An Important Distinction
By L. A. S.
In a recent number of the Union Signal, Rev. W. F. Crafts considers the question, “What business has church or state with ethics?” and takes the position that “moral questions are the supreme questions in politics.” He believes that one of the chief concerns of the civil government should be to regulate public morality; and he affirms that this view is supported by decisions of the United States supreme court. “You can’t make men moral by law,” is “the devil’s proverb,” he says. “We can make morals by law,” he affirms, “precisely as we make health by law. . . . As removing cesspools lessens disease, removing saloons lessens vice and crime.” “Sanitary laws have increased the average life of man, and moral sanitation by law decreases the average immorality wherever it is undertaken in earnest.” The trouble with Mr. Crafts’s argument is that it ignores the distinction between immorality and criminality. It is right to prohibit the saloon by law, not because it fosters immorality, that is, promotes disregard of the law of God, but because it is the breeder of crime. Human rights are invaded by it, human lives and property endangered by it. Most forms of vice likewise should be prohibited because they are inimical to the rights of the people. Human legislation takes account of man’s relation to his fellow beings. It has no business in the sphere of man’s relation to God. But Mr. Crafts wants legislation prohibiting immorality. He says: “The supreme court by its decisions has left us no room to doubt that it means by ‘morals’ what Christian citizens mean, especially the suppression of intemperance, gambling, Sabbath-breaking, and impurity.” Here a purely immoral act—Sabbath-breaking—is mixed with acts which are both immoral and criminal. Mr. Crafts wants Sabbath-breaking prohibited by law, as being an immoral act. Sabbath-breaking (speaking of the true Sabbath, not the one Mr. Crafts has in mind) is immoral, but this fact constitutes no ground for making Sabbath observance a subject of legislation. If it were criminal, there would be a reason for prohibiting it, but the mere matter of the immorality of an act is something which legislatures have no business to consider. If they have, then they should consider and prohibit all immoral actions. And this would cover every violation of the moral law. Idolatry is immoral, no less than Sabbath-breaking; hence we should have laws prohibiting idolatry. It was idolatry that turned the world away from God, and led men into the darkness and degradation of heathenism. Paul tells us in his epistle to the Romans. Idolatry is a terrible thing, and leads to the worst results, considered from a moral standpoint. How can Congress undertake to preserve the public morals, and yet omit to prohibit idolatry? Are Mr. Crafts and those who share his views—the W. C. T. U. and other religious organizations—ready to move for the prohibition of all immorality by law? If not, why do they single out the matter of Sabbath observance, and pass over other things no less truly belonging to the domain of morality? While these individuals are undoubtedly doing much good in their work for the suppression of vice and crime, they will, if they succeed in committing the government to the principle of legislation on purely moral questions, work harm which will more than offset all the good they have accomplished. We recognize in their work much that is high and noble, but there is a dead fly in the ointment. With all that is good, there is also the germ of the very worst evil; there is a leaven of iniquity that will surely, if not cast out, leaven the whole lump. We trust that many who are now zealous for moral reform by law will yet see and repudiate the unchristian union of religion and politics which seems ready to be consummated in this country.