p. 323 | Untitled article by C. P. B.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 16, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 41

Strengthening the Hands of the Enemy.

By C. P. B.

THE Truth Seeker, of this city, occasionally says some very good and sensible things. Here is a sample:—

The State should not pay for religious instruction in the public schools, for the reason that it is not the State's business. Religion is a question for each person to decide for himself. The public schools are for the children of every one, and it could not be otherwise than a wrong inflicted upon some child to have religion taught therein—some Freethinker, some Protestant, some Catholic, some Jew. And for the State to provide schools for each sect would be impossible. It would ruin the people to pay the taxes to support them. There are some two hundred sects of Christians in the world, and the United States has samples of about all of them. Schools would have to be multiplied forty-fold. There is no feasible plan to educate children in public schools that will not work injustice except to make them strictly secular, and leave their religious education to their parents.

This is sound; but not so with this precious bit of baseless assertion from the same article:—

It seems to be necessary to continually remind the priests that morality has nothing to do with religion. Morality appeals to the experience of mankind. It cares nothing about faith, nothing about sacred books. Morality depends upon facts, something that can be seen, something known, the product of which can be estimated.

But morality has much to do with religion, and we doubt not that even the Truth Seeker admits it practically, even if it does not as a theory. We have known the Truth Seeker to remark upon the immorality of professed Christians as something not in accordance with their profession. Why, if morality has nothing to do with religion? The Truth Seeker certainly knows better.

But we quote again from the same article:—

The State should not teach religion for another reason. Religion is the enemy of the State, in that it diverts the attention of men from this world to another, and teaches them to sacrifice this world to that other. This weakens the ties that hold families and States together, and has a tendency to reduce society to anarchy.

The paper that uses such arguments (?) against the teaching of religion, is simply strengthening the hands of those who would make our public schools auxiliary to the Church. Every unprejudiced man knows that true Christianity, is not “the enemy of the State.” Both Christ and the apostles taught submission to rightful authority; and while Christianity teaches that a good hope of eternal life should be the first and great concern of every man, it also exhorts to diligence in business; and every infidel in the land knows that wherever you find a good Christian, one who is really worthy of the name, you find a good citizen, a good neighbor, and a good husband and father. Christianity guards the family, and cements family ties as nothing else can, and it is surprising that the Truth Seeker should deny it. The editor of that paper should read the twelfth chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans, and learn what practical Bible Christianity is. C. P. B.