Church and State hobble along, side by side, notwithstanding their boasted independence.  Almost every man you meet will tell you, that he is occupied in labours most abundant for the good of his country; and almost every woman will tell you, that besides those things that are within (her house) she has coming upon her daily the care of all the churches.  Yet spite of this universal attention to the government, its laws are half asleep; and spite of the old women and their Dorcas societies, atheism is awake and thriving.

In the smaller cities and towns prayer-meetings take the place of almost all other amusements; but as the thinly scattered population of most villages can give no parties, and pay no priests, they contrive to marry, christen, and bury without them.  A stranger taking up his residence in any city in America must think the natives the most religious people upon earth; but if chance lead him among her western villages, he will rarely find either churches or chapels, prayer or preacher; except, indeed, at that most terrific saturnalia, “a camp-meeting.”  I was much struck with the answer of a poor woman, whom I saw ironing on a Sunday.  “Do you make no difference in your occupations on a Sunday?” I said.  “I beant a Christian, Ma’am; we have got no opportunity,” was the reply.  It occurred to me, that in a country where “all men are equal,” the government would be guilty of no great crime, did it so far interfere as to give them all an opportunity of becoming Christians if they wished it.  But should the federal government dare to propose building a church, and endowing it, in some village that has never heard “the bringing home of bell and burial,” it is perfectly certain that not only the sovereign state where such an abomination was proposed, would rush into the Congress to resent the odious interference, but that all the other states would join the clamour, and such an intermeddling administration would run great risk of impeachment and degradation.

Where there is a church-government so constituted as to deserve human respect, I believe it will always be found to receive it, even from those who may not assent to the dogma of its creed; and where such respect exists, it produces a decorum in manners and language often found wanting where it does not.  Sectarians will not venture to rhapsodise, nor infidels to scoff, in the common intercourse of society.  Both are injurious to the cause of rational religion, and to check both must be advantageous.

It is certainly possible that some of the fanciful variations upon the ancient creeds of the Christian Church, with which transatlantic religionists amuse themselves, might inspire morbid imaginations in Europe as well as in America; but before they can disturb the solemn harmony HERE they must prelude by a defiance, not only to common sense, but what is infinitely more appalling, to common usage.  They must at once rank themselves with the low and the illiterate, for