said, "The great object of religion being God supreme, and the seat of religion in man being the heart or conscience, i.e. the reason God has given us, employed on our moral actions in their most important consequences, as related to the tribunal of God, hence I infer that God alone is the God of the conscience, and, consequently, attempts to erect human tribunals for the consciences of men are impious encroachments upon the prerogatives of God." Theophilus Parsons, afterwards ChiefJustice, said, "It has been objected that the Constitution provides no religious test by oath, and we may have in power unprincipled men, atheists, and pagans. No man can wish more ardently than I do that all our public offices may be filled by men who fear God and hate wickedness; but it must remain with the electors to give the government this security. An oath will not do it. Will an unprincipled man be entangled by an oath? Will an atheist or a pagan dread the vengeance of the Christian's God,—a being, in his opinion, the creature of fancy and credulity? It is a solecism in expression. No man is so illiberal as to wish the confining of places of honor or profit to any one sect of Christians; but what security is it to government that every public officer shall swear that he is a Christian? For what will then be called Christianity? The only evidence we can have of the sincerity and excellence of a man's religion is a good life; and I trust that such evidence will be required of every candidate by every elector."

The theory on this point upon which the Constitution was formed was perfect. It secured the recognition of a Supreme Being and a future retribution, and excluded all tests founded upon distinctions of religion or sects. It found the Bible at large among the people for whom it provided a government, and it left among them the power of the gospel without restraint, free. It left it in the authority and made it the highest interest of the people to select the citizens to office who believed in the Bible and acknowledged that power by conforming their lives to its requirements.

More than sixty years of prosperity and domestic peace, under the practical working of this system, attest the wisdom of the scheme on which it was founded.

A fourth fact is its recognition of the Christian Sabbath. Article 1, section 7, says, "If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it

shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law."

"In adopting this provision," says Dr. Adams, "it was clearly presumed by the people that the President of the United States would not employ himself in public business on Sunday. The people had been accustomed to pay special respect to Sunday from the first settlement of the country. They assumed that the President also would wish to respect the day. They did not think it suitable or becoming to require him by a constitutional provision to respect the day: they assumed that he would adhere to the customary observance without a requirement. To have enacted a constitutional provision would have left him no choice, and would have been placing no confidence in him. They have placed the highest possible confidence in him, by assuming, without requiring it, that his conduct in this respect would be according to their wishes. Every man who is capable of being influenced by the higher and more delicate motives of duty cannot fail to perceive that the obligation on the President to respect the observance of Sunday is greatly superior to any which could have been created by a constitutional enactment. The people, in adopting the Constitution, must have been convinced that the public business intrusted to the President would be greater in importance and variety than that which would fall to the share of any functionary employed in a subordinate station. The expectation and confidence, then, manifested by the people of the United States, that their President will respect their Sunday, by abstaining from public business on that day, must extend a fortiori to all employed in subordinate stations."

Senator Frelinghuysen said in Congress, in 1830, "Our predecessors have acted upon a true republican principle, that the feelings and opinions of the majority were to be consulted. And when a collision might arise, inasmuch as only one day could be thus appropriated, they wisely determined, in accordance with the sentiments of at least nine-tenths of our people, that the first day of the week should be the Sabbath of our Government. This public recognition is accorded to the Sabbath in the Federal Constitution. The President of the United States, in the discharge of the high functions of his legislative department,

is expressly relieved from all embarrassment on Sunday. Both Houses of Congress, the offices of the State, Treasury, War, and Navy Departments, are all closed on Sunday.

"Long before the American Revolution, it was decided that the desecration of the Sabbath was an offence at common law, which all admit recognizes Christianity. The Sabbath is recognized, both by the statute and common law, by the States which compose this Union, as a day upon which courts cannot sit or civil process issue; the servant, apprentice, and laborer are exempt from worldly avocations on that day, and protected in its enjoyment as a day of rest; and all entertainments, exhibitions, reviews, or other things calculated to disturb the religious observance of this day, are prohibited.

"The humanizing effect of the Sabbath, in promoting works of benevolence, charity, schools for the instruction of those who cannot obtain instruction elsewhere, and in strengthening the social relations of friends and neighbors, is among its most benign results. The principles which are then inculcated in churches of all denominations strengthen that public morality, good order, and obedience to the laws so essential to the security of the state.

