‘Religion and the State.
By Editor
[We take this article from the Journal and Messenger of May 23, a Baptist paper published in Cincinnati, Ohio. Our readers will understand that it is an editorial review of a contributed article written in advocacy of National Reform. The arguments presented by the Messenger will not be lost upon candid, thinking men.] On our second page will be found an article entitled National Reform, written by the Rev. J. M. Foster, secretary of the National Reform Association. It is an effort to justify the purpose of some of our fellow-citizens to bring about such a union between the Church and the State that the latter may become the executive of the former. It is the result of adherence to the old idea of the theocracy as it existed in Israel and pertained to the Hebrews, previous to the appointment of their king, and even subsequently. It is the result of a failure to distinguish between the nation Israel and the true spiritual Israel, between the “seed” and the “children” of Abraham. It is an effort to apply the principles governing the210relation of child and parent to those who are aliens and strangers to the family and the covenants. It is a mistake constantly making in matters pertaining to reforms, that the State stands in the place of God, and that its business is to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is sin and what is not sin, and to legislate accordingly, forbidding and punishing sin, as such, because it is condemned in the law of God. It is an effort to load upon the State the responsibility of taking the “vengeance” out of the divine hand and punishing the evil doer, not simply because of his offense against society, but because of his offense against divine law. And all this is, as it seems to us, a mistaken view of the province of government. As we understand it, government is a social compact, in which the individual surrenders to the State certain natural rights, in view of the promise, expressed or implied, on the part of the latter, to prevent or punish the infringement of those rights by any other member of the same society; and only when it is doing for the individual what he has a natural right to do for himself, only when it is protecting the individual against interference with his natural rights, or is preventing him from interfering with the natural rights of another, can the State be regarded as in its proper place. The State has a right to protect itself from harm, because thus it protects its individual members from harm; it has a right to promote the temporal interests of its citizens, and thus it promotes its own interests. Take, for example, the sin of lying; there can be no doubt that it is one of the most grievous and most prevalent of sins; and yet the State takes no cognizance of it, except when it is in a court of justice, or when it is shown to have been specifically injurious to another citizen. And so we might go on through the long catalogue and show that it is the business of the State simply to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of all their natural rights, and whatsoever is more than that cometh of evil. By these principles we, as Baptists, have always stood and ought to stand. We recognize one Master, God, the eternal, the unchangeable, the just. . . . For our religious beliefs and practices we refuse to give account to men, and the further the State keeps away from us, as it pertains to these things, the more it will be doing the will of our Master. The State has no right to enter into the place of God and punish any citizen, because of his sin against God. It has no right to punish sin, as sin. For the sinfulness of his acts the individual is amenable only to God himself. It is for the injury imposed upon his fellow-man—upon society—that the State takes cognizance, and its penalties should never have any other end than the prevention of the recurrence of the offense, either as to the same individual or as to another. It is no part of the business of the State to teach religion or to look at questions from a religious standpoint. It has been sufficiently demonstrated that men cannot be made truly religious by law, and that attempts to make them such result in the most despicable hypocrisy and corruption. It was the mistake made by the Puritans in New England that they made religion a matter of statute law, and required all officers to be members of a church. The result was the “half-way covenant” and the condition of things found by Jonathan Edwards and set forth by him in his account of the religious condition of the country when he awakened to it, about the year 1740. It is true that the Puritans attempted to set up a theocracy in New England, and that they required everyone to be religious, to attend the church, to pay tithes, to observe certain fast and feast days, and especially to observe the Sabbath, according to their ideas; and because some Baptists and Quakers refused to conform to the ideas of the authorities, they were whipped and banished, and even hanged. Fortunately for us as a people, the Puritans did not settle the whole country, did not control all the colonies. In many things they were far superior to all others, but their defects were serious, and it was only after their good things had been fused with the good things of some others that the resultant was what we now delight in. It was as when two kinds of ore are brought together in the furnace and the resultant is a superior grade of iron. So it was when some other good things from some other sources were smelted together with the Puritan ideas, that the best results were obtained. And, much as we to-day rejoice in what has come to us from New England, we like it the more because it has been transfused and modified by the good elements in other colonies. This country has made a great improvement in its moral tone and fibre since the Baptists effected its deliverance from the danger which menaced it under the first draft of the Constitution. Let us not forget our mission.