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§145. What therein determines this unique persistence and expanding potency is not far to seek. First, there is an exalted, purified and extended morality, approving itself to the heart and conscience of humanity as in accord with its ideal constitution and the natural order of life among men, which morality is taught in precept and urged in practice. Secondly, there is an enlarged and enlightened view of our relation and obligation to God as Our Father, giving to natural religion a clearness and cogency never attained in the schools of philosophy. Thirdly, there is a well settled claim of a divine origin, of a divine founder in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, of a divine revelation promising redemption to the faithful and eternal blessedness to the righteous. We would not ignore but heartily approve the further claim of the Church that it is multiplied, upheld and impelled by the immanent Spirit of God; but, from a historic and philosophic point of view the aforementioned principles go far toward explaining the phenomenal strength and growth of this the most durable and comprehensive of all human organizations.

Moreover, consider the ends for which the Church proposes itself as the means. It claims to have solved the problem of life, to interpret its meaning, and to offer sure guidance to the faithful. Maintaining that our terrestrial life is teleologically justified only by the fact that it is related to a higher life, to a life beyond, and therefore has import, not as an end in itself, but as a period of preparation and probation for eternal life, it proclaims to restless humanity: defenders should not shrink from any trial of strength.". -MAX MÜLLER, Science of Religion, Lec. i. Let me, the writer of this treatise, reverently add, that a religion which cannot abide the most searching investigation of philosophy and of physical science, a Bible which cannot pass unscathed the fire of adverse criticism, of skeptical, hostile criticism, that religion, that Bible are not for me. Let research go freely on, free from all check save fact and logic; the result, we need not fear.

Come unto me, and find your promised rest. "We may concede that the teleology of history has never reached a system formally more complete than the philosophy of the Church. Heaven and eternal happiness the goal of historical life, the earth its temporal scene of action, its central point the incarnation of God and the foundation of the Kingdom of heaven on earth, all past ages leading up to this culmination which shall determine the entire future, the whole course of history bounded by the day of creation on the one hand and the day of judgment on the other, these indeed constitute such a grand philosophy of history that Hegel's or Comte's barren abstractions are mere nothing when compared with the fruitful, concrete conception." 1 Under the shield of this massive doctrine, and by right of its divine ordination, the Church is claiming ownership and actively seeking possession of the whole world in the name of its living King.

§ 146. In the fourth century the Church was incorporated with the State. It is generally admitted by ecclesiastical historians that, from and after the time of Constantine, the original constitution of the Church was overlaid by a vast body of human additions, particularly by the hierarchy, assimilating the magistracy by a long gradation of ecclesiastical dignities or powers, rising upward from the primitive pastor or curate to the bishop, to the pope or patriarch; and that by these and other results of the alliance of the Church with the Empire, its simplicity was lost, its purity corrupted, and the prior relations of the clergy and laity injuriously affected.2

1 Translated, with some verbal adaptation, from Paulsen's Einleitung in die Philosophie, Berlin, 2d ed., 1893; bk. I, ch. ii, § 3 (p. 178).

2 "If it be assumed that Platonism was among the causes which led to the development of the medieval hierarchy, its influence must be conceived as mainly indirect and exerted through the doctrines of Philo, the NeoPlatonists, and the Church Fathers, all of whom had been especially attracted and influenced by the Platonic doctrine of the ultra-phenomenal world. But

Yet "it was of immense advantage to European civilization that a moral influence, a moral power, a power resting entirely upon moral convictions, upon moral opinions and sentiments, should have established itself in society, just at the period when it seemed on the point of being crushed by an overwhelming physical force. Had not the thoroughly organized Church at this time existed, the whole world must have fallen a prey to mere brute power. It alone possessed a moral power; it maintained and promulgated the idea of a precept, of a law superior to all human authority; it proclaimed that great truth which forms the only foundation of our hope for humanity, namely, that there exists a law above all human law, which, by whatever name it be called, whether reason, or the law of God, or what not, is, at all times and in all places, eternally one and the same."1

