Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/112
in God and the inspiration of the Bible. When the Constitution was framed, in 1787, it read: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Religion, though freed from State control, is still in bondage to the church. The communion is oftener a test act than a memorial service. Narrow convictions have led to the founding of new sects, the separation within the division, each based on a point more or less broad, from whose contracting influence humanity perpetually escapes, for the law of progress ever makes the liberality of to-day the sectarianism of to-morrow. Earnest belief, tempered with comprehension of other creeds, has been the fulcrum which has lifted church-life into the philanthropy of humanity. Contrast Loyala, the sectarian alone, with Fénélon, the sectarian and the liberal; Edwards with Channing, Wesley with Wilberforce, John Knox with the author of