p. 375, para. 1 | Untitled article

Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · December 1, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 47

A GENTLEMAN from South Carolina, a lawyer, who has been reading literature on religious liberty put forth by the Association, writes the following:—

Dear Sir: I have perused with a great deal of pleasure and profit Mr. Jones' pamphlet upon the subject of religious liberty, and pronounce it a work of decided merit. His position is strong and tenable, and can not be gainsaid or controverted by the enemies of religious liberty. The great light and luminary in political and philosophic thought, Edmund Burke, has said that no man has a right to anything that is not reasonable. That is a great and fundamental verity, upon which all human systems are built, and out of which many great and important truths may be evolved.

Human systems and laws are the creatures of human rights. When mankind entered into the covenant and compact of civil government, they agreed to surrender everything that was unreasonable and nothing that was reasonable. If man had not covenanted and agreed to surrender those things that were unreasonable, his liberty would have been his greatest tyrant. He could have had no assurance that those things which he would preserve, cherish, and transmit would be protected. Religious liberty is a natural right, and government was intended to be a rock of safety and security to natural and reasonable rights. We live under two governments in this world, the moral and the civil. The civil is intended to check, restrain and punish any and every member of society who offends against the rights of his fellow-man. The moral is intended to direct, guide, and govern us in those things which belong exclusively, unreservedly, and absolutely to the individual. Conscience is the seat of the moral government, and whenever any earthly power or potentate undertakes to dictate to mankind in matters of conscience, it becomes a usurper; it dethrones and dislodges the rightful sovereign.

The union of Church and State is one of the most gigantic frauds and impositions that was ever practiced upon mankind, and it is responsible for some of the darkest and most diabolical crimes that have ever stained and stigmatized the history of the Old World. It was the union of Church and State that sent Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley to the stake. It was the union of State and religion that compelled Socrates to drink the poisonous hemlock.

Mr. Edwards is quoted as saying that he would not tolerate an atheist. Where did Mr. Edwards get his right to be intolerant of other people's opinions? I think the reverend gentleman would do well to tone and temper his zeal with a little sound and wholesome reflection. Where did Mr. Edwards get his right to believe in a God? Was it the gift and grant of any earthly power? If so, that power is the keeper and custodian of conscience.

If the secular power can say that I shall believe in a God, then it follows as a legal and logical sequence that it can say that I shall not believe in a God, or any of the great and fundamental doctrines of Christianity. It is time that there should be a better understanding between the governed and the government. It is time that rulers and law-givers should learn that human systems are but the evidences of human rights, and that civil and religious liberty are the greatest and most important of human rights, and that government was made to protect and not trample upon them.