LATTER-DAY PATRIOTISM by W. N. G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1898

LATTER-DAY PATRIOTISM.

By W. N. G.

The enemy of souls is not averse to good things, provided he can pervert them to the advancement of his unholy cause. He is quite willing to acknowledge and even to urge the authority of the Scriptures, if he can but create a wrong impression concerning their teaching. This was illustrated in his temptation of Christ in the wilderness. To-day one of his favorite channels of operation is patriotism, and he is leading many zealous people to believe that patriotism means the enforced observance of religious rites, in order to save the nation. First there came the flag-on-the-schoolhouse fad. Of course no lover of his country would find any fault with this of itself; but there follows the flag salutes, in many cases connected with more or less nonsensical sentiment, which is palmed off on the children as patriotism. Aside from the false education involved, there comes in the worse element of compulsion. When teachers imbibe false notions of patriotism, the error will surely be imparted to the children. As a specimen of the growing tendency of this so-called patriotic innovation, we hear of a school in Pennsylvania whose teacher inculcates patriotism not only by the flag salute, but with the addition of a little song said to be introduced by Christian Endeavorers, in which occur the following lines:—

“We are temperance children, Growing for the cause; We will vote down alcohol, And enforce the Sunday laws.”

Children brought up with this idea of patriotism instilled into their minds as part of their daily education, will be prepared to conduct a government on the most intolerant lines. And no one knows this better than the archenemy of civil and religious liberty. Of course all this is the outgrowth of the popular Christian-citizenship theory of salvation through politics. W. N. G.