In the course of the centuries, however, the alliance of the Church with the State proved unwholesome. An arrogant and ambitious clergy endeavored to render its rule entirely independent of the people, to bring them under authority, to take possession of their mind and life without the conviction of their reason or the consent of their will. Claiming to be in possession of the keys, it exercised a spiritual lordship of almost unbounded power. It endeavored with all its might to establish a theocracy, to usurp the temporal authority of the State, to establish universal dominion. The struggle for supremacy between the Church and the State, always at the expense of the liberties of the people, often resulted in the subjugation and subservience of the latter; and the former, asserting its catholicity, was for centuries the dominant power

whatever judgment may be passed on the question of historic dependence, and setting aside many specific differences, the general character of the Platonic State and that of the Christian hierarchy of the Middle Ages are essentially the same. .” — UeberweG, Hist. Phil., § 43, note,

1 Guizot, Hist. Civ., Lec. ii.

over Europe. Ecclesiastical dissension and division, in some States, broke this dominion, but the ill-starred communion of the two organizations has persisted, an unholy alliance, confusing the sacred with the secular to the prejudice of both.1

The end, the ultimate purpose for which the State exists, and that for which the Church exists, are quite distinct, and their rightful means of attaining their ends have little in common. The proper function of the State is concerned with the material prosperity, the external wealth of its citizens; the proper function of the Church is concerned with the spiritual prosperity, the internal weal of its clergy and laity. The one seeks to protect and promote the health and wealth of the body politic; the other to edify and multiply its adherents. Membership in the one is quite involuntary; in the other it is essentially voluntary. The one upholds its authority by physical force; the other by moral force alone, having no penalties beyond censure and excommunication. The State has sharply marked geographical limits which it may not transgress; the Church, expanding its realm, freely invades all other realms. The former is in no sense a propagandist; the latter is essentially a missionary. In their union the lines of demarcation become obscured, and each undertakes more or less the office of the other, leading to a struggle for mastery and a consequent hinderance of efficiency. Christendom has greatly suffered, and is still suffering from

1 Still, Mr. Gladstone, an eminent Statesman, in one of his later Essays, strongly advocates the maintenance of the union; but, on the other hand, the Bishop of Peterborough, a high Ecclesiastic of the established Church of England, in a recent Essay, says: "The Church is not and cannot become the State. These words stand for two wholly distinct and different societies, having different aims, different laws, and different methods of Government. The State exists for the preservation of men's bodies; the Church for the salvation of their souls. The aim of the State, even put at its highest, is the welfare of its citizens in this world; the aim of the Church is their holiness here in order to their welfare hereafter. The duty of the Church is to eradicate sin; the duty of the State is to punish and prevent crime.”

this error. And not without warning. For, at the very origin of the Church, their prospective divorce, their separate functions, their distinct work and harmonious adjustment, were declared in the profoundly wise prescription of its founder: Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's.1

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1 According to Plato, the chief end of the State is the training of its citizens to virtue. "Our object," says he, "in founding the State is that, not a class, but that all may be made as happy as possible.” – Republic, iv, 420 b. Elsewhere he teaches that happiness depends on culture and justice, for the possession of moral beauty and goodness. — Gorgias, 470 e. According to Aristotle, the State originated for the protection of life, but ought to exist for the promotion of morally upright living, its principal function being the development of moral capacity in all its citizens, but especially in the young by education. The end is of higher order than the causes which brought it into being ; ἡ πόλις γινομένη μὲν οὖν τοῦ ἕνεκα, οὖσα δὲ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν. – Politica i, 2. The end is good living, ev Šŷ, that is, the morality of the citizens and their happiness as founded on virtue. Id. vii, 8. These eminent authorities seem hardly to have distinguished the political from the religious institutions, and there can be no doubt that their views greatly influenced those of statesmen and ecclesiastics of the Roman and mediæval periods.

Only in quite modern times, and particularly in America, has a complete separation been made between Church and State. An entering wedge was driven by Lord Baltimore in 1634, and another by Roger Williams in 1635, who as pioneers founded colonies with a guaranty, the one of religious toleration, the other of religious liberty. But it was reserved for the State of Virginia, in its reorganization as an independent commonwealth, formally to enact the divorce as an integral part of its organic law. The Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted June 12th, 1776, closes with § 16, as follows: "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other." The Bill of Rights was incorporated with the State Constitution, enacted June 29th, 1776; and, in pursuance of its provision, the famous Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, drawn by Thomas Jefferson, was enacted December 16th, 1785. See Code of 1849, ch. 76. Other States included the same principle in their several Constitutions, and at the instance of Virginia, it was incorporated in the Constitution of the United States, as a part of Amendment First, thus: "Congress shall make no law respecting

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