Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 21, 1910

The Tide Ebbing

SPEAKING of the recent demand of the Spanish premier for the recognition of absolute freedom of conscience in Spain, the Northwestern Christian Advocate of June 15 says:—

Spain can not much longer remain apart from the universal movement in behalf of religious freedom. It is too much to expect that she should yield readily or soon, but yield she must. The tide of human progress is stronger than dynasties, regal or papal, and man will not forever be denied his birthright of political and religious freedom.

Truly an anomalous condition of things exists in the Christian world to-day. With one breath great religious journals are crying out against religious intolerance, and at the same time making demands for church federation for the recognition of God in the Constitution, and for the enforcement of religious laws relating to First-day observance, etc. This can be explained only on the basis that these journals fail to recognize clearly the great underlying principles of religious liberty. The principles of true liberty will recognize the rights of the infidel and the atheist or heathen equally with the rights of the Christian, the rights of the minority with the rights of the majority. It will not afford, to the advocates of one system of belief, privileges or prerogatives over those exercised by the adherents of any or every other system. True, as the Advocate says, the tide of human progress has been sweeping on during the last few centuries toward greater enlightenment and liberty. But the tide is beginning to recede. Already there are indications of rapid retrogression. Covertly and silently, influences are at work undermining in the hearts of the human family the principles of true liberty, and, in the name of peace, seeking to forge chains which shall bring them again into bondage. The hue and cry heard from every quarter for civic righteousness so-called, and the popular demand for the enforcement of First-day observance, are all steps in this scheme of demoralization. Let us distinguish between principles of true liberty and that which masquerades under that name.