Is not the idea horrible, and of the worst description, that a Church and King, or Church and State, should exist and hold together on no better tenure than a military power; than that of an army constantly under arms to keep the people from carrying their complaints to an extent disagreeable or alarming to the men in office? Yet such is all that you can boast of in the present state of the Institutions of the country. These Institutions did not originate under the protection of an army; nor did they, at their origination, require an army to protect and keep them in existence. An army is a disgraceful appendage, and destructive of every good principle in the Church:--it is not an honourable appendage to the office of King. To the people, it is a burthen and an immoral pest; less requisite in this island than in a continental nation. Give the people knowledge in their Churches, and they will soon dispense with an army. Evils accumulate because there is error at the bottom. There is now no People's Church: it is, as now existing, a Church of the Clergy, engrossing and wasting a large property of the people's due to a most valuable social purpose. The Dissenters have only made the matter worse, in new exactions for no new benefits. Not one tittle of good, not a particle of utility, now proceeds from the Clergy toward the people. They are obstacles to the people's welfare, and their use of means of provision for a new and better Church. God is the subject of man's adoration. But what is God? Man is but an idiot if he professes adoration beyond his understanding. Indeed, worship is but a synonymy of reason and its cultivation; and as we say:--_how can we reason but from what we know?_ so we may as truly say:--_how can we worship what we do not know?_ There is no worship without knowledge; all other pretence to it is idolatry and superstition. I have not space to enter upon this topic largely here; but a voluminous treatise on the word GOD will be the subject of my next Essay. For the purpose of this illustration of what the Church is, and what it ought to be, I can say correctly, that God, as the aggregate of existence, is known to be a physical and moral power. We have distinct ideas of this two-fold power. The American Indians, who speak of God as a Great Spirit, make the best general definition of the word that can be made, and appear to me to have the clearest, purest and wisest idea of Deity, as far as the regulation of their actions by that word is in question,--the pursuit of knowledge, by the use of letters and figures excepted. It corresponds with the emphatic declaration of the Gospel according to Saint John, chap. iv., v. 24:--"God is a Spirit, and they that worship must worship in spirit and in truth"--which means what I have before stated, that they must know what they worship before they can worship. There is evidence of physical as well as moral spirit. Both are seen in man, and constitute what may be termed the Spirit of Man.