Let one fact, incapable of doubt or dispute, satisfy every mind on this point.  The population of the United States is twenty-three millions.  Now, take the map of the continent of Europe and spread it out before you.  Take your scale and your dividers, and lay off in one area, in any shape you please, a triangle, square, circle, parallelogram, or trapezoid, and of an extent that shall contain one hundred and fifty millions of people, and there will be found within the United States more persons who do habitually read and write than can be embraced within the lines of your demarcation.

But there is something even more than this.  Man is not only an intellectual, but he is also a religious being, and his religious feelings and habits require cultivation.  Let the religious element in man’s nature be neglected, let him be influenced by no higher motives than low self-interest, and subjected to no stronger restraint than the limits of civil authority, and he becomes the creature of selfish passion or blind fanaticism.

The spectacle of a nation powerful and enlightened, but without Christian faith, has been presented, almost within our own day, as a warning beacon for the nations.

On the other hand, the cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentiousness, incites to general benevolence and the practical acknowledgment of the brotherhood of man, inspires respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social fabric, at the same time that it conducts the human soul upward to the Author of its being.

Now, I think it may be stated with truth, that in no country, in proportion to its population, are there so many benevolent establishments connected with religious instruction, Bible, Missionary, and Tract Societies, supported by public and private contributions, as in our own.  There are also institutions for the education of the blind, of idiots, of the deaf and dumb; for the reception of orphan and destitute children, and the insane; for moral reform, designed for children and females respectively; and institutions for the reformation of criminals; not to speak of those numerous establishments, in almost every county and town in the United States, for the reception of the aged, infirm, and destitute poor, many of whom have fled to our shores to escape the poverty and wretchedness of their condition at home.

In the United States there is no church establishment or ecclesiastical authority founded by government.  Public worship is maintained either by voluntary associations and contributions, or by trusts and donations of a charitable origin.

Now, I think it safe to say, that a greater portion of the people of the United States attend public worship, decently clad, well behaved, and well seated, than of any other country of the civilized world.  Edifices of religion are seen everywhere.  Their aggregate cost would amount to an immense sum of money.  They are, in general, kept in good repair, and consecrated to the purposes of public worship.  In these edifices the people regularly assemble on the Sabbath day, which, by all classes, is sacredly set apart for rest from secular employment and for religious meditation and worship, to listen to the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and discourses from pious ministers of the several denominations.