CHURCH AND STATE by JOS. CLARKE.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 10, 1867

CHURCH AND STATE.

By JOS. CLARKE.

That there is an intention on the part of many of the mistaken reformers of the day to unite church and State there can be no doubt. Many indications are to be seen here and there floating upon the current news and literature of our time, and many have been published in the Review, all showing whither the would-be reformers of the 19th century are drifting.

At a late State Temperance Convention at Newark, a platform of principles was adopted, one plank of which was this:

“Here, in God’s name, we take our stand, and we invite Christians of every name, temperance men of every organization—all who are unwilling to see the Sabbath blotted out—to unite and stand with us. We shall be denounced and sneered at, but better men have been before us, and it does not alarm us. It will be said we are seeking to legislate men into morality—to unite church and State.”

From this we infer that the subject of intemperance is to be made a matter of legislation, as it may well be; for drunkenness is a crime; but how is it possible, by any moral law, to enforce the sanctification of the first day of the week as the true Sabbath? and how strangely infatuated must that community be, which mingles first-day observance or non-observance with intemperance!

JOS. CLARKE.