Is a State Religion Contemplated?
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
IN the thirteenth chapter of Revelation two beasts are brought to view, representing two earthly powers. The first beast, having seven heads and ten horns, the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion, can be no other than the papal power, and so commentators have generally regarded it. It combines the characteristics of all the beasts of Dan. 7, showing that its dominion has extended over all the territory occupied by the powers represented by those beasts, that is, nearly all of the Old World. It speaks great things and blasphemies; it blasphemes God and his name; it makes war with the saints and overcomes them, and continues forty-two prophetic months, or twelve hundred and sixty years, when it goes into captivity. All these specifications are met in the papal power, and in no other. Its going into captivity was in A. D. 1798, when Pope Pius VI. was taken prisoner to France, and the papacy for two years had no head. This was indeed a deadly wound, which, however, in accordance with the prophecy, was healed by the enthronement of another pope, and the restoration of the papacy to at least the semblance of its former power. Just at this time "another beast" was "coming up out of the earth." Since all the Old World was already occupied, it is evident that we must look to the New World for the rise of this other power. In 1798, when the papacy went into captivity, the United States of America was just "coming up," and there was no other power then establishing itself. The first president had, at that time, barely completed his term of service, and the eyes of the world were being turned to this new nation, which was so rapidly and yet unostentatiously arising to take its place among the foremost nations of the earth. Its peaceable, lamb-like appearance has always been preserved, and even the dragon voice (i. e., the persecuting disposition) has been heard to a slight degree. If space allowed, we might go on to show many more reasons why this two-horned beast must represent the United States. This much we can say, that if this beast does not symbolize the United States, then there is one symbol of prophecy for which no place can be found. This power is to make an image to the first beast. That beast, the papacy, was simply an ecclesiastico-civil power,—a union of church and State. The State existed to serve the ends of the church, and to enforce its dogmas. The church itself never put heretics to death; it simply decided who were heretics, and then handed them over to the civil power, over which the church had supreme control, to be punished. An image to that beast must be something like it—another union of church and State. All that is required to effect such a union is for the civil power to enforce, under penalty, some practice which the religious leaders declare ought to be observed. This is just what must be done in the United States, if we are correct in our application of the prophecy. And this is what Seventh-day Adventists have for thirty years declared would be done in this country. It is well known that for about twenty years a party has been in existence, known as the "National Reform Party," whose avowed object is to secure such an amendment to the Constitution of the United States as will "place all Christian laws, institutions, and usages on an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of the land." To show that this movement contemplates "sufficiently practical ends," the leaders make no secret of the fact that the observance of Sunday is one of the "Christian institutions" which they desire to see enforced by the laws of the State, declaring that when the desired amendment shall be obtained, no one who violates the Sunday shall be eligible to any office. They openly declare, also, that the State should exist only as the servant of the church, to carry out its decrees. When, therefore, a national Sunday law shall have become an actual fact, the image to the papal beast will be fairly set up in the United States. The New York Independent has been very outspoken against such a movement as this. Although advocating the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath, it has depreciated any attempt to make such observance compulsory. We will quote from its pages to show that we are not alone in regarding legal enactments for the observance of Sunday as a union of church and State. The reader will please bear in mind that in these quotations the word "Sabbath" is used for Sunday. In its issue of Dec. 14, 1882, in an article concerning "Sunday Laws," the Independent said:— "There is no doubt that much of the earlier Sabbath legislation of this country, the relics of which still remain to some extent in the law, and to a larger extent in the minds of some of the earnest advocates for the sanctity of the Sabbath, was based upon the principle of a State religion, and that Christianity, with its Sabbath, was that religion. This theory, however, has been thoroughly exploded by judicial decisions in later and wiser times; and it cannot stand a moment without surrendering the fundamental principles upon which the American governments are organized. The State has nothing to do with the Christian Sabbath as a religious day, except to protect from improper disturbance those who, on religious grounds, keep it as holy time. It has no right to pass to the breadth of a hair beyond this point, any more than it has to enact a doctrine of God or the Trinity, which the people shall believe. The moment the State exceeds protection, and undertakes the work of direction, it becomes a trespasser upon the rights of conscience, and assumes a function for which it is not adapted, and for which it has no warrant. The State has no right to compel any