, practically promoting
religious and moral action to the fullest degrees of which humanity
there under circumstances was capable, and often conserving all there
was of justice, art, literature, and good manners--it is clear I say,
that, under the Democratic Institutes of the United States, now and
henceforth, there are no equally genuine fountains of fervid beliefs,
adapted to produce similar moral and religious results, according to
our circumstances. I consider that the churches, sects, pulpits,
of the present day, in the United States, exist not by any solid
convictions, but by a sort of tacit, supercilious, scornful suffrance.
Few speak openly--none officially--against them. But the ostent
continuously imposing, who is not aware that any such living fountains
of belief in them are now utterly ceas'd and departed from the minds
of men?
_A Lingering Note_.--In the making of a full man, all the other
consciences, (the emotional, courageous, intellectual, esthetic, &c.,)
are to be crown'd and effused by the religious conscience. In the
higher structure of a human self, or of community, the Moral, the
Religious, the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the subtle
vitalization and antiseptic play call'd Health in the physiologic
structure. To person or State, the main verteber (or rather _the_
verteber) is Morality.
That is indeed the only real vitalization of character, and of all the
supersensual, even heroic and artistic portions of man or nationality.
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