p. 9 | Putting Darkness for Light by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 26, 1911

Putting Darkness for Light

By C. M. S.

THE Word of God pronounces a woe upon the man who puts light for darkness and darkness for light. It is a very important matter, therefore, that those especially who occupy the position of religious instructors of the people should be very certain before pronouncing a curse as from God upon any of the important relations of life. To do otherwise is most certain at some time to place even those who have been long recognized as the spiritual leaders of the people under the frown of him whom they profess to represent.

In the London Standard of September 20, quite a full report is given of an address by the Bishop of Carlisle at the diocesan conference at Windermere, in which he declared that—

no greater curse had ever befallen mankind than that of supposing that one part of human life was secular and another sacred, or that the state had nothing to do with religion or religion with state affairs. In a pagan empire such distinctions were possible, but a Christian kingdom had but one citadel, although it had two swords. To regulate mundane and physical matters, whether they concerned eating and drinking, or the making of laws by Christian principles, was not to profane religion. Yet, as things were, Christ was left out of touch with the world. Had he any altar on the exchange or in the market? Unless religion produced character or conduct in us, it was only counterfeit. The age needed to be delivered from futile sermons and sacraments which did not uplift the receiver. The Bible never anywhere recognized a mere Sunday religion or mere temple worship.

The teachings of our Saviour himself indicate that, while there is a little truth in the above, the larger part is of a character which the Author of our salvation never sanctioned, always opposed, and which can not “uplift the receiver.” True religion does produce character; it alters the conduct of every soul who truly receives it. But the experience of centuries has demonstrated in cases impossible of computation that a religion supervised and enforced by the state is not of that nature. The man or woman who has truly received religion has received it as an invited guest, and not as a creature of the state billeted upon the household by order of the civil ruler.

It is true that the Christian kingdom has but one citadel; and that citadel is located where the Ruler of that kingdom is—where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

It is not true that the kingdom of Christ has two swords, the sword of the Spirit and the sword of the civil ruler. The words of our Lord to Peter verify this: “Put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Matt. 26:52. While his doctrine would bring division, because light and darkness can not mingle, it was never his purpose to bring into the world a doctrine that would cause the people to perish or to lose their souls. But, by his own word, they would perish if they adopted and wielded the sword of steel. The professed church of Christ, forgetting the admonition of the Lord, has used that sword; and wherever she has done so, she has earned the just condemnation of both God and man, has made religion a formal thing to be flaunted by the characterless and the hypocrite, while

the truest and sincerest children of God have languished in vermin-infested prisons, have died under slow and most cruel torture, have expired on the hangman’s scaffold, under the headsman’s ax, or in the flames of the auto-da-fé. Religion, swinging that sword and panoplied in the trappings of the state, has been a misrepresenter of God, an oppressor of man, and a monster of unrestrained violence, wherever it has appeared on earth.

That religion should exist and be a power in the lives of men, it is not at all necessary that it should be a department of state. It is of the very nature of religion that it be free. If it is not free, it is not religion. If it is a department of state, regulated by the state, it is not free—it is not religion, and has no power to convict souls and mold the lives of men.

It is not true that the separation of church and state is a pagan idea or arrangement. The opposite is the fact. Every pagan government has joined some sort of religion to the functions of the state. Instance: Babylon, Egypt, and pagan Rome, with their religions under the dominance of the governing power. Christ brought a new idea into the conceptions of men, when he taught his followers to “render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Mark 12: 17.

The record states that when they heard that, “they marveled.” Why should they have marveled?—Because the world had been drunk for centuries with the truly pagan idea—the wine of Babylon of old—that the state must administer the affairs of religion.

Now the basic idea of the Bishop of Carlisle is the very antithesis of truth. That basic idea is that “no greater curse had ever befallen mankind than that of supposing that one part of human life is secular and another sacred,” and “that the state has nothing to do with religion.” This is the opposite of truth, because it is the opposite of our Saviour’s teaching; and the facts of history show that the greatest curse the world has ever known rested upon it when religion and the state were one, and the self-styled vicar of Christ was the dictator absolute in the kingdoms of this world. Under the dominance of that curse, true religion was the perpetual food for flames until Christianity was hid in the wilderness and in dungeon cells, and only the hideous counterfeit dared to appear in public and to walk openly before men. That mockery, hypocrisy, and counterfeit could have been possible only under such a régime.

Neither is the separation of church and state the actuating cause of what the bishop terms in another portion of his address “mere Sunday religion or mere temple worship.” Nothing in this world has done so much to bring about mere Sunday religion and mere temple worship as the union of secular and sacred things in a state religion. Under that régime the individual who has religion because the state requires it, feels that he has done all that is required of him when he keeps Sunday as the law of the state requires, and goes to mass or other church service as that same power demands he shall do. The rest of the time he will generally do as he pleases, feeling that he has done all that is required of him. That makes a mockery of religion, and degrades the devotees of that system. There are living examples of such systems in operation, and living examples of the degradation of those who profess them. Under such a system will men curse their fellows with fearful oaths immediately after emerging from a magnificent church edifice where they had knelt before the altar, made the sign of the cross, and touched their foreheads with “holy water.” That is not religion, but it is what such a system produces wherever it is in vogue.

It means much to the world, and much to this people, that there is just now such an insistent demand on both sides of the Atlantic for a revival of that system of union of civil and religious things. Not until such a union is accomplished can that dragon voice thunder forth, and the death decree be pronounced upon those who will not worship the beast and his image, nor receive his seal upon them. But the agitation for such conditions as will make that possible is increasing in volume every day. C. M. S.