MANY sincere Christians of all denominations, but who are blinded by overzealousness, maintain that “the church should control this government,” and are striving in various ways to bring about the much-desired result. We occasionally meet these zealots, and at such times it may not be amiss to propound a few simple questions like the following, to readjust, if possible, the cogs in their thinking machinery:
Which denomination should control this government?
Why should any particular sect be granted a privilege denied to all the others?
Do you realize that you, as well as every other American citizen, would be deprived of individual and constitutional rights if any church were to control this government? and are you personally willing to make this sacrifice, especially if the union should occur with some sect other than the one you favor?
Can any church gain control of the government by other than political methods?
In such case which would be most likely to occur, a purification of politics, naturally corrupt, or would the church be prostituted and brought to the level of politics?
Any church having once gained control, how would she maintain it except by laws having a religious phase?
Would not those who could not conscientiously keep such religious laws be punished for violation of them?
Would not punishment in such case be a literal persecution for conscience’s sake? And such persecution once started, is not the logical conclusion of such a course, torture and death? (See Rev. 13:15–17.) Would this be any different from the Inquisition of the Dark Ages?
Can you find any Scripture authority where the divine Founder of the Christian church commanded her to gain control of any government? Is the doctrine of union of Church and State Christian?
Finally, having thoroughly digested the preceding questions, do you still believe that the church should control the government?
The Junior Order United American Mechanics sounds its voice in no uncertain tone on this grave question, which is being agitated with increased vigor in our land, and threatens the two pillars of our Constitution and republic—religious and civil liberty—in witness of which note the forcible language used in our Declaration of principles:—
We guarantee to every man the liberty of worshiping God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and would give every assistance to protect all in the exercise of this liberty, but we object most strenuously to the interference of any church, no matter under what name it may exist, in the temporal affairs of this country.
On this ground do we firmly and unalterably stand. We have two classes of opponents: one works craftily and in secret, knowing what they aim at, the other openly but blindly, who “know not what they do.” We bear malice towards none, ever striving to present the truth, knowing that should even the least of the denominations commit fornication by wedding the civil power, the offspring would surely be an American Papacy—for a union of the religious and civil principles is what constitutes a papacy, and it will always produce that result anywhere in this wide world.
The business of the church is to mind her own business: preach the Gospel, evangelize the world, and prepare men for citizenship in a better country, even an heavenly. She has no other mission, and if she attends strictly to bettering individuals, the masses and the government will be well able to take care of themselves and get along without her meddlesome interference.—American Banner.
Religious Rights, Not Toleration
What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which governments can not deprive any portion of citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them.—U. S. Senate Report, 1829.
Religious Combinations and Political Power
Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object are . . . always dangerous. . . . All religious despotism commences by combination and influence; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the civil power soon bends under it, and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.—U. S. Senate Report, 1829.
TRUE FREEDOM.
By James Russell Lowell
Is true freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free.
They are slaves who dare not speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truths they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
—James Russell Lowell.
JEFFERSON'S PROPHECY.
BESIDES, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt; our people, careless. A single zealot may commence persecution, and better men be his victims. It can not too often be repeated that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down-hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.—Notes on Virginia, Query XVII.
RELIGIOUS OPINION AND GOVERNMENT.
By Thomas Jefferson
OPINION is something with which the government has nothing to do. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It is error alone which needs the support of government; truth can stand by itself. Millions of innocent men, women, and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced an inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect?—To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites.—Thomas Jefferson.
The Escalation of Persecution
It is incumbent on the authors of persecution previously to reflect whether they are determined to support it in the last extreme. They excite the flame which they strive to extinguish, and it soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy as well as the crime of the offender. The fine which he is unable or unwilling to discharge, exposes his person to the severities of the law, and his contempt of lighter penalties suggests the use and propriety of capital punishment.—Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 37.
Religion in Legislative Acts
If the principle is once established that religion or religious observances shall be interwoven with our legislative acts, we must pursue it to its ultimatum.—U. S. Senate Report, 1829.
“THE WORD OF LIFE.”
WE have learned from the Word, in our previous studies, of God, the Fountain of life, of the Spirit, the life, the presence of God, flowing out into all parts of God’s living universe, of the law of life according to which the Spirit operates; and, saddest and most evident of all, we have learned of the result of the perversion of that law and life through sin.
