Your politicians do not understand their trade; and
therefore they sell their tools.
But the institutions savor of superstition in their very principle; and
they nourish it by a permanent and standing influence.--This I do not
mean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from
superstition itself any resources which may thence be furnished for the
public advantage. You derive benefits from many dispositions and many
passions of the human mind which are of as doubtful a color, in the
moral eye, as superstition itself. It was your business to correct and
mitigate everything which was noxious in this passion, as in all the
passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices? In its
possible excess I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, a
moral subject, and of course admits of all degrees and all
modifications. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and they
must be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in some trifling or some
enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds of a
resource found necessary to the strongest. The body of all true religion
consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the
world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His
perfections. The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the great
end,--it may be auxiliary.
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