The reason that
suffices for the child does not suffice for the adult, and the
reason that suffices for barbarians does not suffice for civilized
men, or that suffices for nations in the infancy of their
civilization does not suffice for them in its maturity. The
appeal to external authority was much less frequent under the
Roman Empire than in the barbarous ages that followed its
downfall, when the church became mixed up with the state.
This trait of the American character is not uncatholic. An
intelligent, free, willing obedience, yielded from personal
conviction, after seeing its reasonableness, its justice, its
logic in the Divine order--the obedience of a free man, not of a
slave--is far more consonant to the spirit of the church, and far
more acceptable to God, than simple, blind obedience; and a
people capable of yielding it stand far higher in the scale of
civilization than the people that must be governed as children or
barbarians. It is possible that the people of the Old World are
not prepared for the regimen of freedom in religion any more than
they are prepared for freedom in politics; for they have been
trained only to obey external authority, and are not accustomed
to look on religion as having its reason in the real order, or in
the reason of things. They understand no reason for obedience
beyond the external command, and do not believe it possible to
give or to understand the reason why the command itself is given.
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