Nay, more, we know the sin, the results of sin, the misery, the wo, the crime, the pain, the wretchedness, the despairing guiltiness, the cries of distress, the hopeless bondage,—we know it all, and not a few of us have moaned in our slavery, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” And the despairing cries of earth’s millions go up continually: “How may I be free? By whom may I be set free? How long shall the defeat, the bondage, the misery, the death of sin continue? How long, O Lord, how long?” Men laugh and jest and abandon themselves to pleasure both light and lustful; the next moment the door opens, the skeleton swings forth, the laughter changes to mourning, the joy to heaviness, the lust to corruption, the sin to death. The very Spirit, the life, of God so perverted in ten thousand different ways pleads for those who are their own worst enemies, with groanings which can not be uttered, that they may turn to God.
For there is deliverance. Where the battle was once lost, in human flesh, it is won.
Before man sinned, Eternal Life was incarnate—flesh dwelling. God was incarnate in man. He dwelt by His Spirit in the sinless man. When man sinned, he lost the eternal life, he lost the Spirit of God; and henceforth he knew no other life than the perverted life of God, which man received not by faith. When man, earth’s king, yielded, all in earth was subjected to sin and its bondage and its end, death.
When the dominion is won back, the battle must be fought again where it was lost, in the flesh. God’s normal life, eternal life, must again become incarnate, dwelling in flesh brought into harmony with God’s law through faith.
All this was accomplished for man through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who “emptied Himself,” and God filled Him “with all the fulness of the Godhead.” “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit [life] of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”
Jesus Christ was in perfect harmony with God’s law. Before He came He said, “I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within My heart.” And when He came He declared: “I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” “I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.”
Being perfectly obedient, He was perfectly in harmony with God’s holy law. The law was in Him what it was ordained to be,—life. In Him it was “the law of the Spirit of life.” Being perfectly in harmony with God’s law, the law of God’s life, God gave Him the Spirit without measure. John 3:34. Having utterly emptied Himself, He had no other spirit save the eternal Spirit of God. And so it was true that “as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.”
As in man, in the flesh, God’s law and life were perverted so as to produce sin and death, so in man God’s law and life were restored, and righteousness and life were the result. “Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned; . . . for as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous.”
In Jesus Christ, therefore, is life for the world. “In Him was light, and the light was the life of men.” “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” “Christ our life.”
There is, therefore, hope to the dark, despairing, sin-sick souls. “How and by whom and when may I be free from sin and death?” “Verily I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life.” “Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” “The flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in Me.” “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
Why wait then to know the power of God’s “endless life”? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Believing Him is yielding in all and every respect to His character and word. That brings us into harmony with God’s law in Christ. And the life from the great Fountain flows out into us in unperverted streams. O, there are life and strength and gladness in believing through Jesus Christ our Lord, our Life!
A PREDICTION ABOUT THE UNITED STATES.
By T.
VERSES 11 to 18 of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation have long been regarded by many careful Bible students as a prophecy applying to the United States. A few of the reasons for this, briefly stated, are as follows:
a. The first part of the chapter is clearly a prophecy of the Papacy—that apostate power which during the Dark Ages made “war with the saints,” and held the world for so long under the superstitious chains of priestcraft.
b. This papal power, according to the prophecy, was to be “wounded to death,” but his “deadly wound was healed.” Rev. 13:3.
c. Familiar to all is the history which shows that during the middle ages the Papacy held all the world “captive.” Kings and emperors did their obeisance to the pope, and his will was not only law, but a terror to all who in any way were made the object of papal attack. But says the prophet, “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.” Rev. 13:10.
d. The “deadly wound” began to be inflicted on the Papacy through the great Reformation of the sixteenth century. This work continued until the French army in 1798 entered Rome and the pope was made a prisoner. Then was fulfilled the prophecy, “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.” How literal the fulfilment! That church power which had not held itself back from the use of the sword, was now being broken in turn by the sword. But the infliction was only temporary; for the Word says the “deadly wound was healed.” So papal persecuting power is again to be exercised as before.7
e. But when the prophet was viewing the papal power going “into captivity” in 1798, he also says, “I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth.” Rev. 13:11. Note that the statement is that he was “coming” up. He was in the very act of arising at that time (1798) when the Papacy was going into captivity.
f. Beasts in these symbolic prophecies represent governments, and the United States in 1798 had but recently fought her revolutionary war, gained her independence, and established herself among the nations of the earth, so that she was then literally and actually “coming” up to her destined place of power and usefulness in the world.
