Even with us, the American system has its enemies, and perhaps only a minority of the people understand it as we do, and some of the courts are beginning to render decisions which, if in one part, they sustain it, in another part flatly contradict it. The Supreme Court of Ohio, in the recent case of the School Board of Cincinnati, has decided very properly that the board could not exclude religion; but, on the other hand, it maintains that a majority of the people in any locality may introduce what religion they please, and teach it to the children of the minority as well as to their own, which is manifestly wrong; for it gives the majority of the people the power to establish their own religion, and exclude that of the minority when, in matters of religion, that is, in matters of conscience, votes do not count. My conscience, though in a minority of one, is as sacred and inviolable as it would be if all the rest of the community were with me. As in the Polish Diet, a single veto suffices to arrest the whole action of the state. The American democracy is not what it was in 1776. It was then Christian after a Protestant fashion; it is now infected with European liberalism, or popular absolutism; and if we had to introduce the American system now, we should not be able to do it. There are serious difficulties on both sides. The church cannot confide in the revolution, and the governments cannot or will not protect her, save at the expense of her independence and freedom of action. They, if we may believe any thing the journals say, threaten her with their vengeance, if she dares to make and publish such or such a dogmatic decision, or to define on certain points which they think touch them, what her faith is and always has been. This is a manifest invasion of her right to teach the word of God in its integrity, and simply tells her, with the sword suspended over her head, that she shall teach only what is agreeable to them, whether in God's word or not. This insolence, this arrogant assumption, applauded by the universal sectarian and secular press, if submitted to, would make the church the mere tool of the secular authority, and destroy all confidence in her teaching. We know not how these difficulties on either side are to be overcome. The church cannot continue to be shorn of her freedom by the secular governments, and made to conform to their ambitious or timid politics, without losing more and more her hold on the European populations. Nor can she side with the revolution without perilling the interests of society from which her own cannot be separated. We see no way out of the dilemma but for her, trusting in the divine protection, to assert simply and energetically her independence of both parties alike, and confide in the faithful, as she did in the martyr ages, and as she does now in every heathen land.