a social being, in
connection with the social system, if we applied this mode of reasoning
to him in his social relations? We have a constitutional government,
about the powers, and limitations, and uses of which there is a vast
amount of differences of belief. Your honors have a body of laws, now
before you, in relation to which differences of opinion, almost
innumerable, are daily spread before the courts; in all these we see
clashing doctrines and opinions advanced daily, to as great an extent as
in the religious world.

Apply the reasoning advanced by Mr. Girard to human institutions, and
you will tear them all up by the root; as you would inevitably tear all
divine institutions up by the root, if such reasoning is to prevail. At
the meeting of the first Congress there was a doubt in the minds of many
of the propriety of opening the session with prayer; and the reason
assigned was, as here, the great diversity of opinion and religious
belief. At length Mr. Samuel Adams, with his gray hairs hanging about
his shoulders, and with an impressive venerableness now seldom to be met
with, (I suppose owing to the difference of habits,) rose in that
assembly, and, with the air of a perfect Puritan, said that it did not
become men, professing to be Christian men, who had come together for
solemn deliberation in the hour of their extremity, to say that there
was so wide a difference in their religious belief, that they could not,
as one man, bow the knee in prayer to the Almighty, whose advice and
assistance they hoped to obtain. Independent as he was, and an enemy to
all prelacy as he was known to be, he moved that the Rev. Mr. Duche, of
the Episcopal Church, should address the Throne of Grace in prayer. And
John Adams, in a letter to his wife, says that he never saw a more
moving spectacle. Mr. Duche read the Episcopal service of the Church of
England, and then, as if moved by the occasion, he broke out into
extemporaneous prayer. And those men, who were then about to resort to
force to obtain their rights, were moved to tears; and floods of tears,
Mr. Adams says, ran down the cheeks of the pacific Quakers who formed
part of that most interesting assembly. Depend upon it, where there is a
spirit of Christianity, there is a spirit which rises above forms, above
ceremonies, independent of sect or creed, and the controversies of
clashing doctrines.

The consolations of religion can never be administered to any of these
sick a