people and their laws
shall be, whether they shall be warlike or peaceful, inventive or
receptive, stationary or roving; and these, in turn, are the matters
which determine the civil scale to which a people shall rise.

True, the religion of a people will make itself felt strongly; but
whenever a nation has found it expedient or desirable to accomplish a
feat which was in opposition to its religion, it has invariably modified
the religion to fit the case, or waived it in favor of that particular
movement.*

* "The popular religion in this, as in other cases, was
made to bend to the new vice."--Lecky's History of European
Morals, vol. il, page 311.

In keeping with this fact it is found that in those countries where the
greatest changes and modifications of government and occupation have
occurred, there have the religions undergone the greatest modification
_to fit the new order of things_. If it were the religion that
determined the matter, civilization and morals would be immovable, and
legislation would revolve around, the guidance of the Church.

According to the very theory of Divine revelation a religion would be
most perfect at its beginning. It would be without flaw when born.
It would be incapable of improvement or growth. In a word it would be
immovable. It would possess the fixation of which Emerson speaks. It
would not have to readjust itself to the changed and improved conditions
of man, and its word would be always a higher light on every movement of
progress. It would be to the Church and not to the State that the great
principles of progress, of liberty, and of justice would look for the
highest guidance and the last light. How far this is from the real
state of things in any country or in any religion all readers of history
know.*

* See Appendix B.

It is the State or Science which has proposed and made the steps of
progress, and the Church has (often after the most bitter fight and
denunciation) readjusted her creed to the new code, and then claimed
that she had that light and knew that principle before, although neither
she nor any one else had ever suspected it.

This has been the case with almost every important discovery that
Science has ever made. The Church has retarded the acceptance of the new
light, and has set her seal of "divine disapproval and damnation" on the
brow of the thinkers who strove to bless mankind. It has been the rule
in State reforms as well. It wa