"Do you make no difference in your occupations on a Sunday ?" I said.

"I beant a Christian, Ma'am; we have got no opportunity," was the reply.

It occurred to me, that in a country where "all men are equal," the government would be guilty of no great crime, did it so far interfere as to give them all _an opportunity_ of becoming Christians if they wished it.

But should the federal government dare to propose building a church, and endowing it, in some village that has never heard "the bringing home of bell and burial," it is perfectly certain that not only the sovereign state where such an abomination was proposed, would rush into the Congress to resent the odious interference, but that all the other states would join the clamour, and such an intermeddling administration would run great risk of impeachment and degradation.
Where there is a church-government so constituted as to deserve human respect, I believe it will always be found to receive it, even from those who may not assent to the dogma of its creed; and where such respect exists, it produces a decorum in manners and language often found wanting where it does not.

Sectarians will not venture to rhapsodise, nor infidels to scoff, in the common intercourse of society.