"The framers of the Constitution, and those who for many years administered it, doubtless had in their eye the first day,the Sabbath of the Christian religion. They were legislating not for Jews, Mohammedans, infidels, pagans, atheists, but for Christians. And, believing the Christian religion the only one calculated to sustain and perpetuate the government about to be formed, they adopted it as the basis of the infant republic. This nation had a religion, and it was the Christian religion.

"That Christianity is the religion of this country, and as such is recognized in the whole structure of its government, and lies at the foundation of all our civil and political institutions,― in other words, that Christianity, as really as republicanism, is part and parcel of our laws,—is evident from the following:

"Such was the relation of Christianity to civil government in the several States as they existed prior to the formation of the present Federal Constitution; and there is no evidence that in acceding to said Constitution they surrendered such relation either to the general or to their own particular governments.

"The colonies from which our present States originated were planted by decidedly Christian people, to be Christian

communities, and with such views of the relations between civil government and religion as were then universal in Christendom. The experiment of a nation without an established religion had not then been tried, nor did they think of instituting it: Christianity, therefore, was made part of their civil institutions, as well in their minuter branches as in their essential foundations.

"In Massachusetts and other Northern colonies, a membership in the Church established by law was necessary to citizenship in the commonwealth. In Virginia and other Southern colonies, the Church of England was by law established.

"By-and-by, when the colonial character had ceased, and that of States been assumed, the legal establishment of any one form of Christianity in preference to all other forms of the same was discontinued. In the adoption of the present Federal Constitution, it was declared, among the amendments of that instrument, that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' This article in the general Constitution, and the similar alterations in the laws of the several States above mentioned, by which the legal precedence of one form of Christianity over another was done away, are all the ground on which it can be asserted that either our General or State Governments have disowned all connection with the Christian religion as having any more countenance in their legislation than infidelity or Mohammedanism. But is this a warrantable conclusion? Is it not perfectly conceivable that Christianity may be the religion of the people and of the people's government, so far as that her great principles shall be assumed as the basis of their institutions and the promotion of those principles distinctly countenanced in their laws and customs, at the same time that no religion is, in the technical sense, 'established,' and no one form of Christianity is distinguished above another? To call religion into connection with the government, so far as to employ ministers of the gospel as chaplains, at the public charge, in Congress and other public departments, is decided by longestablished practice to be not unconstitutional. And thus it is decided that it was not intended, by the article quoted above from the Constitution of the United States, to prevent the Government of the United States from being connected with religion, with some religion in preference to all others, or to

have its institutions based upon the principles of Christianity instead of those of Deism or the Koran.

"How unlikely were the several States, in acceding to the present Constitution, to lay aside all connection with Christianity in the general institutions to which they gave birth, may be inferred from the consideration that in their own respective legislation a close relation between religion and the Government had always subsisted; that, though a strong aversion had arisen to the national establishment of any one form of Christianity, none had grown up against a distinct recognition of Christianity itself as the religion of the nation; and that the representatives of the States in the convention that formed the present Constitution were, for the most part, men of decided Christian principles."

Judge Wilson, a member of the convention that formed the Constitution, in an oration at Philadelphia, July, 1788, commemorative of the adoption of the Constitution by the people of the several States, depicts the future progress and glory of the American nation under the Constitution in these glowing words, -words of prophecy which have been fully realized. He said,"The commencement of our government has been eminently glorious let our progress in every excellence be proportionally great. IT WILL-IT MUST BE SO. What an enrapturing prospect opens on the United States! Placid Husbandry walks in front, attended by the venerable plough. Lowing herds adorn our valleys; bleating flocks spread over our hills; verdant meadows, enamelled pastures, yellow harvests, bending orchards, rise in rapid succession from East to West. Plenty, with her copious horn, sits easy smiling, and, in conscious complacency, enjoys and presides over the scene. Commerce next advances, in all her splendid and embellished forms. The rivers and lakes and seas are crowded with ships; their shores are covered with cities; the cities are filled with inhabitants. The Arts, decked with elegance, yet with simplicity, appear in beautiful variety and well-adjusted arrangement. Around them are diffused, in rich abundance, the necessaries, the decencies, and the ornaments of life. With heartfelt contentment, Industry beholds her honest labors flourishing and secure. Peace walks serene and unalarmed over all the unmolested regions; while liberty, virtue, and religion go hand in hand, harmoniously, protecting, enlivening, and exalting all. Happy country! may thy happiness be perpetual!"