p. 235 | Untitled article by N. R. JOHNSTON

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 21, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 30.

“Nehemiah the Tirshatha.”—No. 2.

By N. R. JOHNSTON

To N. J. BOWERS:—In my first criticism upon your article in the SENTINEL of the 17th, I showed that National Reformers are not in favor of the union of Church and State as you charge. I showed also that the theocracy of the government of Israel was not much different from what we should have now in any Christian nation.

In reply to your additional charges, namely, that National Reformers would tax the people to support the church, and that they would punish marriage with foreigners, I may say,—

1. According to the law of Israel the tithes were paid for the support of the tribe of Levi, which received no landed inheritance. This whole tribe, including the priests, the sons of Aaron, was devoted to the interests of religion and of education.

Nehemiah was a civil officer extraordinary. Probably all he did was to incite the rulers to see that the tithe was paid in the interests of both religion and education.

2. Marriage is a civil contract, not religious. The marriage relation may involve or bring with it religious obligations; but the institution is founded in nature, not in grace or religion, and rightly comes under the cognizance of the State or the civil power which makes laws to regulate men in the relation and to punish open transgressors of the civil law of marriage.

In Israel the civil law, according to the will of the divine lawgiver, forbade the intermarriage of Israelites with heathen idolaters. The law was good. God made it. The people had said amen to it. It was the law of the nation, “the law of the land,” a wholesome law to which all the people in their happiest time had given consent. So that when men married idolatrous heathen wives they violated their own civil law. Moreover, Paul, the Jewish Christian and a correct expounder of Christian law, says: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” And Christians should accept and preach the divine law given to Israel. Nehemiah enforced their own righteous law upon the trespassing Israelites. He did right. Under similar circumstances if all the people of the United States were Christians and were also of one mind as to God’s law of marriage, government—the civil department—should punish nominal Christians who marry heathen idolaters.

I think my logic is good. I see no flaw in it. Do you see any?

The ergo of this is twofold: 1. That when Nehemiah arrested Sabbath desecraters he did right. And, 2. That if our people were what they should be, and if government, was what it should be, we should follow Nehemiah’s example.

N. R. JOHNSTON.