But religion, as an abstract theory, is powerless, as are all abstractions, and exists only as concreted, and religion in the concrete is the church. In the state and in the individual, God operates indeed, but mediately, through natural or secondary causes; but in the church immediately, for the church is his body, and her vitality is the Holy Ghost, who dwells in her, and is to her something like what the soul is to the body, _forma corporis_. Religion without the church is a theory or a vague sentiment; religion concreted in the church is a living reality, a power, and is efficient in vindicating both rights and duties, and affording a solid support to both liberty and authority. The sects, as far as they go, are concrete religion, but not religion in its unity and integrity. They are better than nothing; but lacking the unity and catholicity of truth, and being divided and subdivided among themselves, they can very imperfectly perform the office of religion or the Catholic Church. They are unable to make head against material force, and to maintain with any efficiency the rights of the spiritual against the encroachments of the temporal, or to prevent the state from asserting its own absolute supremacy. They exist not by a recognized right, but by state tolerance; they are suffered to exist and are protected, because they become auxiliaries of the state in its efforts to break the power and influence of the church, whose authority in spirituals is more repugnant to them then is state supremacy. Hence we find that wherever, except in the United States, the spiritual power is broken and divided into a great variety of sects, the state claims to be supreme alike in spirituals and temporals; and it is very doubtful if the freedom and independence of the spiritual order could long be preserved even in our country should our sectarian divisions continue. These divisions are already generating a wide-spread indifference to religion, almost a contempt for it; while there are manifest and growing tendencies to extend the authority of the state beyond its legitimate bounds into the domain of individual liberty. The unity and catholicity of the church, representing the unity and catholicity of the spiritual order, will soon be seen to be necessary to preserve our free institutions.