The foregoing statements are necessarily the very briefest, but it is hoped that enough is presented to assist the reader in seeing the clear line of evidence by which it may be known that these last verses of Revelation 13 apply to the United States.
Note the distinctive characteristics of this symbol of the United States. The prophecy says “he had two horns like a lamb.” Rev. 13:11. The “lamb” is the symbol taken to represent the Saviour,—the kind, impartial, and sympathetic Redeemer. John said of Him, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” John 1:29. And again He is called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Rev. 13:8. And another text says, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” Rev. 5:12. Thus texts may be multiplied showing that the gentle nature of the lamb is that which is chosen to symbolize Him who gave His life for the fallen and oppressed sinner.
Now this United States power when the prophet sees it “coming” up has “two horns like a lamb.” Then this government, according to the prophecy, must have at least “two” leading characteristics that are lamb-like—that, in other words, are in perfect accord with the perfect Gospel of Christ.
The papal power exercised force in religious matters. The heretic must be broken on the rack or in some way tortured till he should yield perfect homage to the church. The Papacy also stood for an aristocracy both in Church and State. The pope, the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops, and also the common priests, were ecclesiastical lords, to whom all the rest of the people must bow in reverential esteem. And in order to hold this sentiment strong in the church it was necessary to stand for the “divine right” of kings, as well as to uphold a long train of dukes, barons, lords, etc., in the State.
But all such distinctions, either in State or Church, are both human and artificial. “There is no respect of persons with God.” Rom. 2:11. Then why should such a thing exist among men? “One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” Matt. 23:8. Then if all are brethren, where is the room for lords, nobles, cardinals, and all the list of “high dignitaries”? And how strikingly clear is the text in James, “If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.” James 2:9.
Then, too, freedom of choice is given to every man by his Creator. He says, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Rev. 22:17. “Let him take . . . freely.” This is God’s plan. He does not compel any one to accept even so good a thing as His proffered salvation. Man can not be perfectly happy unless he is perfectly free. And most carefully does God guard this point of freedom. It is clearly seen in all His Word. Freedom and equality are two of the main corner-stones of Christianity.
How striking, then, is the fact that when this country declared its independence it inscribed in the very forefront of that most glorious of all human documents the immortal words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “Liberty” and “equality” were the watchwords of the new nation. And it was not liberty in civil matters only, but liberty in all things.
The new nation, as she was “coming” up, boldly advanced to take the position that every man has the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. A most noble battle was fought and won on this ground. The superstitions, the priestcraft, and the religious bigotry and intolerance of the middle ages, strove hard to gain a foothold here. But Washington, and Madison, and Jefferson, and a host of other broad-minded and liberty-loving men, united to make on this continent “a state without a king and a church without a pope.” Their efforts were crowned with a glorious success, and in the foundations of the nation was laid that great corner-stone, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
The Old World had believed and taught for ages that the people could not be trusted to choose either their laws or their religion for themselves; kings and nobles and popes and bishops must make their civil statutes and also regulate their faith. But the new nation on a new continent takes its stand for freedom and liberty in everything. And in the face of all the unfavorable predictions this new nation has advanced to the place where she is second to none other in all the world. Neither the histories of the past nor the geographies of the present can reveal a nation that is her peer, and but very few can be claimed as her equals. In a little more than a century from her founding, her strength, her wealth, the freedom of her people, and everything else that goes to make up a nation, have become the marvel and admiration of the world.
Now it has been under these principles of the Lamb that this government has attained so quickly unto such greatness. The Old World looked upon it as an experiment. But the principles of freedom that are the basis of Christianity are no experiment. And a government with such a foundation could have nothing short of success.
But the same prophecy that tells of the “coming up” of this government with its “lamb-like” characteristics, says, “And he spake as a dragon.” Rev. 13:11. Then the prophecy that tells of these good features, with the same straightforward accuracy tells of the bad. “He spake as a dragon,” says the prophet. The “dragon” is the Bible symbol of Satan, and consequently of the oppression and intolerance that he has put into the hearts of men. (Read Revelation, chapter 12, upon this point.)
