these deplorable facts, branding the
brow of partly degraded, partly outraged Humanity? No. It was precisely
the contrary; the fact that the religion of Christ never yet was
practically taken for an all-overruling law, the obedience to which,
outweighing every other consideration, would have directed the policy of
nations--that fact is the source of evil, whence the oppression of
millions has overflowed the earth, and which makes the future of the
proudest, of the freest nation, to be like a house built upon sand.

Every religion has two parts. One is the dogmatical, the part of
worship; the other is the moral part.

The first, the dogmatic part, belonging to those mysterious regions
which the arm of human understanding cannot reach, because they belong
to the dominion of belief, and that begins where the dominion of
knowledge ends--that part of religion, therefore, the dogmatic one,
should be left to every man to settle between God and his own
conscience. It is a sacred field, whereon worldly power never should
dare to trespass, because there it has no power to enforce its will.
Force can murder; it can make liars and hypocrites, but no violence on
earth can force a man to believe what he does not believe. Yet the
other part of religion, the moral part, is quite different. That
teaches duties toward ourselves and toward our fellow-men. It can be,
therefore, not indifferent to the human family: it can be not
indifferent to whatever community, if those duties be fulfilled or not,
and no nation can, with full right, claim the title of a Christian
nation, no government the title of a Christian government, which is not
founded upon the basis of Christian morality, and which takes it not for
an all-overruling law to fulfil the moral duties ordered by the religion
of Christ toward men and nations, who are but the community of men, and
toward mankind, which is the community of nations. Now, look to those
dread pages of history, stained with the blood of millions, spilt under
the blasphemous pretext of religion; was it the intent to vindicate the
rights, and enforce the duties of Christian morality, which raised the
hand of nation against nation, of government against government? No: it
was the fanaticism of creed, and the fury of dogmatism. Nations and
governments rose to propagate their manner to worship God, and their own
mode to believe the inscrutable mysteries of eternity; but nobody has
yet raised a finger to punish th