p. 1, para. 1 | Untitled article

Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 25, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 8

ACCORDING to the word of Christ, the civil power has nothing to do with either God or religion, or with offenses against God or religion. Religion is defined by Webster as “the recognition of God as an object of worship, love and obedience.” Another definition, given by the National Reform Association itself, is “man's personal relation of faith and obedience to God.” If he has no faith at all, and makes no pretensions to obedience to God, that is nothing to the civil government, so long as the man conducts himself civilly. Neither has civil government anything to do with offenses against God; the Lord himself can attend to that. A man is responsible alone to God for the offenses which he commits against God. Civil government has no business to establish a religion, and then make offenses against it criminal; nor has it any business to put itself in the place of God, and presume to declare that an offense against the governmental idea of God is an offense against God. How is the civil government to know whether an act offends God or not? The fact of the matter is, that just as soon as Sunday laws are investigated at all in the light of truth, or justice, or law, it is found that they are inseparable from an established religion—inseparable from a union of Church and State.