National Reform and Religious Laws
THE National Reform movement for Sunday laws and an amendment to the Constitution providing that religion be taught in the public schools is clearly wrong and wicked. It is a dangerous menace to the liberties of the people and detrimental to the best interests of intelligent civilization. It is born of the same narrow, bigoted, intolerant spirit which attended a union of Church and State in the days of papal supremacy; and which later drove Roger Williams into the wilderness of Rhode Island, banished the Quakers from Massachusetts, and burned women at the stake for supposed witchcraft. Christ said: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Yet the National Reformers by their efforts to secure religious laws clearly design to make it such. Religion is something which the conscience alone should decide, and wherein civil laws should not be allowed to dictate. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord.” And yet, the National Reformers are working vigorously to secure the might and power of the State for the enforcement of the principles of the Christian religion. The movement is wrong. It is against the true teachings of Christ. It is against the freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. It ought to be, and is being opposed by the best thinking and reasoning people of the country.—Bertrand (Nebraska) Herald.