secular affairs. This is the most obvious, but it is not the only,
example of their self-restraint. In America religion is a distinct
sphere, in which the priest is sovereign, but out of which he takes
care never to go. Within its limits he is the master of the mind;
beyond them, he leaves men to themselves, and surrenders them to the
independence and instability which belong to their nature and their
age. I have seen no country in which Christianity is clothed with fewer
forms, figures, and observances than in the United States; or where
it presents more distinct, more simple, or more general notions to the
mind. Although the Christians of America are divided into a multitude of
sects, they all look upon their religion in the same light. This applies
to Roman Catholicism as well as to the other forms of belief. There
are no Romish priests who show less taste for the minute individual
observances for extraordinary or peculiar means of salvation, or who
cling more to the spirit, and less to the letter of the law, than the
Roman Catholic priests of the United States. Nowhere is that doctrine of
the Church, which prohibits the worship reserved to God alone from
being offered to the saints, more clearly inculcated or more generally
followed. Yet the Roman Catholics of America are very submissive and
very sincere.

Another remark is applicable to the clergy of every communion. The
American ministers of the gospel do not attempt to draw or to fix all
the thoughts of man upon the life to come; they are willing to surrender
a portion of his heart to the cares of the present; seeming to consider
the goods of this world as important, although as secondary, objects.
If they take no part themselves in productive labor, they are at least
interested in its progression, and ready to applaud its results; and
whilst they never cease to point to the other world as the great object
of the hopes and fears of the believer, they do not forbid him honestly