Cool Irony by John H. Waggoner

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 21, 1876

Cool Irony.

By John H. Waggoner

HON. FELIX R. BRUNOT, President of an Association which does not hesitate to declare its intention to ignore the conscientious convictions and religious rights of the Jews and those Christians who keep the fourth commandment, as Jehovah declared it, without human amendment, was chairman of the meeting to celebrate our independence on July 4, 1876, in Pittsburgh, Pa. On taking the chair he addressed the assembly on the religious principles which have made us to prosper as a nation, using the following words:—

“Ask the colonies, and old Roger Williams replies that ‘every man is permitted to worship God according to his own conscience.’”

This appears so much like a joke that the reader can scarce refrain from smiling; but to Roger Williams it was more bitter than it yet seems to us, when he fled from the persecutions of his Puritan neighbors, because he claimed a conscience of his own. To this day religious convictions are trifled with and trammelled in the churches, and the rights of conscience will never be considered sacred where “the fear of God is taught by the precepts of men.”

We might change the form of Mr. Brunot’s appeal, thus:—“Ask old Roger Williams, and he replies, this youthful, lamb-like people have already learned to speak as a dragon.”

And the descendants and panegyrists of the Puritans sound the praise of those who suffered for conscience’ sake, and magnify the worth of religious freedom, while they put forth their utmost energies to build up a system which cannot fail to trample on the rights of the minority and crush out purity of worship by secularizing Christianity. Had we lived in the days of our fathers, said the Jews, we would not have persecuted the prophets; and all the while they were plotting to take the life of the Son of God. Ambitious, selfish human nature has not changed.

But this piece of history can be repeated only once more. One more persecution of the just by a worldly popular church and the Lord will forever redeem his waiting people.

J. H. WAGGONER.