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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · January 15, 1891

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 6, No. 3

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The Decalogue in Politics.

By R. F. COTTRELL

The declaration of Senator Ingalls that “the Decalogue and the Golden Rule have no place in a political campaign,” is thus replied to by Rev. Dr. Thomas Dixon, a Baptist minister of New York, as quoted in the Buffalo Christian Advocate:—
This Nation was founded on the Decalogue and the ten commandments. The men who landed on Plymouth Rock, landed on their knees. The foundations of this Republic were cut from the quarry of God’s eternal granite. Its foundation stones were laid in cement made with the tears and blood of Christian men and women. The man who has outgrown the Decalogue and the Golden Rule has outgrown his usefulness in this Nation.
The “decalogue and the ten commandments,” must constitute a strong foundation; but would it not be more truthful to say that this Nation was founded on the Declaration and Constitution—the declaration of equal rights to all men, which is in perfect accordance with the Golden Rule, and a Constitution which was designed to protect all in the exercise of all their rights both civil and religious? One who abides by the teaching of the Golden Rule can ask no more of civil government in respect to religion than to be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of the Word of God and his own conscience.
The “the tears and blood of Christian men and women,” with which he says the foundation of our Government was cemented, most naturally calls to mind the persecutions of Baptists, and Quakers, and others in New England before the formation of our peerless Constitution, the recurrence of which it was desired to prevent in the future by protecting all religions, and establishing none.
What is meant by “a religious amendment,” of a Constitution which has nothing to do with religion but to protect the rights of all? It can mean nothing short of perverting the prohibition which says, “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
R. F. COTTRELL.