Even now the leaven of evil is working in confederations and trusts.
Liberty
“ALL men are created equal,” reads the great American Declaration of Independence. It is not designed to convey the idea that all are of equal weight or size or strength or mental capacity. Its meaning is that all are created equal as regards the rights God has given, and entitled to the free exercise and enjoyment of those rights. “They are endowed by their Creator,” reads the great document, “with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In respect to these inalienable, or natural, rights, men are equal. Man can not be justly deprived of them, nor has he any right to barter them away. They are his from God, and all just government will protect him in their proper exercise. Upon this foundation principle the glories and blessings of this government were founded.
The truth of human equality is not new. Nor was it new a century and a third ago, tho then first for a long time definitely stated. It is a divine truth as old as Deity, and is always due when there are men among whom it should be operative. Yet how little has the world known concerning it! Man has lorded it over his fellows. The people have been divided between the nobility and serfs, the classes and masses, the masters and servants. The same domineering spirit has been manifest in all world religions. There have been lords many and gods many, with a constituted hierarchy graded all the way down to the “common people.” But this is not God’s plan. This tyrannical system has been manifest among God’s professed people, but it is not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Proclaim Liberty”
It was a strange voice to Jew and Gentile, that trumpet-toned proclamation sounded out in Judea three and one-half millenniums ago, every half century, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Lev. 25:10. It was not a declaration of independence on the part of the people; it was God’s proclamation in their behalf in an age when men were ground between the upper and nether millstones of civil tyranny and lordly hierarchies, and it was even thought right to enslave one’s own kindred. Yet the Lord had said: “For the Lord your God regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward; He . . . loveth the stranger.” Deut. 10:17, 18. “For there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons.” 2 Chron. 19:7. And the Idumean emir, speaking of those who served him, said, “Did not He that made me in the womb make him? and did not One fashion us?”
Freedom was unknown among the nations, either religiously or civilly. Religion was a state affair, subject to the civil power. God’s own people were not prepared for the fullest freedom, yet the laws among them regarding human rights and freedom were greatly superior to the best of the nations around them. God was giving them every measure of freedom possible and consistent with their condition. They knew but little of the liberty vouchsafed them through the centuries following, because of their bondage to sin and transgression. He who is in the bondage of sin makes often the worst tyrant if he has the power. But whether the people knew it or not, God gave them the principles of the greatest freedom.
After centuries of dry, dead formalism, the Lord Jesus Christ uttered again the same blessed principle in this form: “If any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” John 12:47.
Man was given the right to believe or disbelieve, to receive or reject. Surely Christ’s followers must grant the same liberty to all who reject their ministrations. He said that all judgment, all condemnation, was to be left to “the last day.” Verse 48. Have His followers the right to judge now?
God and Cæsar
More than this: Jesus Christ laid down a principle which draws a distinct line between the duty which we owe to civil government and the duty which we owe to God. When asked whether it was lawful or not to pay tribute to Cæsar, He said: “Show Me the tribute money. And they brought unto Him a penny [a Roman denarius]. And He said unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto Him, Cæsar’s. Then saith He unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”Matt. 22:16-22.
Here is divine guidance for all concerning all requirements. Whose image? what stamp has it? Whose is the superscription? Is it God’s?—Then it belongs to Him. Is it Cæsar’s?—Then it belongs to him.
Take, for instance, the question of the Sabbath, over which legislators have been troubled for years. Whose superscription has the Sabbath? It is not a hard question as revealed by the Sabbath law, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. . . . The seventh day is the Sabbath of Jehovah thy God.” See Ex. 20:8-11. The Sabbath bears the superscription of the great Jehovah, the Creator of heaven and earth; render it to Him, Cæsar has naught to do with it. And God gives to man the free choice of observing the day or not; the Judge of all leaves to the last day the sentence. Surely He has given no commission to His servants to condemn men or to execute sentence before that great day of assize shall come.
Of Our Blood
The reason of the equality of man lies in the fact that all are creatures of the same God, on the same general plan. “The rich and poor meet together,” says the wise man, “the Lord is the Maker of them all.” “Did not One fashion us?” says Job. But the New Testament puts it stronger still; “God that made the world . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” Acts 17:24-26. And the Son of God says, “One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” Matt. 23:8. Thus in express terms the Gospel of God affirms the absolute equality of man as regards his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This does not mean that government is to be despised, or authority of rulers ignored; not at all. In a just government every natural right of man is protected and conserved, not because the individual is stronger but because the rights of one are the rights of each and all; and the just government will protect the rights of the weakest; in fact, it is that purpose for which it is ordained.
The equality of man, proclaimed in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, came as a boon of life and hope. “The poor have the Gospel preached unto them,” was the joyful6cry. Priest-ridden and oppressed, thousands took heart. The spiritual slave of superstitious rites, galled by the iron chains of priestly tyranny, bowed by the heavy burden of human traditions, lifted his head, and with gladdened heart rejoiced that God recognized him and his rights. True, the supercilious wise men, the tyrannous priesthood, and the self-constituted masters in religion, spurned the glad message which broke their galling yoke and severed their chains, but the poor rejoiced and went free in the blessed freedom of the Gospel.
The freedom of the Gospel took hold upon the hearts and minds of men in civil government, notably as the times of the Reformation broke upon the world. In Switzerland, in Germany, but more especially in England, the centuries-old wails of tyranny broke into battle-cries for freedom. Spiritual tyranny was broken. A man became better than a sheep. Men could speak for freedom without waiting expectant for the yawning prison, the ready headsman, the creaking rack, or the burning pyre. The fruitage of the years of travail was the great Republic of the West; American freedom was the result of the liberty of Christ’s Gospel upon Anglo-Saxon hearts.
A Fact of Prophecy
The Christian religion of all religions embraced in its principles the absolute equality of man. The American Republic alone, among all governments, embraced in its principles the same—the equality of man in the exercise of inalienable rights; the free and individual choice of man respecting religion. This great fact is set forth in the symbolical prophecy of the Book as a beast having two horns like a lamb, the lamb being the symbol of Christ Jesus. See Rev. 13:11; 5:6. Blessed, beneficent, freedom-bestowing and life-giving have been those principles in exercise. Blessed it would be if they continued forever. But the same “sure word of prophecy” declares that the lamb-horned beast shall develop a dragon voice and follow in the pathway of its predecessors in the persecution of men for conscience’ sake. Even now the leaven of evil is working in confederations, societies, trusts, formed ostensibly for bettering the condition of men, but which will result in binding the consciences of men.
