Religion sustains the
state, not because it externally commands us to obey the higher
powers, or to be submissive to the powers that be, not because it
trains the people to habits of obedience, and teaches them to be
resigned and patient under the grossest abuses of power, but
because it and the state are in the same order, and inseparable,
though distinct, parts of one and the same whole. The church and
the state, as corporations or external governing bodies, are
indeed separate in their spheres, and the church does not absorb
the state, nor does the state the church; but both are from God,
and both work to the same end, and when each is rightly
understood there is no antithesis or antagonism between them.
Men serve God in serving the state as directly as in serving the
church. He who dies on the battle-field fighting for his country
ranks with him who dies at the stake for his faith. Civic
virtues are themselves religious virtues, or at least virtues
without which there are no religious virtues, since no man who
loves not his brother does or can love God.
The guaranties offered the state or authority are ample, because
it has not only conscience, moral sentiment, interest, habit, and
the via inertia of the mass, but the whole physical force of the
nation, at its command. The individual has, indeed, only moral
guaranties against the abuse of power by the sovereign people,
which may no doubt sometimes prove insufficient.
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