The World's Christian Citizenship Conference
By C. M. S.
IN the report of a conference covering such a scope as did this, and packed so full of addresses and resolutions, it is impossible to touch more than a few of what seem to us the most striking features. One of the most inexcusable of the many illogical deductions noted at this conference was that conveyed in the first address of Rev. T. P. Stevenson, on “The Moral Accountability of Nations,” in which, after declaring that “the nation needs a revelation from God,” he said:— It [the Bible] is the sacred Book of the nation as well as of the church, the sacred Book of mankind; and there is no power that can lawfully interpose between the child that is being trained for citizenship and the voice of God, speaking in his holy Word. The deduction is that if the state does not teach the Bible, it is interposing between the child and “the voice of God, speaking in his holy Word.” As a matter of fact, the very opposite is true. The state prevents any interposing between the child and the voice of God when it refuses to make religion a matter of law, and leaves the teaching of the Word of God to the Sabbath-school, and the home. Were the state to interpret scripture, and enforce its interpretation with the powers at its command, and teach the official dogmas through the public-school teachers, then there would be in very truth a power interposed between the child and the voice of God. In the address of Rev. O. P. Gifford, of Boston, Mass., there was carried out the truly National Reform idea that men can not form true Christian characters unless their surroundings are favorable. This was the idea of the ancient ascetics, who left the habitations of men, and shut themselves up in caves and cloisters that they might have an opportunity to develop a Christian character. Christ sent not his disciples into convents or monasteries, but into the surging, throbbing channels of life's activities. Said Dr. Gifford:— It is difficult for a man to live a personally religious life in an irreligious nation. It was difficult for our ancestors of the Roman empire to develop personal religion. Personal religion is directly dependent upon the life of the nation. The fact of the matter is that the very highest type of personal religion has been developed under the most forbidding circumstances. In the midst of life's hurries and perplexities and even persecutions, the most stalwart Christian characters have been formed. The man who has truly a personal religion will be true to God in spite of all that human beings and demons can do. It is he whose religion is of the hot-house variety who quails under difficulties and opposition. Enoch, Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and our Lord all developed their religious characters in irreligious nations. It was when the Roman government professed Christianity that the Dark Ages began; and wherever governments have espoused religion, character has molded into decay, and the religion of the mass has been a festering disgrace. He who can sail only with favoring winds will never anchor in the port of heaven. In this address also was emphasized the untrue premise that if the state does not teach morality, the child can not be expected to distinguish between right and wrong. For what, then, stands the “Rev.” and the theological degree? What have the church and the home been doing if the youthful criminal goes to the jail and the gallows unwarned as to what is evil? Dr. Gifford unintentionally spiked one of the guns of the National Reform propaganda when he declared that “the Lord's day is a day of rest because it is a day of worship.” It has been the effort of the National Reform Association to convince legislators that all they desired was a “civil rest day.” Certainly we15can not be charged with unfairness in declaring the “civil rest day” proposition an insincere one, when such men as Dr. Gifford and Dr. Crafts openly declare the religious character of the day. In an address by Rev. Chas. E. Parker, a missionary from India, there was clearly taught one of the principles for which we have all along contended; that is, that Christianity thrives best when left completely to itself by the government. Dr. Parker said:— We [in India] can not advise a change in the matter of the government favoring one religion above another. It helps the Christian missionary when he goes out to preach the gospel to the people if they can look to him as one who is advancing the real idea of Christianity, separate from the government. If the government were to favor the Christian religion above other religions, in the minds of Hindu and Mohammedan it would destroy the divine element in Christianity. It is a real help to the missionary on the field to be able to say that the government does not help us. The conclusion of the Hindu and Mohammedan is correct if Christianity is dependent upon the help of human government in order to succeed in the world. Dr. Parker touched the most vulnerable and vital spot in the National Reform armor when he made that truthful observation. That Christianity has succeeded in spite of all that the most tyrannical governments could do, is proof positive that its actuating power is not human, and that it does not need governmental assistance. Upon the matter of Sunday observance he made this observation:— We feel that the sabbath day is not observed as it should be. This can not be really a matter for the government. It is more a matter for the individual, because the government, as a government, must remain neutral on matters of religion. . . . The British officials in India do what they do, or what they think is best, not because of religion, but because of justice. And that is the true basis of human government. Religion must rest on its own worth, or its own power to appeal to hearts, or it has no business in this world. Rev. James F. Dickey, of Berlin, Germany, spoke upon “The German Government and Christianity.” He lauded the union of church and state, and declared it founded on the rock of Scripture, “which recognizes Jesus Christ as the Prince of the kings of the earth, and calls on earth's rulers to be defenders and protectors of the church of the living God.” That papistical idea that the church must be defended and protected, and its interest advanced by secular means, is dominant, and doing its character-destroying work wherever religion is looked upon as a matter that can be regulated by human law. The inconsistency of the situation was admitted even by the speaker when he stated that in a portion of Germany a Roman Catholic ruler had to act as head of the Protestant churches of that district. The aims of the conference will be treated in another article. C. M. S.