The Folly of Bigotry by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 27, 1913

The Folly of Bigotry

By C. M. S.

FORCE has no place in the settlement of religious questions, and yet it is the universal weapon of bigotry. The man who will not see, who knows nothing of the work of grace in the heart, and who cannot meet argument with argument, or give a reason for his hope that is satisfactory even to himself, will attempt to silence argument with a club and answer logic with a brickbat or a stone.

Gamaliel gave sound advice to the leaders of the Jews when he said concerning the apostles and their work:—

“Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.” Acts 5:38, 39.

The Pharisees seemed to be echoing the teaching of Gamaliel when they said, concerning Paul and his work:—

“We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God.” Acts 23:9.

This was sound advice; but bigotry has never followed it. When Jesus went up Calvary’s slope bearing his cross, bigotry was exulting in the idea that it had silenced his teaching and scattered his followers. But instead of that, it had shed the blood of man’s great Sacrifice and had finished the work of perfecting that antitype to which all sin-offerings had pointed forward since the days of Abel.

With every stone hurled at the martyr Stephen, bigotry thought it was driving a nail in the coffin of Christian doctrine. But the prayer of Stephen for his orthodox murderers has been an example and an inspiration to the followers of Christ for nineteen hundred years. His spilled blood has helped to seed the world with the virile truths of the gospel.

The Jewish Sanhedrin thought it had accomplished much toward stifling the gospel when it sent Saul to Damascus, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the Christians, and with authority to bind and bring to Jerusalem any who were of that way. But God sent a shaft of light into the soul of Saul, and Saul the persecutor became Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, the greatest factor after Christ in the establishment of Christ’s kingdom in this world.

The Roman Church of the dark ages thought it was working in its own interests when it made the Bible a forbidden book, and tortured and burned to death the millions who persisted in reading it; but out of that awful régime of bigotry and oppression and slaughter stepped the monk of Wittenberg, with that forbidden Book in his hand and its precepts in his heart, to start a Reformation that made the Pope himself tremble

on his throne, and burst the mental and spiritual shackles of many of earth’s defrauded millions. Bigotry had overshot the mark. God himself had spoken to an imprisoned soul, “The just shall live by faith,” and the emancipated monk to whom he spoke it passed on that bread of life, first to the hungry millions of his native land by word and pen, and then to hungry souls in every land by the multiplication of his published works. God meant religion should be as free as the untrammeled river flowing on to the great sea; and when men attempt to dam it up and imprison it and regulate it by human law, it rises and flows over, and sweeps away the barriers and obstructions that human hands have put in its way.

The American colonists thought to regulate religion, and to proscribe and banish from their realms all religion save their own; but in doing it, they banished a man who grew into a State, and the fundamental principles of that State became the fundamental principles of the whole nation; and that nation, in that thing, became a light to all the world. Bigotry had undone itself again with its own weapons.

But bigotry is blind and dull; it will not learn. Nation after nation is rising and throwing off the shackles bigotry had forged for it. England did it; Germany has done it; France is doing it; Portugal has done it; Spain is moving in that direction; the people of Austria have seen a light, and many of them are moving toward it; and even the nations of South America are working toward soul emancipation. A Catholic bishop of Peru, with a band of followers, rode out into the mountains to break up a Christian medical mission among the Indians, and to destroy a school. They beat the Christian Indians and dragged some of them off to prison; but in a few days a law was passed by both houses of the Peruvian legislature so amending the constitution that the Roman Church loses its position in that nation as the only permitted religion, and the people are to have the privilege of accepting and practising the religion of their choice. These experiences prove, and prove again, the truth of that scripture declaration that we “can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” The weapons formed against religious freedom finally help in the overthrow of the cause they were intended to serve. The burning of Bibles causes more Bibles to be published; the persecution of Christians has always made more Christians; and the denial of freedom has always been the harbinger of liberty. These are the lessons of the ages; but bigotry will not learn.

A few years ago a great federation of Catholic societies began to make demands upon the American government that periodicals attacking the Catholic faith should be denied the privilege of the mails. Immediately there began to spring up in different parts of the country anti-Catholic weeklies. One of these, in less than three years, has attained a circulation of more than a million copies a week, and others that have been in the field longer are increasing their lists.

The attacks of Catholic mobs on anti-Catholic speakers increase the desire of the people to know what it is that Rome does not want them to hear. On November 7 Detective Robert Wilson, of Scranton, Pa., delivered a lecture against Rome in the Berean Baptist Church at Carbondale, Pa. A mob of about two thousand persons attacked the church while the lecture was in progress, demolished the large memorial windows, more or less seriously injured with stones and bricks many of those inside the church, brutally beat some of those who were in attendance and some who were not, entered a near-by house, dragged out its owner, and would undoubtedly have beaten out his life had not the police succeeded in getting him out of their clutches. The mob would not disperse until the sheriff permitted them to go through the wrecked church hunting in every possible hiding-place for the pastor and the lecturer. How the mob would have treated these men had they found them can only be imagined by the way in which they wreaked their unreasoning vengeance upon those who did fall into their hands.

Such acts can convince no one of the falsity of the charges made by the lecturer. They only serve to convince those who heard them of the dangerous nature of the organization the lecturer was attacking. Such a mob by such acts cannot convince any one of the harmlessness and beneficence of the religion it professes; for no one can believe that the priests to whom those men confess could not have stopped the riot if they had chosen so to do. In fact, many will believe that the priests themselves were the instigators, and will judge the religion by the characteristics of that frenzied mob, the brutal acts it committed, the weapons it used, and the windowless and demolished church. There is no escaping it.

We note that the papers which speak editorially of the deplorable occurrence seem afraid to denounce the actions of the mob, and they lay the chief blame upon the speaker, of whose arguments and charges they had heard nothing, as the meeting was not for the general public, and reporters were excluded.

That demonstration was the argument of bigotry,—the only one it has,—and it never satisfies, never convinces. It proves conclusively that they who use it have not learned Christ; for he, “when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.” If the Roman Church would convince the world that she is indeed the true church of Jesus Christ, she must abandon the weapons of the unconverted, and demonstrate her claim by the Christlikeness of her acts. The sword of the Spirit is not a bludgeon, and the power of the Christ life is not manifested in the hurling of bricks and stones. C. M. S.