Then this country is yet to become an oppressor, like other nations before it. It seems hard to believe it, and yet there is the prophecy concerning it. It therefore must be true. This oppression must come about by degrees. It will steal in almost imperceptibly. And even while men are lauding freedom they may be sowing the seeds of oppression, religious bigotry, and intolerance.
Are there any indications that the “dragon” voice of oppression may soon be heard in this “land of the free and home of the brave”? This article is already long enough. We will have to answer this question next week. But in the meantime, when you are celebrating Independence day this year, carefully review the established principles of this great nation, and ask yourself if they are as well understood and as dear to the heart as they were a hundred years ago. T.
America and the Philosophy of the Dark Ages
“HISTORY is to a nation what experience is to an individual, and just as a wise man will guide himself by “the lamp of experience,” so will a patriotic people run not after strange gods, but will direct their course under the guidance of the philosophy of their own past.” —Oscar S. Straus, present U. S. Minister to Turkey, in “Religious Liberty in the United States.” But, unfortunately, it is not the philosophy of the past of THIS country that is now guiding it, but in its religio-political phase the philosophy of the Dark Ages.
THE TRUE MAN OF LIBERTY.
The true man of liberty is the Christian, the Christian in very deed. He is a free man, not by virtue of any human laws, but by virtue of God’s gift of the freedom of the will and the grace manifest through Jesus Christ. For whom the Son makes free is free indeed.
He is freed from the most terrible bondage known to the universe, the bondage of sin. He knows that only Christ, through faith, could give him this freedom. His belief in Christ was not, nor could it be, compelled or coerced. He, therefore, knows that other men can not be coerced or compelled to follow Christ or do God’s will; and he will, therefore, be willing to leave every soul free to follow its own desires.
In thus doing he will but follow his Master. Jesus said: “If any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.”
But have not “Christians” persecuted bitterly those whom they adjudged to be heretics? —Yes; men professing Christ have done all this; but they did it because they did not know Christ. This is what He says upon this very point: “These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogs; yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor Me.” He who knows the compassionate Christ, will never persecute his fellow-man.
PLEASE explain in your paper Rev. 14:17-20. To what time has it reference? Is it to be taken literally when it says “even unto the horses’ bridles”? C. V. A.
The angel with the sickle and the gathering of the grapes are symbolic of the punishment of the wicked, including it all at the beginning and the end of the 1,000 years. Verse 20 doubtless has reference to the great battle of Armageddon fought around Jerusalem under the seventh plague, just previous to the Lord’s coming, and in the final end. See Rev. 16:13-21; 19:11-21; 20:9. The grapes and the winepress are symbolical, but the wrath and punishment and battle are literal. In such an awful battle what would there be unreasonable in the last verse of Rev. 14:20?
TO WHAT do the eagles of Matt. 24:28 refer? B. O. C.
The eagles, as vultures, are typical of the last plagues (Revelation 16). The “carcass” refers to the wicked who have rejected the Gospel prior to Christ’s coming. The time is the close of probation. See Luke 17:34-37; Rev. 22:11, 12.
DOES Isaiah 35:8 mean that there will be a time in the age of man that it will be more easy to do right than wrong?
It is easier now for him to do right than wrong who has Christ abiding within. There will come a time when Christ’s kingdom, this earth renewed, will be filled with such people. “Thy people also shall be all righteous.” Isa. 54:17; 60:21.
819. Generation and Generation.
THE three “fourteen generations” of Matt. 1:17 do not cover the same period of time. From Abraham to David requires 70 for a generation, and from David to the captivity about 33 years, and from the captivity to Christ about 43 years. Can you explain and harmonize?
What needs explaining? Who said that a generation at one time should equal a generation at another? The people of the royal line lived longer in the time of the patriarchs and the judges than during the stormy times of the kings, or the less stormy times following the captivity. There is no definite period for a generation given in the Word.
WAR CHAPLAINS.
By T.
A man who holds the office of chaplain is supposed under all circumstances to be a minister of the Gospel. When he accepts that position, he claims to step into it as a representative of the Prince of Peace. Most of the armies of the so-called “Christian nations” have a full quota of chaplains. And the chaplains of the contending armies claim to be each under the banner of the same Prince of Peace.
