In the first place, let us enquire whether it is lawful and right, according to the Constitution of our country, to examine and practise this Bible doctrine? Our fathers, who framed the Constitution of our country, devised it so as to give freedom of religious worship of the Almighty God; so that all people under our Government should have the inalienable right--a right by virtue of the Constitution--to believe in any Bible principle which the Almighty has revealed in any age of the world to the human family. I do not think however that our forefathers, in framing that instrument, intended to embrace all the religions of the world. I mean the idolatrous and pagan religions. They say nothing about those religions in the Constitution; but they give the express privilege in that instrument to all people dwelling under this Government and under the institutions of our country, to believe in all things which the Almighty has revealed to the human family. There is no restriction or limitation, so far as Bible religion is concerned, on any principle or form of religion believed to have emanated from the Almighty; but yet they would not admit idolatrous nations to come here and practise their religion, because it is not included in the Bible; it is not the religion of the Almighty. Those people worship idols, the work of their own hands; they have instituted rights and ceremonies pertaining to those idols, in the observance of which they, no doubt, suppose they are worshipping correctly and sincerely, yet some of them are of the most revolting and barbarous character. Such, for instance, as the offering up of a widow on a funeral pile, as a burnt sacrifice, in order to follow her husband into the eternal worlds. That is no part of the religion mentioned in the Constitution of our country, it is no part of the religion of Almighty God. But confining ourselves within the limits of the Constitution, and coming back to the religion of the Bible, we have the privilege to believe in the Patriarchal, in the Mosaic, or in the Christian order of things; for the God of the patriarchs, and the God of Moses is also the Christians' God. It is true that many laws were given, under the Patriarchal or Mosaic dispensations, against certain crimes, the penalties for violating which, religious bodies, under our Constitution, have not the right to inflict. The Government has reserved, in its own hands, the power, so far as affixing the penalties of certain crimes is concerned. In ancient times there was a law strictly enforcing the observance of the Sabbath day, and the man or woman who violated that law was subjected to the punishment of death. Ecclesiastical bodies have the right, under our government and Constitution, to observe the Sabbath day, or to disregard it, but they have not the right to inflict corporeal punishment for its non-observance.