The True Principle Stated
It was not until 1776, that a place was found among the civilized governments of earth where Church and State both stood where God designed they should stand, each in its own sphere. This was in the Federal Government of the United States. That glorious principle of liberty was emblazoned on the very front of the crest of the republic, in the immortal Declaration of Independence, and in the first amendment to the Constitution. On the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States was placed this inscription, "Novus Ordo Seclorum," meaning— This new order was especially manifest in these two ideas: Government is of the people; and government is, if right, absolutely separate from religion. George Bancroft, the great historian, remarks as follows on these guarantees of religious liberty: “The Constitution establishes nothing that INTERFERES with EQUALITY and INDIVIDUALITY. It knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, of favored classes, or legalized religion, or the political power of property. It leaves the individual alongside of the individual. . . . Religion was become avowedly the attribute of man and not of a corporation. . . . VINDICATING THE RIGHT OF INDIVIDUALITY EVEN IN RELIGION, and in RELIGION ABOVE ALL, the new nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God THE PRINCIPLE FIRST DIVINELY ORDAINED IN JUDEA. It left the management of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American Constitution, in harmony with the people of the several States, withheld from the Federal Government the power to invade the home of reason, the citadel of conscience, the sanctuary of the soul; and not from indifference, but that the infinite Spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power.” —History of the Constitution, book 5, chapter 1. Under these guarantees of equity and liberty, during the succeeding century, both Government and genuine religion have prospered as under no other government.