Now it must seem queer to a chaplain when he considers that he is praying for the success of the army he is with, while his brother chaplain with the enemy’s forces is fairly storming heaven with his warlike prayers, asking a directly opposite result. Is the Master—the great Prince of Peace—thus so double in His dealings? Will He send chaplains with the forces on one side and bid them pray for the success of their armies and the destruction in cruel death of their enemies, while at the same time He sends other chaplains with the other side and bids them pray that all the soldiers with those other chaplains may be killed or captured? The simple asking of the question ought to be enough to show that true Christianity can not be such a mixture of inconsistencies.
It would seem that the genuine “fighting chaplain” had only gone so far in his knowledge and experience as to have heard the rumor spoken of in Matt. 5: 43, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” The Saviour does not say that it actually hath been said, but He states that “ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” Then this doctrine of hate was only a wicked rumor that had been set afloat, and they “had heard,” and, worse than all, the majority of the Jews believed it and were acting upon it. And every one knows that when their principles of hatred were fully developed, they clamored for the life-blood of the very Messiah that they all professed to be looking for and praying that He might come. What an awful object lesson is thus given to those who allow enmity or hatred to be cherished in the heart!
In what striking contrast to this doctrine of hatred for our enemies, is our instruction from the Lord Himself: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matt. 5: 44, 45.
The unjust are the enemies against the Lord, but He does not withhold His blessings from them. He sends His rain and sunshine upon them the same as He does on the just. And if we are to be “the children of our Father which is in heaven,” we are to learn from Him how to love our enemies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them which despitefully use us, and persecute us.
No one can live up to the standard of these words of the Lord and go into the field to kill his fellow-men or to pray that they may be killed. Force is the basis upon which the civil government rests. And while time lasts, armies there will be to maintain it. But leave this science of killing people to those whose hopes center in this life, and let all Christians give themselves to the great work of pointing men away from the perishing to that which shall endure.
T.
Government and Religious Institutions
I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.—Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Rev. Mr. Millar, Jan. 23, 1808.
MODERN IDOLATRY.
Civilization, so called, is far advanced, but superstition is as rife as ever. The form has changed, but the fact is here. Nearly every baseball nine and football eleven must have its mascot, as does every pugilistic bruiser and many a politician. The dog, or monkey, or ring, or rabbit’s foot is a potent force in success! Men worship, revere, adore, the symbols not the things symbolized. This is very forcibly, tho almost profanely, put by the noted writer and master of English, Ambrose Bierce, staff officer, by the way, in the Civil War. He says in the Examiner of June 19:—
“Says an esteemed tho local contemporary:—
“‘The American flag is an emblem not only of freedom but of civilization; and as such, it ought to be beloved and worshiped by all who live under it or who in anywise receive the benefit which it confers on mankind.’
“That is a pretty fair sample of the stuff that one can be brought to write by indulgence of the awful human propensity for confusing things. Human nature presents no more striking characteristic than the tendency to neglect the substance and consider the shadow; to forget the end in contemplation and approval of the means; to substitute principle for action and ceremony for principle; to attribute to the symbol the virtues of the thing symbolized. It evidently did not occur to the patriotic gentleman who wrote the quoted sentence, and much else in the same spirit, that the flag, being only an ‘emblem’ of freedom and civilization [our kind of freedom and civilization, by the way] is not at all entitled to the love and worship that he solicits for it; these should go, not to the flag, but to the things of which it is an emblem,—to freedom, to civilization. His idolatrous tendency and his truly heathenish confusion of mind are still further shown in his reference of ‘the benefit which it [the flag, observe] confers on mankind.’ His is a typical utterance: the vestigial idolatry of the cave-dweller and the sylvan nomad is still strong in the race, and flag-worship is one of its most reasonless manifestations. Everywhere and always in these days of war we hear and read words about the flag which a thinking human being would be ashamed to utter of an actual beneficent deity.
“There is no room whatever for doubt that what the average patriot acclaims and honors is the actual colored silk or bunting, not the abstractions that it represents. To the conception of abstractions he comes unfitly equipped, but he can see a tinted rag. I do not know that any harm comes of his idolatry; it is noted here merely as an interesting and significant phenomenon—one of a thousand proving the brevity of our advance along the line of progress toward the light. It is of a piece with the average human being’s more or less sincere respect for truth, justice, chastity, and so forth, not as practicable means to the end of human happiness, but as things creditable and desirable in themselves, even when subversive of their actual purpose by promoting misery. Let the flag flap, and let ‘our ill-starred fellow-citizens’ who are unable to get a firm, mental grasp on what it stands for, knuckle down upon their knees before it and lift the voice. But, God bless them, how they would be shocked to observe the indifference with which it is regarded by soldiers in battle! One of the sharpest and most righteous rebukes I ever got from high authority was for permitting my color-sergeant to flaunt his gaudy symbol in the face of a battery. To civilian orators and poets the flag is sacred; to the soldier it is useful.”
