Every religion has two parts.  One is the dogmatical, the part of worship; the other is the moral part.

The first, the dogmatic part, belonging to those mysterious regions which the arm of human understanding cannot reach, because they belong to the dominion of belief, and that begins where the dominion of knowledge ends—­that part of religion, therefore, the dogmatic one, should be left to every man to settle between God and his own conscience.  It is a sacred field, whereon worldly power never should dare to trespass, because there it has no power to enforce its will.  Force can murder; it can make liars and hypocrites, but no violence on earth can force a man to believe what he does not believe.  Yet the other part of religion, the moral part, is quite different.  That teaches duties toward ourselves and toward our fellow-men.  It can be, therefore, not indifferent to the human family:  it can be not indifferent to whatever community, if those duties be fulfilled or not, and no nation can, with full right, claim the title of a Christian nation, no government the title of a Christian government, which is not founded upon the basis of Christian morality, and which takes it not for an all-overruling law to fulfil the moral duties ordered by the religion of Christ toward men and nations, who are but the community of men, and toward mankind, which is the community of nations.  Now, look to those dread pages of history, stained with the blood of millions, spilt under the blasphemous pretext of religion; was it the intent to vindicate the rights, and enforce the duties of Christian morality, which raised the hand of nation against nation, of government against government?  No:  it was the fanaticism of creed, and the fury of dogmatism.  Nations and governments rose to propagate their manner to worship God, and their own mode to believe the inscrutable mysteries of eternity; but nobody has yet raised a finger to punish the sacrilegious violation of the moral laws of Christ, nobody ever stirred to claim the fulfilment of the duties of Christian morality toward nations.  There is much speaking about the separation of Church and State, and yet, on close examination, we shall see that there was, and there is, scarcely one single government entirely free from the direct or indirect influence of one or other religious denominations; scarcely one which would not at least bear a predilection, if not countenance with favour, one or another creed—­but creed, and always creed.  The mysteries of dogmatism, and the manner of worship, enter into these considerations; they enter even into the politics, and turn the scales of hatred and affection; but certainly there is not one single nation, not one single government, the policy of which would ever have been regulated by that law of morality which our Saviour has promulgated as the eternal law of God, which shall be obeyed in all the relations of men to men.  But you say, of the direct or indirect amalgamation of Church and State, proved to