ion of chapels or
crosses by the roadside, are soon regarded as the most meritorious
works; so that even a great crime may be expiated by them, as also by
penance, subjection to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages,
donations to the temple and its priests, the building of monasteries and
the like; until finally the clergy appear almost only as mediators in
the corruption of the gods. And if things do not go so far as that,
where is the religion whose confessors do not consider prayers, songs of
praise, and various kinds of devotional exercise, at any rate, a partial
substitute for moral conduct? Look at England, for instance, where the
audacious priestcraft has mendaciously identified the Christian Sunday
with the Jewish Sabbath, in spite of the fact that it was ordained by
Constantine the Great in opposition to the Jewish Sabbath, and even took
its name, so that Jehovah's ordinances for the Sabbath--_i.e._, the day
on which the Almighty rested, tired after His six days' work, making it
therefore _essentially the last day_ of the week--might be conferred on
the Christian Sunday, the _dies solis_, the first day of the week which
the sun opens in glory, the day of devotion and joy. The result of this
fraud is that in England "Sabbath breaking," or the "desecration of the
Sabbath," that is, the slightest occupation, whether it be of a useful
or pleasurable nature, and any kind of game, music, knitting, or worldly
book, are on Sundays regarded as great sins. Must not the ordinary man
believe that if, as his spiritual guides impress upon him, he never
fails in a "strict observance of the holy Sabbath and a regular
attendance on Divine Service,"--in other words, if he invariably whiles
away his time on a Sunday, and never fails to sit two hours in church to
listen to the same Litany for the thousandth time, and to babble it with
the rest _a tempo_, he may reckon on indulgence in here and there little
sins which he at times allows himself? Those devils in human form, the
slave-owners and slave-traders in the Free States of North America (they
should be called the Slave States), are, in general, orthodox, pious
Anglicans, who look upon it as a great sin to work on Sundays; and
confident in this, and their regular attendance at church, they expect
to gain eternal happiness. The demoralising influence of religion is
less problematical than its moral influence. On the other hand, how
great and how certain that moral influenc