rality determines the
bonds which hold society together. Can it, then, be indifferent in
regard to religions? No; for morality depends upon religion, and the
social bond owes its strength to both. The state can be no more an
impartial bystander in one case than in the other. The 'free Church in a
free State' represents a temporary compromise, not an ultimate ideal.
The difference between Church and State is not a difference of
provinces, but a difference of 'sanctions.' The spiritual and the
secular sanctions apply to the same conduct of the same men. Both claim
to rule all life, and are ultimately compelled to answer the fundamental
questions. To separate them would be to 'cut human life in two,' an
attempt ultimately impossible and always degrading. To answer
fundamental questions, says Mill, involves a claim to infallibility. No,
replies Fitzjames, it is merely a claim to be right in the particular
case, and in a case where the responsibility of deciding is inevitably
forced upon us. If the state shrinks from such decisions, it will sink
to be a mere police, or, more probably, will at last find itself in a
position where force will have to decide what the compromise was meant
to evade. Once more, therefore, the limits of state action must be drawn
by expediency, not by an absolute principle. The Benthamite formula
applies again. Is the end good, and are the means adequate and not
excessively costly? Mill's absolute principle would condemn the levy of
a shilling for a school, if the ratepayer objected to the religious
teaching. Fitzjames's would, he grants, justify the Inquisition, unless
its doctrines could be shown to be false or the means of enforcing them
excessive or inadequate--issues, he adds, which he would be quite ready
to accept.[139] Has, then, a man who believes in God and a future life a
moral right to deter others from attacking those doctrines by showing
disapproval? Yes, 'if and in so far as his opinions are true.'[140] To
attack opinions on which the framework of society depends is, and ought
to be, dangerous. It should be done, if done at all, sword in hand.
Otherwise the assailant deserves the fate of the Wanderer in Scott's
ballad:

Curst be the coward that ever he was born
That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn.[141]

Such opinions seem to justify persecution in principle. Fitzjames
discusses at some length the case of Pontius Pilate, to which I may
notice he had often applie