in Catholic and in Protestant countries, the world has still to wait for a religion which shall grow stronger and stronger with every development of sound scientific acquirement.

Nor perhaps is this the worst: for we must add Europe has yet to wait for a religion which shall exert any good influence over public measures. A distinguished foreigner, in his own consciousness a true Christian - whose name we could not properly here bring forward-on a recent day said, in a select circle: "I begin to doubt whether Christianity has a future in the world." "Why so?" asked one present, in surprise at such an augury from such a quarter. "Because," he replied, "neither in India, nor in America, nor anywhere at all in Europe, does any of the governments called Christian '-I do not say, do what is right, but-even affect and pretend to take the RIGHT as the law of action. Whatever it was once, Christianity is now in all the great concerns of nations a mere ecclesiasticism, powerful for mischief, but helpless and useless for good. Therefore I begin to doubt whether it has a future; for if it cannot become anything better than it is, it has no right to a future in God's world."

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

[1859.]

CHRISTIANS have often admitted and deplored that the

history of Christianity is funereal and heart-breaking: especially the animosity of Christians against one another. The violence with which sect has persecuted sect, and man man, stands in appalling and grotesque contrast to the celebrated precept of mutual love. That a religion which began by preaching that the human conscience ought to be open to conviction, and, when convinced by free preaching, ought to abandon the belief and the practices of its forefathers; a religion which professed not to take up the sword of the magistrate, but to fight only with the sword of the spirit-that this religion should, the moment it got the power, grasp at the sword, and use it against its adversaries who were pleading only with its legitimate weapons of reason and argument, is so hideous and mortifying a fact, as painfully to weaken men's confidence in the onward destinies of the human race. But, in truth, the phenomenon is wider and older and deeper than Christianity, which is less original than is popularly supposed, both in its better and in its worse aspects. No deeply seated error can be extirpated, until we know its secret justifications and its means of self-delusion, the fancied good at which it is aiming, and the truth for which it darkly protests.

We have to ask, not only why such men as Pius V., and Cranmer, and Calvin, and St. Bernard, and Augustine were persecutors, but also why the same was true of the excellent Emperors Decius, and Marcus Aurelius, and Trajan? I do not mean by this remark to give any opinion whether the details of the persecution ascribed to Decius and Marcus Aurelius are credible. But it appears undeniable, that the doctrines of political obedience professed in the pre-Christian age, naturally led to extreme punishment, as soon as men were found stubborn enough to oppose themselves to the religious decrees of the State. Christians, who brought in new principles, ought to have risen above the errors which infected Pagan philosophy; but they did not; on the contrary, they eagerly adopted and transmitted them

exactly as did the Reformers of the 16th century, and exactly as did the English Puritans in the New World. The tendency to religious persecution must have some very deep and subtle selfjustification, when it can thus arise afresh in men of strong minds, wide knowledge, and free thought, who love freedom for themselves and make high professions concerning it. To us moderns, or at least to us Protestants, it is apt to appear as a first axiom of thought, that every man has an absolute right to religious freedom; insomuch that we are embarrassed to understand how any can doubt of it. Perhaps this is because we think of religion chiefly, if not exclusively, as an inward judgment or inward emotion. Over this, it is unendurable that any should claim authority. Possibly even in the Church of Rome, even among those who now seem to us ready to go all lengths in persecution of hostile opinion, few will justify inquisitorial interrogation to elicit punishable error. The real controversy begins when religion ceases to be a purely inward fact, and comes out visibly into human life. Now, in truth the old religions were not only not inward and spiritual, but they were obtrusively public, consisting in pageantry and exhibitions, sometimes indecent and corrupting, or otherwise extravagant; for the like of which we have only to look to modern India. The ancient statesmen and philosophers, with whom it was an axiom that religion was to be controlled by the civil magistrate, had nothing else in their minds than these externalities of religion. When a new theology came before them which had no other public action than that of argument, the question whether it should be allowed freedom of speech against the constituted religion, appeared to the statesmen as one purely political. To attack by words the established ceremonial seemed to Trajan an offence of the same kind as to attack the political authority of the emperor or of the senate.

