That the American state is true to the order it acknowledges, and never usurps any spiritual functions, we do not pretend. The American state copies in but too many instances the bad legislation of Europe. It from the outset showed the original vice of the American people; for while they very justly subjected the state to the law of God, they could subject it to that law only as they understood it, and their understanding of it was in many respects faulty, which was no wonder, since they had no infallible, no authoritative, in fact, no representative at all of the spiritual order, and knew the law of God only so far as taught it by natural reason, and spelled out by their imperfect light from an imperfect and mutilated text of the written word. They had a good major proposition, namely, the spiritual order duly represented is supreme, and should govern all men collectively and individually, as states and as citizens; but their minor was bad. But we with our reading of the Bible do duly represent that order. Therefore, etc. Now, we willingly admit that a people reverencing and reading the Bible as the word of God, will in most respects have a far truer and more adequate knowledge of the law of God than those who have neither church nor Bible, and only their reason and the mutilated, perverted, and even travestied traditions of the primitive revelation retained and transmitted by Gentilism, and therefore that Protestantism as understood by the American colonists is much better for society than the liberalism asserted by the movement party either here or in Europe; but its knowledge will still be defective, and leave many painful gaps on many important points; and the state, having no better knowledge, will almost inevitably misconceive what on various matters the law of God actually prescribes or forbids. The American state, misled by public opinion, usurps the functions of the church in some very grave matters. It assumes the control of marriage and education, therefore of all family relations, of the family itself, and of ideas, intelligence, opinions, which we have seen are functions of the church, and both are included in the two sacraments of marriage and orders. It also fails to recognize the freedom and independence of the spiritual order in refusing to recognize the church as a corporation, a moral person, as capable of possessing property as any natural or private person, and therefore denies to the spiritual order the inalienable right of property. The American state denies to the church all possessory rights unless incorporated by itself. This is all wrong; but if no better, it is no worse than what is assumed by the state in every European nation; and the most that can be said is, that in these matters the state forgets the Christian commonwealth for the pagan, as is done everywhere else.