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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · September 25, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 38

A Good Utterance.

On the evening of August 26, a banquet was given in the First Congregational Church, Oakland, California, by the Congregational Club, in honor of Rev. Dr. R. R. Meredith, of Brooklyn, New York, who was its guest. Many pastors of Congregational Churches in San Francisco, and the surrounding towns, were present.

In response to several addresses, in which warm fraternal sentiments were expressed toward himself, Dr. Meredith said that two thoughts had been uppermost in his mind during his journey across the continent, and his thirty days’ visit on the Coast. These thoughts were Christianity and the country. Of the former, he said: Strictly defined, its essential spirit is a missionary spirit. From its institution down to this day, its true work has been missionary work. The Church, which is the embodiment of Christianity, is necessarily a missionary society; that and nothing else. Jesus Christ, the author of Christianity, and the founder of the Church, was himself strictly a missionary; for he came to seek and to save them that were lost.

As to the country, he firmly believed that God had, for centuries before it was settled, kept his hand upon this land for a peculiar purpose, keeping out the old nations until an appointed time. And this peculiar purpose, he believed, was to establish on this continent a nation in which the political and religious institutions should be kept utterly separate; in short, a nation in which there should be not the shadow of a union of Church and State, and no State support for church schools. And he thanked God for that purpose; for Christianity needs no aid, no support, from the State. Christianity has power within itself to stand alone; to accomplish its own mission; and should the day ever come in this country, when the Church, as in an hour of great temptation in the third century, joins hands with the State to accomplish her aims, that will be her day of peril, and will seal the fate of the country.

So far as Dr. Meredith’s utterance is concerned, it is all right; but the trouble is, he does not realize what may constitute a union of Church and State. The fact that he says, “Should the day ever come in this country when the Church . . . joins hands with the State to accomplish her aims,” etc., shows that he does not realize that the Church is quite generally doing that very thing now, in asking the State to teach religion in the public schools, and to maintain Sunday

observance. And so, in spite of his opposition to Church and State union, he may be expected to lend a hand to help it on. Yet we are glad of such utterances, for they call people’s attention to the danger attending a union of Church and State, and so prepare them to oppose it when we show them that the principle of such a union is embodied in Sunday legislation.—Signs of the Times.