are of all the churches. Yet spite of this universal attention
to the government, its laws are half asleep; and spite of the old
women and their Dorcas societies, atheism is awake and thriving.

In the smaller cities and towns prayer-meetings take the place
of almost all other amusements; but as the thinly scattered
population of most villages can give no parties, and pay no
priests, they contrive to marry, christen, and bury without them.
A stranger taking up his residence in any city in America must
think the natives the most religious people upon earth; but if
chance lead him among her western villages, he will rarely find
either churches or chapels, prayer or preacher; except, indeed,
at that most terrific saturnalia, "a camp-meeting." I was much
struck with the answer of a poor woman, whom I saw ironing on a
Sunday. "Do you make no difference in your occupations on a
Sunday?" I said. "I beant a Christian, Ma'am; we have got no
opportunity," was the reply. It occurred to me, that in a
country where "all men are equal," the government would be guilty
of no great crime, did it so far interfere as to give them all
_an opportunity_ of becoming Christians if they wished it. But
should the federal government dare to propose building a church,
and endowing it, in some village that has never heard "the
bringing home of bell and burial," it is perfectly certain that
not only the sovereign state where such an abomination was
proposed, would rush into the Congress to resent the odious
interference, but that all the other states would join the
clamour, and such an intermeddling administration would run
great risk of impeachment and degradation.

Where there is a church-government so constituted as to deserve
human respect, I believe it will always be found to receive it,
even from those who may not assent to the dogma of its creed; and
where such respect exists, it produces a decorum in manners and
language often found wanting where it does not. Sectarians will
not venture to rhapsodise, nor infidels to scoff, in the common
intercourse of society. Both are injurious to the cause of
rational religion, and to check both must be advantageous.

It is certainly possible that some of the fanciful variations
upon the ancient creeds of the Christian Church, with which
transatlantic religionists amuse themselves, might inspire morbid
imaginations in Europe as well as in America; but before they can
disturb the solemn harmon