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. They regard the authority of the church as a thing apart, and see no way by which faith and reason can be harmonized. They look upon them as antagonistic forces rather than as integral elements of one and the same whole. Concede them the regimen of freedom, and their religion has no support but in their good-will, their affections, their associations, their habits, and their prejudices. It has no root in their rational convictions, and when they begin to reason they begin to doubt. This is not the state of things that is desirable, but it cannot be remedied under the political regime established elsewhere than in the United States. In every state in the world, except the American, the civil constitution is sophistical, and violates, more or less, the logic of things; and, therefore, in no one of them can the people receive a thoroughly dialectic training, or an education in strict conformity to the real order. Hence, in them all, the church is more or less obstructed in her operations, and prevented from carrying out in its fulness her own Divine Idea. She does the best she can in the circumstances and with the materials with which she is supplied, and exerts herself continually to bring individuals and nations into harmony with her Divine law: but still her life in the midst of the nations is a struggle, a warfare.