IT WILL WORK OUT TYRANNY.
The United Christian party, a religio-political affair, sends out an address from Pittsburg, Pa., entitled “The Twentieth Century for Christ.” It appeals for the Bible, the church, and the Sabbath. Here is a paragraph:— “The Bible, the church, and the Sabbath day are three cardinal things about which every patriotic citizen ought to have convictions of a positive and aggressive character. The Bible is the only perfect rule of duty. The church is the teacher, and the Sabbath day the time for the teaching to be done. They together form a chain of three golden links, the parting of any one of which lets fall all the cherished institutions which it supports. Our danger is more from indifference and neglect of religion than from open infidelity.” And all these are important, and the last sentence is emphatically true. It is true that every person ought to have positive convictions concerning these three things, but as a person, not as a citizen. God has left every individual free to choose or refuse, and the patriotic citizen has no business whatsoever to meddle with these things; other than as matters of faith and conviction. He may persuade as a man; he may not seek to coerce as a citizen. They belong not to the domain of earthly government. Mr. A may be a Methodist, and believe the Methodist Church to be right, but he has no moral, spiritual, temporal, or civil right to say to Mr. B, a Catholic, that he, Mr. B, shall recognize the Methodist Church. The reverse is also true. The same principle holds good as regards the Sabbath. Politics has by right naught to do with any of them. All attempts to legislate upon such religion and religious institutions, to say thru law how they shall be recognized or observed, have ever proven a curse to religion, a source of great weakness to the State, and oftentimes hardship and oppression to those who may exercise their God-given right of dissent. There is one thing about the address characteristic of the day. It perverts the language of liberty to the use of that which, if developed, will result in oppression. It is largely a parody on Patrick Henry’s famous speech.