Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 12, 1891

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 6, No. 7

A CORRESPONDENT of the Christian Union says that Bishop Whately reports that as late as the last generation, they deceived themselves by the sophism that “religious liberty was, by all means to be maintained, but not so with irreligious liberty.” But this need occasion no surprise when we consider that many of the present generation deceive themselves by the sophism that “while there should be absolute separation between Church and State, there should not be a separation of religion and the State.” The sophistry of one is as great as of the other.

There can be no union of religion and the State without a union of Church and State, unless, indeed, the Church and religion are entirely separate, which, however, can never be, though the National Reformers seem determined to make it so in order that they may compass their ends.

In this country the term “religion,” when unqualified, means Christianity. It is in this sense that the National Reformers use it. But Christianity is bound up in the Church. The Scriptures declare the Church to be “the pillar and ground of the truth;” therefore the two cannot be separated, and to conjoin religion and the State is also to unite the State and the Church which is “the pillar and ground” of that religion. Therefore, in this as in everything else, National Reform is antichristian.