ESTABLISHMENT
306
ESTHER
and suffered in consequence of estalilisbments will al- ways form an argument aicainst them. Under estab- lislimants also, it is said, corriij)tion cannot lie avoided. Emolument must be attached to the national church, ■which may be a strong inducement to its ministers to defend it, be it ever so remote from the truth. Thus, also, error becomes permanent ; and that set of opin- ions whic'li happens to prevail when the establishment is formjd, continues, in spite of superior li^'lit and im- provement, to be handed down, without alteration, from age to age. Hence the disagreement between the public creed of the Church and the private senti- ments of its ministers. (4.) Finally, though all Chris- tians should paj^ respect to civil magistrates as such, and all magistrates ought to encourage the Church, j-et no civil magistrates have any power to establish any particular form of religion binding upon the con- sciences of the subject; nor are magistrates ever rep- resented in Scripture as officers or rulers of the Church. As Jlr. Coleridge observes, the Christian Church is not a kingdom, realm, or state of the world, nor is it an estate of any such kingdom, realm, or state; but it is the appointed opposite to them all collectively — the sustaining, correcting, befriending opposit3 of the world — the compensating counterforce to the inher- ent and inevitable evils and defects of the state as a state, and without reference to its better or worse con- struction as a particular state ; while, whatever is be- neficent and humanizing in the aims, tendencies, and proper objects of the state, it collects in itself as in a focus, to radiate them back in a higher quality ; or, to change the metaphor, it completes and strengthens the edifice of the state, without interference or commix- ture, in the mere act of la3'ing and securing its own foundations. And for these services the Church of Christ asks of the state neither wiiges nor dignities ; she asks only protection, and to be let alone. These, indeed, she demands; but even these only on the ground that there is nothing in her constitution nor in her discipline inconsistent with tiie interests of the state; nothing resistant or impedimental to the state in the exercise of its rightful powers, in the fulfilment of its appropriate duties, or in the effectuation of its le- gitimate objects. (5.) As to the provision made for the clergy, this may be done without an establish- ment, as matter of fact shows in hundreds of instances in the Dissenting and Methodist churclies in England, and universal!}' by all churches in America. Indeed, the question of the value of the voluntary principle may be considered as flnallj' settled by the experience of the English and American chui-ches. In England, in 1855, the Established Church had church accommo- dation for 5,300,000, and all other denominations could seat 4,900,000, making in all church-room for 10,200,000 of the population. In the United States there were church accommodation in 1850 for 14,000,000, and it is compnted by Dr. Baird {Religion in A meric(t)X\\aX, there must be altogether far more than one minister for each 900 inhabitants. In England they have an establish- ment of untold wealth. For centuries they have been accumulating edifices for worship the most costly and durable that the" world knows, and yet the United States, witliout any aid from the government, seats a larger pro])ortion of the inhabitants in houses of wor- ship, and raises $-25, 000, 0(10 annually for religious be- nevolence. Thatwhicii has been the cause of this su- perior success in America is the more perfect action of the voluntary jn-inciplo. Even in England this prin- ciple has worki'il in the same manner. I'ift}' years iigo the population of that country was less than half what it now is. Then the Church of England could seat 4,000,000, now 5,300,000. But at that time the Dissenters could seat only one fifih of the numbers the}' can at present. In America the population has doubled itself five or six -times since the Revolution, and yet then there was but alwut one minister to every 2000 inhabitants, now there is one to every 1000. See
y^&Yhwvtcm, Alliance between Chm-ch and State; Chris- tie, Essay on Estuhlishnunts ; Paley, Mor. Phil. v. ii, c. 10; Bp. Law, Theory of Riliglon ; Watts, Civil Poicer in Thiiifjs Sacred, third volume of his ]Vorks; Hall, Lib- erty of the Press, sec. 5 ; Conder, Protestant Noncon- formitij ; Baird, Rclirjion in America (N. Y. 1856, 8vo) ; Buck, Diet. s. V. ; and art. Church and State.
Es'ther [vulgarh' pronounced Es'terl, a beautiful Jewish maiden, the heroine of the Biblical book that bears her name.
1. Name. — Her proper Hebrew name was Hadassah (q. v.), but on her introduction into the royal harem she received, in accordance with Oriental usage (comp. Dan. i, 7), the new and probably Persian name of Esther ("iPlpS, Ester' ; Sept. '£tr3-//p, and so Josephus [Gen. -r/po(.]. Ant. xi, G, 2, etc.; Yulg. Esther), which thenceforth became her usual and better-known desig- nation, as appears from the formula "^PGN N"^!!, "that is, Esther" (Esth. ii, 7), exactly analogous to the usual addition of the modern names of towns to explain the use of the old ohsolcte ones (Gen. xxxv, 19, 27 ; Josh. XV, 10, etc.). As to its signification, Gesenius {Thes. Heb. p. 134, a) cites from that diffuse Targum on this book, which is known as the second Targum on Esther, the following words : " She was called Esther from the name of the star Venus, which in Greek is Aster" (i. e. doTiip, Lat. aster, Engl, star ; see Lassen, Ind. Biblioth. iii, 8, 18). Gesenius then points to the Persian word satdrah, star, as that of which Esther is the Syro-Ara- bian modification ; and brings it, as to signification, into connection with tlie planet Venus, as a star of good fortune, and witli the name of the Syrian goddess Ash- tfireih (q. v.). In this etymology Flirst acquiesces {IJeb. IJandwb. s. v.).