Constitutional Religion.
By Editor
ON the effort made by a considerable number of Protestant clergymen of this State to induce the constitutional convention to insert a clause in the fundamental law enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath a leading secular paper comments as follows: “However commendable the designs of these good gentlemen may be in a mere moral view, in the higher light of true patriotism and loyalty to free government they are narrow-minded, bigoted, even treasonable, and belong to the age of puritanical persecutions or the Papal inquisition, rather than to the present stage of civilization, when civil and religious liberty is the proudest boast of human progress. It was the boon for which the fathers of the republic fought, and for which almost every war that has convulsed the world for centuries has been waged; and any movement tending to the reshackling of civil government with religion, can only threaten disaster. There is no provision in the federal constitution permitting of religious discrimination, and there never can be while the nation remains a free republic. Religious dissension is the most dangerous element of distraction that can take root in any country. Its natural inspiration is hate, cruelty and uncharitableness, and it can transform the meek and lowly into fiends incarnate, and reduce the highest condition of liberal and enlightened government to merciless despotism. . . . Laws based upon a proper conception of right and common justice will suffice to protect all in the peculiar method of Sabbath observance which their consciences may dictate or their inclinations invite, and enforce the proprieties of civilized life. If there is a laxity of moral sentiment and torpidity of religious enthusiasm in the community, it is a matter for the pulpit to deal with, and not the law courts. And, in this connection, it may be suggested, with all reverence, there is a far more pressing requirement for religion in the churches than there is in the constitution.”