American Confederation enjoys an advantage which more than one European
government, I suspect, would at some moments purchase at a high price:
it has not to trouble itself about religious interests, either in its
action without or its administration within. If there are conflicts
everywhere in the spiritual order, it leaves them to struggle and become
resolved in the spiritual order, without needing to trouble itself in
the matter. Hence arises for the State a freedom of bearing, a
simplicity of conduct, which we, who have to steer adroitly through so
many dangers, can hardly comprehend. The American government is sure of
never offending any church--it knows none; it does not interfere either
to combat or to aid them; it has renounced, once for all, intervention,
in the domain of conscience.

The result, doubtless, is, that this domain is not so well ordered as in
Europe; the administrative ecclesiastical state has by no means
submitted to such regulation. Is that to say that this inconvenience (if
it be one) is not largely compensated for by its advantages? Is it
nothing to suppress inheritance in religious matters, and to force each
soul to question itself as to what it believes? In the United States,
adhesion to a church is an individual, spontaneous act, resulting from a
voluntary determination. This is so true that four-fifths of the
inhabitants of the country do not bear, the title of church members.
Although attending worship, although manifesting an interest and zeal in
the subject to which we are little accustomed, although assiduous
church-goers, and liberal givers, they have not yet felt within
themselves a conviction strong and clear enough to make a public
profession of faith. Think what we may of such a system, we must avow,
at least, that it implies a profound respect for sacred things; nothing
can less resemble that indolent and formal assent which we give, in
conformity with custom, and without binding ourselves, in earnest, to