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CHAPTER V.
OF THE MANNER IN WHICH RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES
AVAILS ITSELF OF DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES.
I have laid it down in a preceding chapter that men cannot do
without dogmatical belief; and even that it is very much to be
desired that such belief should exist among them. I now add, that
of all the kinds of dogmatical belief, the most desirable appears to me
to be dogmatical belief in matters of religion; and this is a very
clear inference, even from no higher considerations than the interests
of this world.
There is hardly any human action, however particular a character be assigned to it, which does not originate in some very general idea men have conceived of the Deity, of His relation to mankind, of the nature of their own souls, and of their duties to their fellow-creatures. Nor can anything prevent these ideas from being the common spring from which everything else emanates.
Men are therefore immeasurably interested in acquiring fixed ideas of God, of the soul, and of their common duties to their Creator and to their fellow-men; for doubt on these first principles would abandon all their actions to the impulse of chance, and would condemn them to five, to a certain extent, powerless and undisciplined.
This is then the subject on which it is most important for each of us to entertain fixed ideas; and unhappily it is also the subject on which it is most difficult for each of us, left to himself, to settle his opinions by the sole force of his reason. None but minds singularly free from the ordinary anxieties of life—minds at once penetrating, subtle, and trained by thinking—can, even with the assistance of much time and care, sound the depth of these most necessary truths. And, indeed, we see that these philosophers are themselves almost always enshrouded in uncertainties; that at every step the
