6M 



STATEN ISLAND 



STATE RELIGION 



a calyx of five leaves, five deeply-cloven petals, 

 ten stamens, three styles, and a many -seeded cap- 

 .-ub- opening with >i\ teeth. The specie* are 

 numerous, and several are very common in liritain, 

 annual and perennial plants, with weak stems and 

 white flowers, which in some are minute and in 

 others are large enough to be very ornamental 

 to woods anil hedge-banks, as in the Wood Star- 

 wort (S. nemoritm) and the Greater Starwort (S. 

 Holostea). To this genus the common Chick weed 

 (q. v.) is now generally referred. 



Staten Island. (1) a beautiful and pictur- 

 esque i-l.-i!i<l, 5 mill-. S\V. of New York, washed 

 by both the I'pper and Lower Bay, and separated 

 from Long Island by the Narrows and from New 

 Jersey by the Kill van Kull and St.-u.-n Island 

 Sound. Area, 55 q. in.; pop. (1880) 38,991; 

 ( 1890) 51,693. Its shores are dotted with villages, 

 and its heights crowned with villas. At its eastern 

 point Forts Richmond and Wadsworth guard the 

 entrance to the Narrows. The island constitutes 

 one of the boroughs of New York City (q.v.), 

 and on the north shore possesses a home for old 

 sailors. (2) An Argentinian island separated from 

 the south-east point of Tierra del Fnego by Le 

 Maire Strait (40 miles). It is long (45 miles) and 

 narrow in shape, with steep coasts penetrated by 

 deep fiords, and rises to nearly 3000 feet. Snow 

 covers it almost all the year. The island received 

 its name in 1616 from Cornelius Schonten in honour 

 of the ' Staaten ' or States-general of Holland. 



State Papers. See RECORDS. 



State Religion. A state religion and a 

 national religion are two different things. A 

 nation may, with more or less of universal con- 

 currence, accept a certain type of religion as the 

 people of the United States for the most part 

 accept Christianity yet they may not commit to 

 their government the task either of representing 

 officially or of maintaining financially their religion. 

 In that case it is a national but not a state religion. 

 Wherever, on the other hand, we witness either 

 establishment or endowment committed to the gov- 

 ernment even if, as in Ireland till 1869, the religion 

 thus favoured is very far from being national 

 there we have the spectacle of a state religion. 

 Now such a spectacle almost invariably presents 

 itself to our view on the first emergence of any 

 people from trilml confusion into national order. 

 The previous multiplicity of local gods and diver- 

 sity of religious ideas became fused together into 

 a conglomerate state religion, and then were com- 

 pacted by time and by priestly labour into a sort 

 of incoherent unity. As to any rights of the 

 individual conscience to worship according to its 

 own private judgment, such a notion had not so 

 much as dawned upon men's imagination. It thus 

 becomes interesting in studying this subject to 

 watch tin? first emergence of the chief historical 

 nations of the ancient world into organised states; 



and tl arliest naturally to reach this high il. 



of development were the crowded ]H)pulationswhoin 



abiimlani f food and water drew together in the 



great river-basins of the East. China, India, 

 Mesopotamia, Egypt accordingly present us with 

 the tii -i ' stat'-s ' aliout which anything is known; 

 and in each case we are confronted with a state 

 religion either pat ionising or patronised by the 

 civil power. In ancient China, for instance, public 

 worship was regulated down to its minutest details 

 by six ministers of state, who were responsible even 

 for the sacred music and religious dancing. The 

 emperor alone might offer sacrifice to the supreme 

 spirit; the nobility might do homage to the 

 various subordinate spirits of the earth ; the high 

 officials to the spirits of house and home, and soon, 

 in ever-descending order. Even the soothsayers, 



magicians, and spirit-charmers were reckoned 

 among public functionaries of the slate. Nor did 

 the reforms effected by Confucius (500 B.C.), nor 

 vet the uprise of two sects, the TAoists and the 

 liilddhist.s, alter in any way this Erastian character 

 of the Chinese system. It was therefore, and is 

 still, a state religion in close combination with, 

 and siilxmlination to, the civil power. 



A sim ilar phenomenon appears among the crowd ed 

 races which inhabited ancient Mesopotamia. Thei e. 

 too, the supreme head of the state religion was the 

 king; and to such an extent was he predominant 

 that he alone could penetrate into the innermost 

 sanctuary, he alone could offer sacrifice for tin- 

 whole people ; and his palace stood pre-eminent and 

 alone and solid, as if built for eternity, on tin- 

 sacred platform whence rose towards heaven tin- 

 terraced tower of Bel. It is therefore from the ruins 

 of the palaces at Nineveh and Babylon, and not 

 from those of the temples, that the records have 

 been recovered which unfold to us the sacred his- 

 tory of this remarkable form of state religion ; 

 displaying to us the gradual amalgamation of a 

 hundred tribal beliefs, the ultimate emergence of 

 a Sennacherib or a Nebuchadnezzar to rule, like 

 some incarnation of divine despotism, over all the 

 prostrate nations, and the absolute predominance 

 of the civil over the ecclesiastical power. 



Singularly enough, both in India and in Egypt 

 we have the exact contrary of all this. We lind 

 there two forms of state religion, in each of which 

 a priestly caste has gained the supremacy over the 

 regal power. In India (as is well known) a religion 

 which began with the lay poets who composed the 

 Vedas emerged from an ol>scure period at last com- 

 pletely organised on a caste system ; and this system 

 assigned irrevocably the first place to the priest- 

 hood and the second place to the secular author- 

 ities. In ancient Egypt the same relation between 

 the two powers nmylje observed. There, too, the 

 priesthood is predominant, and kings hold the 

 secondary place. It is the temples which seem 

 built for eternity. The royal palaces have dis 

 appeared ; or if anything of royalty has remained 

 it is in their tombs those palaces of the buried 

 kings which the state religion has consecrated with 

 its symbols and covered thickly over with its rubrics 

 from the ' Hook of the Dead/ Here, indeed, as in 

 ancient Mesopotamia, the local gods long held 

 sway, and suffered at last agglomeration into the 

 state religion. But the greater state deities were 

 immensely more powerful. They were endowed 

 with vast estates; they employed thousands of 

 labourers, agents, scribes, overseers; they even 

 maintained armies and flotillas of their own; and 

 should any luckless sceptic too openly express his 

 vi.-ws he was dragged before the pitiless idol in 

 some dark judgment-hall, and expiated his ollence 

 in the llaiiio. Thus the Egyptian Mule religion 

 dominated the entire life of the people, and for 

 long centuries reigned in uncontesled supremacy. 



When we cross the sea, however, and discmb'nrk 

 in imagination among the bright and mobile popu- 

 lations of southern Europe, \\e soon lind that these 

 vast sullen siate religions of the eastern river basins 

 have been left behind. The gods of am-iem (',< 

 were as Bohemian and passionate as their wor- 

 sliipix.'rs, and no crushing priestly tyranny could 

 lind a fooling among it small and iniarrelsome 

 communities. Yet even there, as childish fancies 



Olympus and its happy denizens hardened 

 into dogma, and nursery legends became endeared 

 to the people and fixed in beautiful forms of epic, 

 dramatic, and statuary art, then here, too, a state 

 religion came into being. To ridicule the gods 

 became perilous, even to an Aristophanes ; to 

 mutilate their images became an unpardonable 

 crime ; ami to replace them by other and worthier 



