Religion and Our Country.
Past and Present Attitude.
In the Christian Advocate (New York) of November 7 is an article by George P. Mains, D.D., on “America the Strategic Basis for the Christianization of the World,” which, from what it contains, as well as acting as an index of many other utterances, deserves more than a passing notice. After stating, and most truly, that God’s hand has been shaping the centuries to definite ends, and that our own country has a great part to act in connection with God’s plans, Dr. Mains cites “great facts” to enforce his view, from which we quote several striking paragraphs:— 1. The American republic, more than any other great nation in Christendom, is permeated by the leaven, and is under the sway of a progressive, evangelical, and missionary type of church life. The church here stands free from all entangling alliances with the state. The experiment of a free church in a free state has not only proven a great success in the republic, but the incentive of missionary achievement moves American Christianity as no other. Throughout the present century the growth of the evangelical churches has been greatly in excess relatively of the growth of our population. The growth of Christian forces in our land, within this century, is without parallel in the history of the ages. The American Church has not only been phenomenally prosperous at home, but she leads the Christianity of the world in her foreign missionary enterprises. The first two sentences express a truth that is past. The church does not now stand free from entangling alliance with the state. She has left the Protestant traditions and is in politics everywhere; and her most aggressive methods, the methods that are telling most upon national character, are not evangelical but political. Before the church entered the political field, she was prosperous and powerful. But she now is confessedly without the power of God, as her appeal to the state demonstrates.2Everywhere is she appealing to the civil power for the promotion and enforcement of moral laws and church institutions, compelling the government, through threats, to yield to her demand even to the interpretation of God’s moral law. This was notably manifest in the nation in the summer of 1892, when Congress and the Executive committed the government to religious legislation, and hence to a union of church and state, on the Sunday closing of the Chicago World’s Fair. The same year the Supreme Court, poisoned by the same wine of fornication, in its “Christian nation” decision committed the judiciary branch of the Federal Government to the same principles. Behind all this were the so-called “evangelical” churches of America. Numerous attempts, together with some “successes” and persecutions in state and municipal governments, show what spirit is entering the churches all over the land. Said the Senate of the United States in 1829 over this very Sunday question: “Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object are, in the opinion of the committee, 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.” We have reached that time, and have entered upon the down grade. The same Senate document said in respect to a law for Sunday: “If the principle is once established that religion or religious observances shall be interwoven with our legislative acts, WE MUST PURSUE IT TO ITS ULTIMATUM. We shall, if consistent, provide for the erection of edifices for worship of the Creator and for the support of Christian ministers, if we believe such measures will promote the interest of Christianity. Let the national Legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge to the fairest portions of the Old World.” We see now the beginning of this. And for it all the church is responsible. She has left the very principles which gave her success in the early years of the republic, and has adopted those against which the Reformation was a protest. The advantage already secured to the American church as a single force in the Christian mission of world-wide conquest can not be overestimated. Her untrammeled life, her evangelical spirit, her missionary training and achievement, have set upon her brow the diadem of leadership. Only by bootless sacrifice of her great advantage through disloyalty to her best traditions can she fail to prove herself the most weal-working of Christian forces. And the first two sentences of this quotation were once true, but through “disloyalty to her best traditions,” by the “bootless sacrifice” of the advancing light of truth for the dry husks of a dead tradition, the church has failed and will eternally fail as a weal-worker—unless by hearty and humble repentance she break loose from the world and return to Christ and his truth for these days. 2. Our capacity for supporting vast populations, and the certainty that these populations will be with us, is another important element in this problem. But, notwithstanding our “capacity,” the fact remains that the struggle for life and livelihood is beginning in this country with an intensity equaling that of the Old World. It is not that there is not enough; it is that system that throws all the wealth, with its consequent unmerciful power, in the hands of the few. It was formerly in this land “THE PEOPLE;” it is now coming to be the “classes as against the masses,” as veritably as in the Old World. 3. The wealth of the republic is another factor which should not be excluded from any study of this strategic situation. We are literally to-day the richest nation in the world. Leaving out England, Germany, and France, the wealth reported by our latest census would permit us to buy all of Europe, all of South America, all of Australia, and South Africa, including all of their material possessions, and then we should have billions left for further purchases. Up to 1890 our national wealth had made an average increase of $5,000,000 per week for the previous twenty years. Dr. Josiah Strong, who has given these questions much expert study, estimates that one-fourth of the nation’s wealth is in the churches. He says that the church members of America are growing richer at the rate of $435,000,000 annually over and above living expenses and all benevolences. Surely, it is one of the most significant things in the world-embracing plan of his providence that God has caused so much Christian wealth to be lodged in this land of so matchless moral opportunity. True, America and the professed Christian church in America are both wealthy; but what boots all this