A Centennial Homily

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 29, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 18.

A Centennial Homily

THE Christian Union is often considerably confused in its theology and its views of National polity, but when it does get on the right track for a while its utterances are as good as those of any other paper that speaks truth. In its issue of May 2 it has “A Centennial Homily,” in which it gives expression to some weak thoughts and some good ones, and among the latter are the following:—

“The church is a corporation of men and women organized for certain purposes, which, whether wholly good (as the church people claim) or wholly bad (as the infidel pamphleteer claims), or partially good and partially bad, are certainly, on the one hand, innocent, and therefore entitled to the protection of the State, and, on the other, non-political and therefore not entitled to any partnership with it. We would have the State appropriate no moneys to institutions under church control; we would have it enter into no entangling alliances with church or clergy in the work of education; we would have it recognize no religious tests; we should be glad to have it abolish all oaths, and punish false affirmation with the penalties now visited on perjury; we would have it enforce no religious observances, except as such enforcement is necessary to protect the religious rights of the individual—no Sunday laws, for example, except to protect the individual’s right to his Sabbatical rest.”