Churches Equal Before the Law
Hon. J. L. M. Curry, in his valuable essay, “Establishment and Disestablishment,” very correctly says: “In the United States it can not be too frequently or strongly reaffirmed, churches or denominations or sects are on a plane of undistinguishable equality before law. The government can not interfere with their doctrines, discipline, worship, or the appointment or support of the clergy. It is sheer impertinence, insolent assumption, to talk of any American citizens as dissenters or non-conformists.”—Quoted in “Religious Liberty in the United States.”
Religious Persuasion, Not Legislation
Our Constitution recognized no other power than that of persuasion for enforcing religious observances. Let the professors of Christianity recommend their religion by deeds of benevolence, by Christian meekness, by lives of temperance and holiness. Let them combine their efforts to instruct the ignorant, to relieve the widow and orphan, to promulgate to the world the Gospel of their Saviour, recommending its precepts by their habitual example. . . . Their moral influence will then do infinitely more to advance the true interests of religion than any measure they may call upon Congress to enact.—U. S. Senate Report, 1829.
Religion and Human Government
Religion is not in the purview of human government. Religion is essentially distinct from government, and exempt from its cognizance. A connection between them is injurious to both.—James Madison.
IS IT PROGRESS OR DEGENERACY?
By W. N. G.
THE “spirit of ’76” is fast giving way to the spirit of ’98. The Government of the United States has departed and is departing so far from its original doctrines as to be scarcely recognizable when compared with its first picture. In the glamor of latter-day pretension the new “Novus Ordo Seclorum” (A new order of things) poses on the pedestal of “Progress;” but, if the doctrines of the founders of the government were correct, the present tendency is rather degenerate than progressive. The latest political suggestion is the United States party, and whether or not the suggestion actually materializes under that name, the principles set forth in the proposition are no doubt becoming the popular idea. The Kansas City Star comments quite patronizingly upon the proposed new party and its platform. In order to show how easily popular sentiment may be diverted, even reversed, we give a few extracts from the Star’s article:—
“The vast army of new converts to the idea that the American republic is henceforth to be a nation of the world in the sense of having a voice in the direction of its affairs, might properly marshal themselves under the name of the United States party. That title would indicate the universality of the movement and would convey an adequate idea of its breadth. . . .
“Never has this country witnessed such a rapid and sweeping revolution of sentiment as has manifested itself in all parts of the Union since the outbreak of the war. The conservative of six weeks ago has become, through the force of unexpected events, a staunch advocate of the doctrine of manifest destiny. From the hour that the Spanish fleet went down before the guns of the American squadron at Manila, a new purpose took hold of the American people. They were brought, in a moment, to a realization of their power and of their obligation to the world. With the last echo of Dewey’s guns the United States ceased to be a hermit nation. The platform of the United States party is: The annexation of Cuba. Military occupation of Porto Rico. Permanent military occupation of Manila. The annexation of Hawaii. Completion and control of the Nicaragua canal. An increased and active navy. A standing army of 150,000 men. An Anglo-American alliance.
“Such a creed can not fail to attract a great multitude of followers, and it will exercise an influence that will do nothing less than change the map of the globe. . . .
“Aiming alone at the glorification of the United States and the extension of its influence on the globe, the new party will present a platform broad enough for every loyal and patriotic citizen to stand on. Republicans, Democrats, Populists, Prohibitionists, all who are interested in the march of liberty and in the expansion of the best government the world has ever seen, can join the new party and labor together for the principles which it upholds.”
Unless the ambitions so suddenly inspired by a few successes in the trial of strength with a broken-down nation shall meet some unforeseen checks, the Fourth of July celebrations will soon, of necessity, wear a different aspect from those of the olden-time occasions. But if the Church-and-State spirit, which has gained such an impetus in the past decade, shall continue its hold upon “the powers that be,” the “glorification of the United States and the extension of its influence on the globe” will not be so great a boon as its promoters imagine. Such a consummation would be little, if any, better than the “extension of the influence” of any other Church-and-State government. W. N. G.
