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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · June 5, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 23

The Sphere of Legislation.

LEGISLATION can deal only with the natural affairs of man. The laws of a land are restraining and compulsory, and can therefore not touch the free will of a man, to which true religion only, can come. No legal enactment can make a man honest; but if he is found guilty of stealing, it can punish him as a warning, and for a season remove him from all opportunities to steal. All legislation is for the protection of the people, to prevent the evil and unjust from molesting others in their just rights. Beyond this it has no power. All it can therefore do for religion, which is of every man's own free choice, is to prevent others from interfering with him in his worship and practices according to his own conscience; and to prevent zealots, who have not the Christian love of the neighbor, from molesting others.

THE AMERICAN SENTINEL seems therefore to be right in opposing religious legislation. . . . All just laws are made for the protection of the people in all their just rights; of which religious liberty is the first; but no law can enforce, or even defend, any form of religion.—Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, Herald.