Thus religion and liberty have well-nigh perished together, and their present resting-place on earth resembles rather the one found by Noah's dove on her second flight, than the broad home, illimitable but by the world's circumference, which as philanthropists we hope, and as Christians we pray, they may soon enjoy.
Others again, warned, perhaps, by the disasters consequent upon the policy last described, have gone to the extreme, not less hurtful, and far more presumptuous, of excluding religious motives and religious principles from all influence in the affairs of the commonwealth. They have thus become _quoad hoc_, practical atheists. Content indeed, that the Deity should keep our planet in motion, and regulate its seasons and its tides; and surround and cover it with the blessings of Providence, nor careful to forbid him a participation even in the _internal_ concerns of Jupiter, or Herschell,--perhaps even willing to admit in theory, the truth of the statement from the inspired record with which this article commenced,--they yet deem it best for man, considered either as a governing or as a governed being, that the notion of a presiding Deity should be as much as possible excluded from his mind. The mere juxtaposition of the words "religion" and "politics," or any of their correlates, is sufficient to excite the fears of these scrupulous alarmists; and if they do not imitate the example of the French, who were seen near the close of the last century, rushing madly with the pendulum-like oscillation of human nature, from the bonds of religious despotism, into the very wilderness of atheism, and denounce Jehovah as a usurper, and his adherents as rebels against "the powers that be," they strive to separate all questions and acts of government from God and his laws, as if there _were_ no God; thus making, if not an atheistic people, an atheistic government. Far otherwise, we cannot but pause here to remark, acted the noble men, the sifted wheat of three kingdoms, who were thrown by God's providence through ecclesiastical tyranny, upon these shores. If they for a time, with a strange tenacity of old habits, which showed that principle, not passion, led them, clung to the very usages respecting toleration, which had exiled them, they at least preserved the nation which they founded, from the character and the curse of a nation which despises God. Heaven grant, that the pendulum may not even now be swinging to the other extreme!