Before the President-elect of the United States enters upon the execution of his office, he shall, according to Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States, take the following oath or affirmation:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Now it was not the purpose of the fathers of this republic to throw the strength of the government to the upholding of institutions, documents, or things, as sacred fetishes. Human rights were to be guarded, and the Constitution preserved, protected, and defended because it conserved and guarded those rights. And the only way to preserve, protect, and defend that great instrument is to preserve, protect, and conserve the rights of the people—the individual—for which the Constitution was ordained. For, as stated in the preamble of the Constitution, it was ordained among other good things to “establish justice,” and to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
Among the blessings of liberty which the fathers of the republic sought, and for which they bled, were the blessings of religious liberty, the freedom to worship God according to the dictates of conscience, untrammeled and unhindered by medieval exactions or church-and-state limitations.
Madison expressed it in the following words in 1785 in his memorial to the General Assembly of Virginia:
“Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties, we hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution.”
“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”
“All men are to be considered as entering into society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and, therefore, retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all, are they to be considered as retaining an ‘equal title to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.’ Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we can not deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.”
And Thomas Jefferson in the same year said:
“Almighty God hath created the mind free; all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercion on either, as was in His almighty power to do.”—Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1785.
Therefore the following principle was embodied in the Constitution:
“No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
But that was not sufficient. The principle must be more strongly stated, the rights of man more clearly expressed, more strongly guarded. From ten sovereign states came proposed additions, which were embodied in Article I of Amendments to the Constitution:
“Congress shall make NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, or PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the people for a redress of grievances.”
At a still later date, after the fearful Civil War had ravaged the land, it was feared that the citizen might suffer from state restrictions upon his liberty, and therefore in Article XIV of Amendments this prohibition was placed:
“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Of that Constitution, the great historian George Bancroft truly said:
“The Constitution establishes nothing that INTERFERES with EQUALITY or INDIVIDUALITY. It knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, of favored classes, or LEGALIZED RELIGION, or the political power of property. It leaves the individual alongside the individual. RELIGION was become avowedly the ATTRIBUTE OF MAN and not of a corporation. VINDICATING THE RIGHT OF INDIVIDUALITY EVEN IN RELIGION, and in RELIGION ABOVE ALL, the new nation dared to set the example of ACCEPTING in its RELATIONS TO GOD THE PRINCIPLE FIRST DIVINELY ORDAINED IN JUDEA.” It left the management of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American Constitution, in harmony with the people of the several states, WITHHELD from the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THE POWER to invade the home of reason, the CITADEL OF CONSCIENCE, the SANCTUARY OF THE SOUL; and not from indifference, but that the infinite Spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power.”—History of the Constitution, Book V, chapter 1.
Truly the nation had the right to engrave upon the reverse side of its great seal, “Novo Ordo Seclorum”—a new order of things, or ages. The nation had turned its back upon the medieval principles, laws, methods, tyrannies, and had emblazoned upon its escutcheon, Liberty for each and all, civil and religious. And in no land has religion ever prospered as under that only true civil policy.
Yet religious zealots,—with less faith in God than in the state, have endeavored to turn back the tide of liberty to the Dark Ages. They have kept alive the old medieval and colonial laws which have disgraced the statute-books of our states. They have combined in these latter days in various forms and ways, the latest that of church federation, to embody a religious sabbath in the statute law. Efforts of this kind have been kept before Congress for years. Pressure9from religious bodies has been brought to bear upon representatives and senators. Let the pressure become strong enough, as it may under Mr. Taft’s administration, and the sabbath bills will be passed by Congress. Will Mr. Taft sign such bills, or will he weigh them all in the light of the principles of the Constitution and the rights of the individual American? From such legislation in some of the states men have languished in prison and been deprived of property without due process of law. Like legislation will become national. How will our President stand?
In a report adopted by the United States Senate in 1873 is the following:
“EXTENSIVE RELIGIOUS COMBINATIONS TO EFFECT A POLITICAL OBJECT ARE . . . always dangerous. This first effort of the kind calls for THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A PRINCIPLE which, in the opinion of the committee, would lay the foundation for DANGEROUS INNOVATIONS upon the spirit of the Constitution, and upon the RELIGIOUS RIGHTS OF THE CITIZENS. IF ADMITTED, it may be justly apprehended that THE FUTURE MEASURES OF THE GOVERNMENT will be strongly MARKED, if not EVENTUALLY CONTROLLED, by the same influence. ALL RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM commences by COMBINATION AND INFLUENCE; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the CIVIL POWER SOON BENDS UNDER IT; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.”
Will President Taft—lawyer, jurist, American, man—stand for the principles of the Constitution, for the conservation of the rights of the individual, both civil and religious?—We believe that he will. We accept his solemn oath for what it declares to the full, till overt acts shall demonstrate to the contrary. And we shall pray for his health and prosperity.