wholly distinct from that of the right of private judgment in matters of religion, and of the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one's own conscience.

"The real difficulty lies in ascertaining the limits to which government may rightfully go in fostering and encouraging religion. Three cases may easily be supposed. One, where a government affords aid to a particular religion, leaving all persons free to adopt any other; another, where it creates an ecclesiastical establishment for the propagation of the doctrines of a particular sect of that religion, leaving a like freedom to all others; and, a third, where it creates such an establishment, and excludes all persons not belonging to it, either wholly or in part, from any participation in the public honors, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities of the state. For instance, a government may simply declare that the Christian religion shall be the religion of the state, and shall be aided and encouraged in all the varieties of sects belonging to it; or it may declare that the Catholic or the Protestant religion shall be the religion of the state, leaving every man to the free enjoyment of his own religious opinions; or it may establish the doctrines of a particular sect, as of Episcopalians, as the religion of the state, with a like freedom; or it may establish the doctrines of a particular sect as exclusively the religion of the state, tolerating others to a limited extent, or excluding all not belonging to it from all public honors, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities.

Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as it is not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs whether any free government can be permanent where the public worship of God and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American States, must settle this problem, as yet new in the history of the world, abundant as it has been in experiments in the theory of government.

But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner which they believe their accountability to him requires. It has been truly said that 'religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be dictated only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.' Mr. Locke himself, who did not doubt the right of government to interfere in matters of religion, and especially to encourage Christianity, has at the same time expressed his opinion of the right of private judgment and liberty of conscience in a manner becoming his character as a sincere friend of civil and religious liberty. 'No man or society of men,' says he, 'have any authority to impose their opinions or interpretations on any other, the meanest Christian; since, in matters of religion, every man must know, and believe, and give an account for himself.' The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power.

They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as revealed, religion.

"The real object of the amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus sought to cut off the means of religious persecution (the vice and pest of former ages), and the power of subverting the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New England, the land of the persecuted Puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, had furnished a chapter as full of dark bigotry and intolerance as any which could be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals. Apostasy, heresy, and nonconformity have been standard crimes for public appeals to kindle the flames of persecution and apologize for the most atrocious triumphs over innocence and virtue.

"It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, thus exemplified in our domestic as well as in our foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject. The situation, too, of the different states equally proclaimed the policy as well as the necessity of such an exclusion. In some of the States, Episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others, Presbyterians; in others, Congregationalists; in others, Quakers; and in others again there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition (as we have seen) of all religious tests. Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice and the State constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils without any inquisition into their faith or mode of worship."

DOCUMENT VI.

Opinion of Dr. Francis Lieber on Religious Liberty.

From "Civil Liberty and Self-Government," by Francis Lieber, LL.D. Philadelphia, 1859, p. 99.

'Liberty of conscience, or, as it ought to be called more properly,' the liberty 1 Conscience lies beyond the reach of government. "Thoughts are free," is an old German saying. The same must be said of feelings and conscience. That which government, even the most despotic, can alone interfere with, is the profession of religion, worship, and church government.

of worship, is one of the primordial rights of man, and no system of liberty can be considered comprehensive which does not include guarantees for the free exercise of this right. It belongs to American liberty to separate entirely the institution which has for its object the support and diffusion of religion from the political government. We have seen already what our constitution says on this point. All state constitutions have similar provisions. They prohibit government from founding or endowing churches, and from demanding a religious qualification for any office or the exercise of any right. They are not hostile to religion, for we see that all the State governments direct or allow the Bible to be read in the public schools; but they adhere strictly to these two points: No worship shall be interfered with, either directly by persecution, or indirectly by disqualifying members of certain sects, or by favoring one sect above the others; and no church shall be declared the church of the state, or 'established church'; nor shall the people be taxed by government to support the clergy of all the churches, as is the case in France."

DOCUMENT VII.

Fudge Cooley on Religious Liberty in the United States.

JUDGE THOMAS M. COOLEY, in his "Constitutional Limitations" (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 5th ed. 1883), pp. 576 sqq., has the following chapter :

66 OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

"A careful examination of the American constitutions will disclose the fact that nothing is more fully set forth or more plainly expressed than the determination of their authors to preserve and perpetuate religious liberty and to guard against the slightest approach towards the establishment of an inequality in the civil and political rights of citizens, which shall have for its basis only their differences of religious belief. The American people came to the work of framing their fundamental laws, after centuries of religious oppression and persecution, sometimes by one party or sect and sometimes by another, had taught them the utter futility of all attempts to propagate religious opinions by the rewards, penalties, or terrors of human laws. They could not fail to perceive, also, that a union of church and state, like that which existed in England, if not wholly impracticable in America, was certainly opposed to the spirit of our institutions, and that any domineering of one sect over another was repressing to the energies of the people, and must necessarily tend to discontent and disorder. Whatever, therefore, may have been their individual sentiments upon religious questions, or upon the propriety of the state assuming supervision and control of religious affairs under other circumstances, the general voice has been, that persons of every religious persuasion should be made equal before the law, and that questions of religious belief and religious worship should be questions between each individual man and his Maker. Of these questions human tribunals, so long as the public order is not disturbed, are not to take cognizance, except as the individual, by his voluntary action in associating himself with a religious organization, may have conferred upon

such organization a jurisdiction over him in ecclesiastical matters. These constitutions, therefore, have not established religious toleration merely, but religious equality, in that particular being far in advance not only of the mother country, but also of much of the colonial legislation, which, though more liberal than that of other civilized countries, nevertheless, exhibited features of discrimination based upon religious beliefs or professions.

