The Papistic Element in the National Reform Movement.
The Christian Statesman, organ of the National Reform Association, puts forth a full-fledged Papistic theory, in an editorial upon “The Sabbath and Its Legal Safeguards.” It asserts that all “intelligent and earnest friends” of Sunday should unite to accomplish the following points:— “1. To the maintenance of every right and wise safeguard of the Sabbath rest which is now to be found on the statute-books of the nation. The fundamental principles in view of which we must judge of the wisdom and righteousness of these statutes are these: The supreme authority of Almighty God as the Creator and Lawgiver of the world; the fact that he has, from the beginning, and through all dispensations, reserved one-seventh of man’s time as his portion, to be employed, not according to our judgment or inclination, but according to his direction. “2. These defenses must be restored where they have been overthrown. “3. To meet the altered conditions of our modern society, the laws must be enlarged and strengthened. The fine of four dollars and some cents, which sufficed to detain a Conestoga wagon until Monday in the days when all freight was carried across the Alleghanies in such conveyances, is ludicrously inadequate as a means of regulating the vast railroad system of to-day. The same is true of other lucrative and gainful occupations. To adjust penalties wisely, so as to meet the changed conditions of society, and to preserve the efficacy of the law, is one of the delicate, but imperative, tasks of statesmanship, and one for which our modern statesmen have shown little aptitude or inclination. They must be admonished and instructed by the aroused conscience of the Christian public, and if they refuse to heed they must be replaced by men who will. “4. The action of the general government must be brought into accordance with the requirements of the Sabbath. Among the most needless, most extensive, and most injurious forms of Sabbath desecration in the land to-day is the transportation and distribution of the mails on the Lord’s day. It is needless, because our telegraph system, wisely employed, obviates the necessity for any mail service on that day. In the face of the fact that London, with its five millions of inhabitants, the commercial center of the world, has neither collection nor delivery nor dispatch of letters on the Sabbath, the plea of business necessity for this form of labor on the day of rest is inadmissible. Yet none save those who have carefully informed themselves have any idea of the amount of labor performed on the Sabbath by our postal employees, of the rapidity with which this service on that day is extending itself over the land, or of the inevitable consequences which it is drawing in its train. On this and on other points the reformation we seek must extend to the general Government. “5. The law of the Sabbath must, by the intelligent and deliberate decision of the people, be embodied in our Constitutions, State and National. The American people are learning great lessons in these days touching the nature and purpose of written constitutions of government. They are discovering that by means of constitutional provisions they can lift great subjects, on which they have reached conclusions, out of the realm of political chicane and party strife and set them on high as the declared policy of the State or of the Nation, which parties will vie with one another in extolling, and which all public officers are sworn to execute. So sacred and important an interest as the Sabbath deserves a place among the high provisions of fundamental law. The temperance reformation is carrying the enlightened verdict of public opinion to its legitimate expression in these great instruments of the Nation’s will. The rising controversy regarding the authority of the divine law of the Sabbath over communities and Nations, will seek and will find its final settlement in the same way. “All these considerations justify and illustrate the work of the National Reform Association, whose object, as declared in its constitutions, is ‘to maintain existing Christian features in the American Government, to secure needed reforms in the action of Government touching the Sabbath [and other kindred matters], . . . and to secure such an amendment [or amendments] to the Constitution of the United States as will indicate that this is a Christian nation, and place all the Christian laws, institutions, and usages of the Government on an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of the land. What Christian citizen, and what friend of the Sabbath, can hesitate to lend his co-operation to the work of such a society?’” Summarized, the above says: Sunday laws must be maintained, enlarged, and strengthened by heavier penalties. The officers who will not execute such laws, must be removed to make room for those who will. The mail service and similar National institutions must be compelled to conform to the Sunday laws. That all this may be the better and more securely attained, the Sunday laws must be made a part of the constitutional law of the States and of the Nation. These ends justify the existence and the purposes of the National Reform Association. All this should be done on religious grounds, and in conformity to the law of God. And yet the Statesman insists that it does not aim at a union of Church and State, but only at a union of Christianity and the State. This is a distinction without a difference, and the plea is an evasion. When the Christians of the United States, acting in concert through a Christian political party, have thus subordinated the National Constitution to a common creed, there will be set in operation the machinery of a spiritual despotism, un-Christlike, and destructive of liberty of conscience. It would be a State church, composed of united denominations, whose common creed would find expression in constitutional law, State and National. This creed would be the political platform of the Christian party, which the Statesman hopes to form through a union of the National Reformists and the Third Party Prohibitionists. A President of the United States, elected on such a platform, or a dictator after the model of Oliver Cromwell, would be bound to enforce the creed of those placing him in power. Even revolution, in the name of religion, would be a legitimate part of such a program. No amount of evasive statements and smooth rhetoric can disguise the logical results which are involved in this movement. Religious intolerance and civil proscription of all who could not yield submission to such a civil authority, would be the unavoidable result. Such a conception of the functions of the State in religious matters is a compound of Jewish theocracy and the State church of pagan Rome. It is Romanism in disguise. The Roman Catholic Church of the world might well join in such a movement, as being a most effectual one against her lost children, the Protestant churches. Rome must have an especial interest in the application of this principle to our Sunday laws. Sunday legislation is Rome’s first-born and well-beloved child. It is the only point of common union left between her and Protestants. Let the National Reform movement concerning our Sunday laws reach a point where the Roman Catholic power in the United States, thrown into the balance, would turn the scales, and Rome could dominate the National Government far sooner than she can hope to do in any other way. Holding thus the balance of power, the way to the gradual suppression of Protestantism would be plain. Neither is it improbable that by some “bold stroke,” which Rome knows so well how to make, this humiliation of Protestantism would not be gradual. Rome could thus make Protestants their own executioners.—The Outlook.