They are in the order of second causes, and second
causes, without the first cause, are nought. Communion which
stops with them, which takes them as the principle and end,
instead of media, as they are, is the communion of death, not of
life. As religion includes all that relates to communion with
God, it must in some form be inseparable from every living act of
man, both individually and socially; and, in the long run, men
must conform either their politics to their religion or their
religion to their politics. Christianity is constantly at work,
moulding political society in its own image and likeness, and
every political system struggles to harmonize Christianity with
itself. If, then, the United States have a political destiny,
they have a religious destiny inseparable from it.
The political destiny of the United States is to conform the
state to the order of reality, or, so to speak, to the Divine
Idea in creation. Their religious destiny is to render
practicable and to realize the normal relations between church
and state, religion and politics, as concreted in the life of the
nation.
In politics, the United States are not realizing a political
theory of any sort whatever. They, on the contrary, are
successfully refuting all political theories, making away with
them, and establishing the state--not on a theory, not on an
artificial basis or a foundation laid by human reason or will,
but on reality, the eternal and immutable principles in relation
to which man is created.
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