INDEPENDENCE DAY—ITS MEANING.
About the time this paper reaches its readers the blow of bugle and trumpet, the whistle of fife and roll of drum, the crack and fizz and display of fireworks, and the roar of cannon, will be heard throughout the land. “Old Glory” will wave from liberty pole and masthead, from public edifice and private residence. Spread-eagle oratory and original poems will recount heroic deeds of the past, and predict great blessing and glory for the future. The Fourth of July will be everywhere in evidence. Yet how few, comparatively, realize what the day once meant and what it should still stand for. To the great majority it means “a day off,” “a good time,” a picnic, a holiday. They know nothing of the days in which it was born, or the principles which gave it birth. The old Revolutionary days of strenuous struggle for liberty, revived during the Civil War, are waning in interest, and under the era of “good times” and “prosperity” interest in them grows less and less. The days are now strenuous for pleasure and profit. But to the fathers of the Republic the Fourth of July meant something. It stood for essential principle of sound, rational, just, and free government. As expressed on the reverse side of the great seal of the United States, “Novus ordo seclorum;” it meant a “new order of things.” The old order was to perish, the new order was to change the face of the world. There are two great principles dear to mankind; they always have been dear, even when seen in the dim or dreary dreaming of slavery. One of those principles is the equality of man as regards rights of opportunity, and the other is religious liberty. True, these things had been taught by one religion—the Christian. “One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren,” was the teaching of its Founder. “God . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,” was the teaching of the great apostle to all nations. This—and there is much more—for the first principle. The second—religious liberty—is thus voiced by the Master: “If any man hear My sayings, and keep them not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” And that apostle to the Gentiles, not a whit behind any other, declared that the faith of men was not to be regulated even by apostolic mandate. “Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy; for in faith ye stand.” “Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men.” No nation of the world in centuries knew these principles of life and liberty. No religion of the world, save the Christian religion in its purity, knew them. But when Columbia sprang to life, these principles had been trodden down by the apostasy for more than a millennium and a half. Light had broken into the darkness through the Reformation. Germany and Great Britain had taken mighty strides toward the light, but the foregoing fundamental principles were still claimed by caste and class in the church and the union of church and state in religion. But the far-seeing, liberty-loving fathers of the republic struck for them both,—“a church without pope, a state without a king,” free men civilly and religiously. The first of these principles is embodied in the Declaration of Independence:— We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, etc. The second of these principles—implied in the Declaration of Independence—is thus expressed in the First Amendment 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. These noble principles—found alone in the Christian religion of all religions, expressed in the fundamental charter and organic law of this government of all governments—have been guiding lights to the darker nations of the world. The influence of the “new order of things” overturned religious intolerance and class privileges in nations still bound by medievalism. The progress toward the fruition of these principles in this nation struck high noon at the close of the Civil War. Since that time the influence of greed and gold upon our government and upon religion has mightily checked the current of liberty and freedom, and in principle turned it backward to the stagnant, poison pools of the Dark Ages. These two Christian principles in civil government, and their repudiation in principle, and at last practise, are set forth in Rev. 13:11–17. (See the Sabbath-school lesson on page 14.) The beast with two horns like a lamb—symbol of Christ—finally speaks like a dragon—symbol of tyranny, oppression, persecution. Wealth and militarism are essentially imperialistic. They breed classes and inequality. They stimulate, if unwisely used, discontent, hatred, injustice, rebellion. They exalt the thing more than the man. They paralyze the spiritual power and the moral courage of the Gospel minister and hold back or make void the message, which would alarm and save or restrain. With a Protestantism departing from its first and vital foundation principles, with a democracy repudiating the very reasons for its existence, what can await but the destruction of both? The many evidences of mob law, the misrule and corruption in church and municipality and state, the increase of crime and violence, the frequent manifestation of mob law in old, legally-organized communities, the war between capital and labor, such as is now going on in Colorado, the constant steps in religious legislation, point clearly the fact, whatever be the cause, that the people are rapidly coming to that condition where they are not fit to be free, where strong, rigid, centralized government is necessary. There are voices in the wilderness crying for fundamental principles, but they are not in touch with the masses. Imperialism or revolution, or, truer, imperialism and revolution seems the order which the logic of events is programming. There is a score of political panaceas, but all will alike prove futile to heal the disease of the body-politic. This country’s only hope, the world’s only hope, is in Jesus Christ, as a personal, divine Saviour, bringing to the individual life and righteousness and liberty, quickening a sleeping church, and moulding in Christ’s own way a sinful world. In the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone, in the consummation of that Gospel—the second coming of Christ—lies the hope of mankind. There is none other; but that is all-sufficient.