But it is a difficult question to determine how this may most justly
be carried out. It might be considered whether it would not be right
to exact contributions for this purpose from the unmarried persons
of both sexes who are possessed of means, as being in part responsible
for the evil; and further, whether the end in view would be best
carried out by foundling hospitals, or in what other way consistent
with right. But this is a problem of which no solution has yet been
offered that does not in some measure offend against right or
morality.
3. The church is here regarded as an ecclesiastical establishment
merely, and as such it must be carefully distinguished from
religion, which as an internal mode of feeling lies wholly beyond
the sphere of the action of the civil power. Viewed as an
institution for public worship founded for the people- to whose
opinion or conviction it owes its origin- the church establishment
responds to a real want in the state. This is the need felt by the
people to regard themselves as also subjects of a Supreme Invisible
Power to which they must pay homage, and which may of be brought
into a very undesirable collision with the civil power. The state
has therefore a right in this relation; but it is not to be regarded
as the right of constitutional legislation in the church, so as to
organize it as may seem most advantageous for itself, or to
prescribe and command its faith and ritual forms of worship (ritus);
for all this must be left entirely to the teachers and rulers which
the church has chosen for itself.
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