In the first place, we remark, as a simple matter of fact--the deductions from which will afterwards claim our attention--that certain very extraordinary and painful scenes, sufficiently well known, have been enacted in our religious history, bordering on fanaticism, in some of the means employed, and modes adopted, for the extension of the interests of religion, according to the particular views of those engaged in these measures. So long, however, as those excesses were confined to religious action, they have been tolerated and protected by the laws of the land. It is the spirit of our Government, and the general temper of the community, not to disturb religion, even when its measures, in the judgment of the more sober, are deemed very extravagant and fanatical. Hence the rather _forcing_ methods that have been so extensively adopted to gain and multiply converts, have been connived at, because they have been allowed to be sincere, and it was hoped they might be useful, as a conscientiously religious man is a better citizen than one whose sense of moral obligation is not founded in religious motives. This high stimulation of the moral world, however, has had the effect to produce an extensive and powerfully active leaven of a specific character, which seemed to require a wider scope of action, or an action the results of which might be somewhat more palpable in the common regions of society, than that which relates merely to the spiritual affections of mankind. In a word, instead of being satisfied with the religion of those “who declare plainly, that they _seek_ a country” not yet possessed, it has shown a disposition to take under its charge a country _already_ possessed. A religious faith, which ought to have maintained ulterior and higher aims, has degenerated somewhat into a religious patriotism; which still might have been well enough, as to any objections from general society, if it had not transcended the laws of the land. But it was perfectly natural, that a spirit which was violent, and addicted to forcing measures in one department of society, should also be violent, and employ like forcing measures in another, whenever its drift or inclinations should tempt it from its original and legitimate sphere of action. It will be understood, of course, that we allude, in the first place, to the violence which has been so extensively manifested in religious reforms; and next, to the same spirit which afterwards took hold of Abolitionism. It was the breaking over of all religious order in the first instance, which prepared the way for the violation of civil order in the second. That boldness which trampled on custom in one case, was naturally schooled to set at defiance the law in the other.