"Considerable differences will appear in the provisions in the State constitutions on the general subject of the present chapter, some of them being confined to declarations and prohibitions whose purpose is to secure the most perfect equality before the law of all shades of religious belief, while some exhibit a jealousy of ecclesiastical authority by making persons who exercise the functions of clergyman, priest, or teacher of any religious persuasion, society, or sect, ineligible to civil office; and still others show some traces of the old notion that truth and a sense of duty do not consort with skepticism in religion. There are exceptional clauses, however, though not many in number; and it is believed that where they exist they are not often made use of to deprive any person of the civil or political rights or privileges which are placed by law within the reach of his fellows.

'Those things which are not lawful under any of the American constitutions may be stated thus:

"I. Any law respecting an establishment of religion. The legislatures have not been left at liberty to effect a union of church and state, or to establish preferences by law in favor of any one religious persuasion or mode of worship. There is not complete religious liberty where any one sect is favored by the state and given an advantage by law over other sects. Whatever establishes a distinction against one class or sect, is, to the extent to which the distinction operates unfavorably, a persecution; and if based on religious grounds, a religious persecution. The extent of the discrimination is not material to the principle. It is enough that it creates an inequality of right or privilege. "II. Compulsory support, by taxation or otherwise, of religious instruction. Not only is no one denomination to be favored at the expense of the rest, but all support of religious instruction must be entirely voluntary. It is not within the sphere of government to coerce it.

III. Compulsory attendance upon religious worship. Whoever is not led by choice or a sense of duty to attend upon the ordinances of religion is not to be compelled to do so by the state. It is the province of the state to enforce, so far as it may be found practicable, the obligations and duties which the citizen may be under or may owe to his fellow-citizen or to society; but those which spring from the relations between himself and his Maker are to be enforced by the admonitions of the conscience, and not by the penalties of human laws. Indeed, as all real worship must essentially and necessarily consist in the free-will offering of adoration and gratitude by the creature to the Creator, human laws are obviously inadequate to incite or compel those internal and voluntary emotions which shall induce it; and human penalties at most could only enforce the observance of idle ceremonies which, when unwillingly performed, are alike valueless to the participants, and devoid of all the elements of true worship.

"IV. Restraints upon the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of the conscience. No external authority is to place itself between the finite being and the Infinite, when the former is seeking to render the homage that is due, and in a mode which commends itself to his conscience and judgment as being suitable for him to render and acceptable to its object.

"V. Restraints upon the expression of religious belief. An earnest believer usually regards it as his duty to propagate his opinions and to bring others to his views. To deprive him of this right is to take from him the power to perform what he considers a most sacred obligation.

"These are the prohibitions which in some form of words are to be found in the American constitutions, and which secure freedom of conscience and of religious worship. No man, in religious matters, is to be subjected to the censorship of the state or of any public authority; and the state is not to inquire into or take notice of religious belief when the citizen performs his duty to the state and to his fellows, and is guilty of no breach of public morals or public decorum.

"But while thus careful to establish, protect, and defend religious freedom and equality, the American constitutions contain no provisions which prohibit the authorities from such solemn recognition of a superintending Providence in public transactions and exercises as the general religious sentiment of mankind inspires, and as seems meet and proper in finite and dependent beings. Whatever may be the shades of religious belief, all must acknowledge the fit. ness of recognizing in important human affairs the superintending care and control of the great Governor of the Universe, and of acknowledging with thanksgiving His boundless favors, or bowing in contrition when visited with the penalties of His broken laws. No principle of constitutional law is violated when thanksgiving or fast days are appointed; when chaplains are desig nated for the army and navy; when legislative sessions are opened with prayer or the reading of the Scriptures, or when religious teaching is encouraged by a general exemption of the houses of religious worship from taxation for the support of the state government. Undoubtedly the spirit of the consti→ tution will require, in all these cases, that care be taken to avoid discrimina→ tion in favor of or against any one religious denomination or sect; but the power to do any of these things does not become unconstitutional simply because of its susceptibility to abuse. This public recognition of religious worship, however, is not based entirely, perhaps not even mainly, upon a sense of what is due to the Supreme Being himself as the author of all good and of all law; but the same reasons of state policy which induce the government to aid institutions of charity and seminaries of instruction will incline it also to foster religious worship and religious institutions as conservators of the public morals, and valuable, if not indispensablc, assistants in the preservation of the public order.

'Nor, while recognizing a superintending Providence, are we always precluded from recognizing, also, in the rules prescribed for the conduct of the citizen, the notorious fact that the prevailing religion in the States is Christian. Some acts would be offensive to public sentiment in a Christian community, and would tend to public disorder, which in a Mohammedan or Pagan country