A Ray of Light from the Past.
THE theologians who insist that our Government rests upon an implied assumption or recognition of the divine authority of the Christian religion, and who seek to make that recognition palpable by an amendment to the Constitution, will find a hard nut to crack in the following provision of the treaty of Tripoli, made under the administration of Washington in 1796, when the fundamental principles of the Government and the ideas and purposes of its founders were yet fresh in the minds of the people:— “As the Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Mussulmen (Mussulmans); and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohammedan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” To this declaration, which bears the stamp of the Senate’s approval, is appended the name of George Washington, who, though himself a Christian, held that his religious faith entitled him to no privileges as a citizen that were not common to all others, of whatever religious belief. The declaration, moreover, for aught that appears, received the assent of the whole American people, as embodying an essential and fundamental principle of the Government. It would seem to have been well understood at that day that, while the Government was Christian in spirit, in that it recognized and proposed to vindicate and maintain the equal rights of men as set forth in the New Testament, it was at the same time not Christian in any theological or dogmatical sense, nor as conferring any special rights or privileges upon Christians as such. The more the subject is agitated, the clearer will this historic fact become, and the more ready will all good citizens be to acquiesce in a principle which cannot be discarded without leading us directly and inevitably back to a union of Church and State. The Government of the United States, while it neither makes nor exacts any religious profession, is yet Christian in spirit in proportion as it seeks to “establish justice,” to “promote the general welfare,” and to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;” and it is needless that it should be Christian in any other sense. Nay, to make it Christian in a dogmatic and exclusive sense would be to open the door to assumptions and practices incompatible with the growth of humanity and the equal rights of the people, and injurious, if not fatal, to the church itself. Let those who imagine that a nation can be made Christian by incorporating the letter of a Christian creed into its Constitution, remember the lessons of history. The worst despotisms that have ever cursed the world were administered in the name, and by the assumed authority, of God. Even the rebels of our Southern States, when they “seceded” from the Union, incorporated into their new Constitution, framed for the sustenance and perpetuation of slavery, the most solemn professions of reverence for God and allegiance to his laws. They ostentatiously challenged the attention of the world on this very ground, boasting that their Constitution was more religious than that framed by Washington and Franklin and Jefferson; but no solemnity of profession, no ardor of boasting, could avail to hide the atheism implied in the profane and audacious attempt to keep a race forever in bondage. Let us not, in the very hour of our rejoicing over the downfall of the civil authority of the church in the Roman States, countenance the attempt to remove the barriers erected by our fathers against a union of Church and State in this Republic.— Tribune.