enormous wealth when missions are languishing and mission debts increasing for lack of funds, while church members are piling up costly palaces for life and marble mausoleums for death, in the very shadow of which their brethren and sisters are dying for bread, which the merest pittance of their wealth would have furnished? God has said of the last apostate church, “How much hath she glorified herself and lived deliciously.” Is it not this we see in the wealthy church, rather than self-denying, primitive, and powerful Christianity? What matter the resplendent jewels, the rich robes, the untold wealth, if the life be lacking? What better is the “Christian” wealth hoarded or invested for selfish gain, or lavished on unnecessary luxury, than the wealth of the Jew or the infidel? Truly in the face of the great wealth possessed and the little yielded to Christ, it may well be said, “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” We do not include all in these strictures, not even all wealthy Christians; there are many in the aggregate who are living, earning, expending for God’s glory, but how few comparatively! 4. The freedom of our land from militarism is to be reckoned not among the least of those factors which mark our preëminent mission as a Christianizing nation. Standing military preparations rest as a well-nigh intolerable burden upon nearly every nation in Europe. The vast sums annually expended in Europe upon armies and armaments may here be diverted into channels of prosperity and expended in promotion of the arts of peace. From this cause alone our republic has a vast surplus of treasure and of energy which may be capitalized in the interest of extending the victories of the Prince of Peace. And all this was once true; but as the church has departed from Christ, adopted political instead of evangelical methods, the spirit of militarism has come in. We now have “Christian citizenship,” logically involving in its scheme “Christian” armies and “Christian” warfare with “carnal” weapons. Boys’ Brigades are becoming an approved factor in church and Sunday school work, and bayonets, as well as Bibles, are advocated as Gospel to the heathen, especially to those who do not want the Gospel. But the relation of the American church to the Christianizing of the world must not be looked upon simply as a question of possibilities; it must be studied and accepted as a supreme necessity. Why not leave the “necessity” to God? He will care for that. Let the church do its work—“holding forth the word of life,” “blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom shine ye as lights in the world.” Phil. 2: 16, 15, margin. This is the work of the church. God will care for the results. The great trouble is that the church has unwarrantably adopted the idea of a converted world, that she must do the work, that present methods will not accomplish it, and therefore follow “Christian citizenship,” church dictation in politics, union of church and state, out of which will inevitably result ruin to both church and state. But there is a deeper question than all this. We are under the necessity of Christianizing these foreigners lest they should heathenize us. No student of the situation now fails to understand that the American city is the strategic and most critical battle field for both Christianity and civilization. But these foreign elements gravitate, as by an instinctive selection, to the cities. In our 500 cities a vast majority of them all now dwell. They very largely monopolize the municipal offices, they are for the most part directors of the saloon system, and are largely behind those forces and influences which render the Christianization of the city the most difficult and desperate task of the American church. These peoples are as those who search, knife in hand, for the very ganglia of our Christian civilization. If we fail to save them, they will destroy us. For the most vital ends of our own civilization, and ultimately for the salvation of the entire world, it is incomparably more important that we secure the Christianization of these heathen at home, than by any possibility it could be to secure the conversion of a like number abroad. A failure now, with all the present advantages within our grasp, to save America would mean the deferring for dark and sad millenniums of Christ’s world triumph in redemption. This is in the same line as the previous quotation. We must do this; we must do that. It is perilously near the old cry, “Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth;” and the same result is following.3 We again repeat, It is the duty of the church of Jesus Christ to lift him up, to preach the word in humility, faith, and sincerity, following light and truth, albeit it draws away from creeds; and then leave the results with God. He will care for them. Dr. Mains thus concludes:— The subject now under consideration, all too large for a single newspaper article, is of measureless import. The sublime possibilities, the fearful perils, the imperial duties, to which it points, will receive from many only a treatment of indifference; others will receive its propositions in the spirit of incredulity or of fear. It is a subject, however, over which broods the divinest of prophecies. That there is much of darkness, alarming darkness, around the horizon need not be ignored. But this darkness does not deepen; it is not night. The light of the most triumphant Christian day that the world has ever seen is lifting itself above the storm centers, and the skies are rich with signs which foretoken a coming glory of the Lord far more resplendent than any which ever yet rested on land or sea. There are prophecies, but they do not flatter the future of this country. They indeed point to the triumph of the church, but it is through a baptism of trial, persecutions, suffering, and humility. They do indeed speak of a wealthy and outwardly prosperous church, but she is apostate and a harlot with the powers of earth. They do indeed predict the deeper darkness of sin’s night, and also the coming day resplendent with the eternal glory of Christ’s presence. But Christ’s triumph is not by political methods, not by human power, or wealth, or numbers. “The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Would to God that those who profess Christ’s name would turn from the Assyrias and Egypts to him and the Gospel of his power. This would reach the heathen hordes and win some. Political evangelical methods will make hypocrites or harden hearts. Let Christ work.