Struggles for Great Principles by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 13, 1913

Struggles for Great Principles

By C. M. S.

Far back in the days of Moses, when a people had been delivered from involuntary servitude, we find the first recorded use of the word “liberty.” It occurs in this expression: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

It is not merely a coincidence that these identical words should have been cast on the bell that was to ring out to the American people their proclamation of liberty from the rule of a country beyond the sea. While that bell had been tolling from its tower, circumstances had been educating a people in the love of liberty. With eyes opened by a divine hand, they had been enabled to see the violation of principles of truth and justice in the liberties which were denied them. Because they had been taxed without representation, because they had been looked upon as subjects rather than as equals, they made this declaration to the world: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” etc. It was a principle new to the nations, but in itself as old as creation. It simply meant that the circumstances of birth could not justly give to any man a preeminence in rights over another. It was a bold statement to make; but it was true, and they made it. It was a broad foundation on which to build; but it was a solid one, and they built upon it. They built wiser than their day, and they built wiser, it seems, than the majority of their posterity in this day are able to appreciate. Without that foundation, the structure they reared could not have stood a hundred years; and a departure from that foundation will see that structure ruined in much less than a hundred years from the date of the departure.

Because they had been deprived of many natural rights, they declared that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Because they had been ruled by one who claimed the inherited right to rule without any regard to the authority of those he ruled, and had suffered under that rule, they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the outspoken principle that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;” and because those principles were not recognized nor those rights allowed, they declared that “these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” From these plain declarations of principle, and the firm stand which they took upon them, there grew up what was then an anomaly among the nations, an anomaly which persisted by virtue of the principles upon which it was founded.

Now, in these later days the remembrance of those principles is fading away, even as fades the ink in which they were written. The outlines of those words which meant so much to the descendants of the American colonists are dimming to obscurity to-day, and he must look with keen eye who would see those principles in the deeds and words of many of those who are formulating public sentiment to-day.

When the nation was still young, there were incorporated into its fundamental law specific declarations of principles to safeguard the liberty of the soul as well as of the body. These were as hard a blow at the established church as the declaration of civil independence was against the former established government in the country. But they had been whipped and burned and banished when religion had been established by state law, and they would protect themselves and their posterity by disestablishing that power which had made such things possible.

Naturally the established church was strongly opposed to the cutting off of its financial state aid, its exceptional prerogatives, and its advantages over other sects. So the battle for religious freedom followed hard after the battles for civil freedom, and the victories gained were as much more important than the military victories as the freedom of the soul is more important than the name of the country to which the person owes allegiance. Efforts were made to recommit the country to the principles of a union of church and state, but they failed as they deserved to do, and there went into the constitutions of every one of the original thirteen States the principles, if not the exact words, of the following declaration: “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; opinion in matters of religion shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect civil capacities. The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of man.”

Most of the other States since added to the Union, have also incorporated these principles into their constitutions. The nation itself was not permitted to remain silent on so great and vital a principle. It prohibited in emphatic terms the making of religion a test of qualification for public office, and forbade even Congress itself to invade the citadel of the soul by enacting religious legislation.

Therefore, with the Declaration of Independence speaking as it does, with the Constitution of the nation speaking as it does, with the constitutions of forty or more of the States speaking as they do, and with the history before us of the memorable struggle that was waged by the founders of the nation for religious liberty, it would certainly seem that the people of these United States had spoken plainly enough, and that the lesson had been learned well enough, so that never again in this land could religious persecution raise its head to hurt or punish any for worshiping God according to the dictates of their consciences.

But in spite of it all, the principles of church and state union, whose logical sequence is and always has been religious persecution, has been retained, upheld, and promoted in nearly all the States—so far have their legislators lost sight of the principle upon which their own religious freedom rests, the principle upon which the nation was established, the principle “on which the gospel was first propagated, and the Reformation from popery carried on.”

As the battle for civil freedom and the battle for religious freedom were carried on at practically the same time and by the same people, so the forgetting of those political principles and those principles of soul freedom are going on at the same time and on the part of the same people. As the fathers of the nation declared it “impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith without erecting a claim to infallibility, which would lead us back to the Church of Rome,” and as the magistrate is now permitted to do that very thing in every prosecution of a Christian for the violation of a Sunday law, it is evident that that claim has been to all intents and purposes erected, and that the nation is now being led just where they said it would be.

If it was “proper” in those distant days “to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties,” it must be eminently “proper to take alarm” at the

multitudinous experiments that are made to-day along that line. It certainly is very proper so to do when men in these days have been repeatedly condemned to prison and to the payments of burdensome fines for worshiping God according to the dictates of their consciences.

Out of the persecutions suffered by the Baptists and Quakers and others because of their mode of worship grew the guaranties of liberty in religious things that were incorporated into our national and State constitutions. But now we have the persecutions as they had them, and that, too, in spite of the supposed guaranties of religious freedom. America, which should have stood as a light and pattern to the world, which fought the battles of mankind and won; America, the asylum for the oppressed, is forgetting the most vital principle for which she stood,—the freedom of the consciences of men. The great hand of an oppressive church is now grasping the seats of government in State and nation, even as the founders of this nation warned us that it would do when the people departed from the principles of religious liberty.

The plans laid by the National Reform Association, by the Lord’s Day Alliance, by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, by the American Federation of Catholic Societies, and, in a word, by the great Catholic Church as a body, contemplate the accomplishment of a work that is the very antithesis of what the founders of the country did. Let those plans become a fact, and the nation has started back toward the bitter experiences of colonial days and of the middle ages. It is unthinkable and unexplainable; but thus has the prophet outlined it, and thus do we see it fulfilling before our eyes to-day. C. M. S.