It Ought Not So to Be by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 5, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 10.

It Ought Not So to Be.

By Editor

—Mr. Patterson, a Colorado senator, one of the Philippine Committee, in a speech in the Senate February 20, took issue with some of the statements of Governor Taft. “He asserted, says the Despatch, that if the 6,000,000 Christians in the Philippines were Protestant Christians, the cruelties practised on them by the American authorities would have to stop, as no member of Congress would be able to withstand the wrath of the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians of this country.” But this ought not so to be. We have no sympathy with Catholic doctrine or belief, but Roman Catholics are entitled to the same rights and privileges as other men, whatever may be the religious belief of those men, but no more. Every man is entitled to even and exact justice, not because he is a Catholic man or Methodist man or Baptist man, or Seventh-day Adventist man, but simply because he is a man. And every religious man ought to demand that the same liberty and justice be granted his most antagonistic co-religionists that he asks for himself. If we believe in true liberty, it will surely be for the other man.