Untitled article | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · March 23, 1893

Curious Ideas of Liberty.

EUROPEAN governments entertain curious ideas with regard to liberty of conscience—that is, freedom of religion, which is theoretically conceded by every one of their constitutions. In the Prussian Diet the Minister of Public Instruction declared the other day that parents who sent their children to school were at liberty to have them taught any creed they pleased, providing it was a positive creed. He, however, denied the legal right of agnostic parents to have their offspring brought up according to the doctrines which they profess. In Austria, the government draws the line at Methodism, while in Spain the recent troubles which have taken place in connection with the attempt to open a Protestant place of worship in Madrid show plainly that the Peninsular government, while guaranteeing the liberty of conscience prescribed by the constitution, draws the line at Protestantism. The truth is, that there are few people or governments who do not draw the line against religious liberty somewhere, resembling therein Oliver Cromwell, who proclaimed that all creeds should be tolerated, but added that if anybody thought that he was entitled thereby to celebrate mass in Great Britain he would find himself speedily mistaken.—New York Tribune.