In my opinion, religious persecution, like all unjust despotism, has two sources-the pride of rulers, and confused or false theories of morality. The former is the more obvious of the two, and I do not underrate its energy as a cause of the results which we see; but it would not be so long-lived, and it could not command so much support from the intelligent, the thoughtful, and the well-meaning, if it were not abetted by a confused morality. Especially, I believe, the limits which separate morality from religion are indistinctly seen and insufficiently insisted on; and it is by the obscurity as to these limits that the functions of the civil power are imperfectly understood; out of which rises a twofold

D

mischief. On the one side, well-meaning men who are chiefly zealous for religious freedom imagine that the State ought not to support morality; on the other, men equally well-meaning, who see that morality must be upheld, drive their doctrine into a practical advocacy of religious persecution.

The most legitimate procedure of a civil goverment, acting for the protection of morality, takes the aspect of religious persecution to a sect which has adopted some immorality as a part of its religion, and it will conduce to a full insight into the subject, if I first develop this side of it. Let me begin by the very extremest case; I will take no fictitious example, but a terrible reality. The Thugs of India were a religious sect. They were united by religious ceremonies, and entered upon their darkest plots with religious formalities. When they waylaid, strangled, and plundered the unsuspecting traveller, they returned thanks to the Deity who had aided them, and glorified him with presents in their own fashion. None of us can suppose that all of these men had clear consciences, and that the forms of religion entirely overcame the remonstrances of natural feeling. No more can we imagine that religious murderers in Europe have been free from the qualms of conscience. But undoubtedly all religious ceremonies have wonderful power in enabling men to perpetrate evil deeds with selfcomplacency; and they cannot have been wholly ineffective in the case of the Thugs. Hence to these men, just in proportion as they were possessed by religious fanaticism, as distinguished from mere ruthless cupidity, the English government which hunted them down and hanged them must have appeared as an armed enemy to their religion. But the Thugs, it may be well pleaded, took up the rope, and they could not complain if they perished by the rope. Let us proceed to somewhat less extreme cases, and it will immediately appear how very important to the English government in India, in Singapore, in Hongkong, it is, to hold sound and sharply defined doctrines on this subject. Until a recent day, the Brahmin priests all but universally taught as a part of religion, that a widow performed a pious duty in burning herself on her husband's funeral pile. They had been accustomed for ages to assist in the immolation; and when the English first began to move against it, a cry was raised of religious persecution. Happily men rose into places of power, who had strength of mind to despise that cry, and who clearly understood, that as no immorality can be justified by a plea of religion, so neither can it be sheltered by such a plea; and that there lies the same duty on the civil

government to put down this atrocity, as to put down the murder of travellers under the forms and pretences of religion. Infanticide is a third instance. In India, as in China, it has been a simple custom, and not, I believe, a religious rite, except in pursuance of a voluntary vow, which concerned the individual and not the priestly body collectively. But this is an accidental distinction. If the Brahminical religion had even prescribed infanticide in certain cases, none of us will think that that could have altered the duty of the civil government to act against it. All that we can say in this direction is, that when a government is separated by a vast chasm from the religious sympathies of the people, it may sometimes perhaps plead the weakness hence resulting as a palliation for the neglect of certain parts of its duty. But its duty to stop the killing of innocent human beings is in no case altered by the fact that some fanatical religion enjoins the murder.

Let me next advert to a case which brings us nearer home, where we have recently had a stiff controversy on the question of divorce and re-marriage. The Chinese are accustomed to Polygamy. A man of this nation settles at Singapore, marries there, and dies, leaving a widow and family. After his death a claim to his property is put in by another woman, in her own name and that of her children, who professes that he was her husband before he came to Singapore. What is the English government to do? It cannot abdicate its duty as guardian of the property. To be neutral is impossible, even if it be pretended that religion, and not civil law, is to decide what marriages are lawful. Whichever way it decides, it appears to superimpose its own opinions on to a foreign conscience; and those Englishmen who have never gained clear views on the due limits of State-action, find no guiding principle, even if the facts are clear. Among the philosophic thinkers of antiquity, the superintendence and recognition of marriages by the State was regarded as the first step out of barbarism into civilization; plainly because on this depends the due provision for the maintenance of children, and, much more, for their training to virtuous habits. Here the State and the Church are of course on common ground, as so often beside, and for that very reason are liable to clash. Again: the highly respectable and estimable community of Quakers holds a doctrine concerning the morality of military engagements and standing armies, which puts them into direct collision with the English government. It is not a very rare case for Quakers to distribute tracts among soldiers, inciting them to desert; and forthwith the whole diffi