The Amendment by Chas. A. Russell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 29, 1873

The Amendment.

By Chas. A. Russell

‘I CLIP the following from The Independent of Feb. 27, 1873, in reference to the Constitutional Amendment. It speaks for itself:—

AN UNCHRISTIAN AMENDMENT.

Those persons who believe that it is lawful to use force in propagating Christianity are holding a public meeting in the Cooper Institute in this city as this paper is passing through the press. The call for the meeting is signed by a Justice of the Supreme Court, by several governors, ex-governors, bishops, doctors of divinity, and other notabilities, civil and ecclesiastical; many of whom are men of undoubted worth and respectability, and whose connection with this enterprise is the only impeachment of their good sense.

We say that these people propose to use force in propagating the Christian religion. That is a point which must not be lost sight of. Law is force. It rests upon force; it is maintained by force; whenever it is violated, force must be appealed to for its vindication. We always speak of enforcing law; and it is not a figure of speech, by any means. An amendment to the Constitution recognizing and proclaiming Christianity as the supreme law of the land would be maintained only by the suggestion or the use of carnal weapons. This is directly contrary to the letter and the spirit of Christianity. “My kingdom is not of this world” said the Master; and those who undertake by political methods to advance his kingdom are disobeying his express command.

No worse dishonor has ever been put upon the religion of Christ by its professed adherents than this proclamation, signed by a chief justice of our Supreme Court and a vast number of other dignitaries, that “every Christian feature” will surely be obliterated from existing institutions unless we “make the Constitution explicitly Christian.” The power of the pulpit and the Christian press; the influence of Sunday-schools and home missions; the moral and spiritual forces at our command: the promised aid of Him who said, “Lo! I am with you alway”—all these will be of no avail to preserve our land from heathenism, if we cannot get a few words of religious dogma into the text of our Constitution! We desire the public to understand that these men do not represent the Christian sentiment of this land. They are but an insignificant faction in the churches, and their numbers will not increase. Many of them are wholly sincere in their advocacy of this measure; but there is not a ghost of a chance that it will be adopted, and the agitation of it can result only in harm. It is not only an unchristian but an Antichristian project, and ought to be repudiated with indignation by every man who believes that “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.”

The Editor of the Christian Union, in a late issue, also speaks as follows:—

1. The method here proposed is antagonistic to the Christian method, which, in its purest forms and pre-eminently in the hands of Christ himself, has ever been to deal first with the inside, and work thence outward; to attach great value to the spirit, and very little to mechanical devices, to secure the good profession by securing first the good heart. But the process advocated by the National Association is exactly the reverse of this. Its plan is to secure an operation which is begun on the outside and not within: to get the mechanical device of a formal acknowledgment, in our national charter, of God, of Jesus Christ, and of the Bible, without any account being taken of the attitude of the national spirit; to obtain a profession by the lips, whatever may be the testimony of the heart and the life. Let it not be said that this question of method is unimportant. Nay, it goes to the very essence of the strife between Christianity and all corruptions of it. The first note of a fatal lapse from the spirit of Christ is to be discovered in the shifting of the field of religious operation from the interior to the surface. The worst opponents whom Christ encountered on earth were those Hebrew religionists whose external service was perfect; and who continually wore upon their foreheads slips of parchment on which was inscribed the devout “recognition of Almighty God.” The plan we are discussing is a proposal to wear a phylactery upon the forehead of the Constitution.

2. The method of the National Association is antagonistic to the spirit of American civil liberty. Every argument which has been or can be used in favor of the theological amendment of the Constitution, has been used a thousand times; just as logically, for the union of Church and State. Moreover, every one of these arguments would justify prosecution in the courts of the land for opinion’s sake. Suppose that you have carried your amendment. Instantly you have revolutionized the civil spirit of this Republic. From the moment of your victory, you make the holding of certain theological opinions, different from your own, an offense indictable in our courts and punishable in our prisons. When you have gained so much, what have you left of American liberty?

Both as Christians and as patriots, therefore, we solemnly protest against the measure now in agitation. It is a measure in every way evil. Its success would be fatal at once to religion and to freedom in America.

Thus speak two of the leading papers in America, and although they cherish the belief, the project will not succeed, as in the language of one of them they think the scheme as “impossible as it is objectionable,” what would be their consternation were their eyes open to the future of this government as delineated in the sure word of prophecy.

How thankful ought we to be as a people for the light which has shone upon us in advance. Who shall be ready for the contest?

CHAS. A. RUSSELL.

Plainwell, Mich.