Not only can a group or a nation not hold a collective religious opinion, but no majority in it, however great, can change the opinion of a single individual by any form of coercion. It may suppress the outward manifestation of opinion, and may indirectly present considerations to the mind of the individual which will lead him ultimately to recast his views in some respects; but it cannot directly command the humblest or most docile of its members to change his mode of thinking on the instant. The pretense of uniformity of faith in a people must, therefore, be the sheerest humbug. Could belief be collective, and made to continue so, there would be some pretext for the advocacy of a state church. Since, however, there is no way of making every individual an organic part of a believing whole, a real state church is an unqualified impossibility. A dominant party or number of individuals may by sheer brute force compel the rest of the community to pay lip-service to a formal organization labeled a state church; but the total amount of belief in the dogmas of such an institution will not be increased in the slightest degree by the false label which seeks to represent it as an expression of community-belief. A state church cannot become a centre for collective worship, since no such thing is possible; it can only bring together for joint outward expression of worship a mass of individuals, the real believers among whom will engage in actual worship, while others, under persuasion or coercion, will go through certain mechanical forms of no value to themselves or to others, in simulation of the reverence which they do not feel, and without which their participation in the external rites of religion is meaningless. UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE--ITS ORIGIN.