man to treat the first day of the week as 'holy time.' Whether he shall do so or not is for him to determine, and not for the State to determine for him." To all of this we give our assent; we believe it is in accordance with sound reason and strict justice. In its next issue, that of Dec. 21, 1882, the Independent says further:— "The State has nothing to do with Sunday as a purely religious day, or with the reasons which demand and enforce its observance as such a day. Its sole function is to regulate it as a rest day, and that, too, for reasons that apply equally to all the people, and not particularly to Christians, who keep it as 'holy time.' Christians have an unquestionable right so to keep the day, and by moral means persuade others to keep it in the same way, and to be fully protected in so doing; but they have no right to demand that the State shall compel others to adopt either their creed or their practice in regard to the religious sanctity of the Sabbath. It should be enough for them if the State, for its own reasons, and not theirs as religionists, makes Sunday a rest day within the limits of a reasonable propriety. When they ask the State to do more, they virtually ask it to establish a State religion." The Independent seems to be a little confused in this quotation, in that it says the function of the State is to regulate Sunday as a rest day. But whatever it may mean by that statement, it is clear enough when it says that Christians have no right to ask the State to compel others to adopt either their creed or their practice in respect to the religious sanctity of the Sunday. So long as the State does not seek to compel us to adopt the practice of the majority of professed Christians in regard to Sunday, we care not how much it legislates concerning it. To say that the State has no right to compel any one to adopt their practice in regard to Sunday, is equivalent to saying that it shall not compel any one to rest on that day. In this it is correct, as it is also in the statement that such compulsion would be the establishment of a State religion. Again, in its issue of Dec. 28, 1882, in an editorial on "The Sabbath and Railroads," it says:—"We would resist to the very last any attempt to put the civil statute behind the Sabbath [Sunday] as a religious institution, since this cannot be done without involving in principle the whole doctrine of religion and State. It is, however, not less a duty586of the church, and of Christians in their individual capacity, to do what the State cannot properly do, and, therefore, should not do; and that is to enforce the Sabbath as a sacredly religious day, by moral means, by example, and by precept." With this we have no fault to find. We do not question the right of Christians, as individuals, to enforce the observance of Sunday by example and by precept, nor of anybody to keep the Sunday of their own free will. What we do protest against is a State religion,—the compelling of individuals to rest on Sunday against their will. But since 1882 the Independent has undergone a radical change, and now approves what it once condemned. The issue of Aug. 28, 1884, contains an editorial on "The Working Man's Interest in the Day of Rest," in which it says that all legislation which allows any work to be performed on Sunday is a failure, and a move to deprive the laborer of his right. This wrong to the workingman, it says, can be relieved by nothing but the religious observance of the day. From this article we quote a few paragraphs:— "The net result [i. e., of laws which permit any person to labor on Sunday] is to put more terror into toil, and to add so much more of burden to the existence of a class of people whose lot is already hard enough, and who, without the powerful arm of the law and of social custom to protect them, are unable to vindicate themselves." "There is no secular nor semi-secular theory of the day that can meet this abuse. If it is handed over to amusement, money-making enterprise will only lay itself out on that day in another way, and drive its wheels and push its methods so much the harder as the time is shorter." "The only possible protection lies in supporting by law and by social observance the religious character of the day. In the name of religion a halt may be called, and the weary toil ended. Religion is rest and peace. It is still and recuperative to the body and mind. It keeps people in their homes, and engages them in wholesome thought, and it speaks in the name of an authority which is sacred enough to rise superior to the pressing claims and urgency of business." It then states that the right of the laborer to his rest holds good for domestics, for coachmen and stable-boys, in the railway and the steamer, as well as in mills and manufactories, and says further:—"It is a right on whose recognition the religious observance of Sunday depends. If Christian people will not consent to some sacrifice in matters like these, they cannot hope to retain the great boon to themselves and to the world around them, of a religious day. If they consider that price too high, they cannot have their jewel of a well-kept Sabbath." The article closes with these words: "A religious Sunday gives the only hope a weary world can have of a regular day of rest." We do not give these quotations in order to take the Independent to task for its change of base; that is its own affair, not ours. But we give them to show how public sentiment is shaping. When the strongest opponent of the "National Reform" movement, the most influential popular religious journal in the country, favors that movement, it indicates no little progress toward the end sought by that party. That that end is in reality a union of church and State, no thinking person, least of all the Independent, can deny. The agents of the so-called Reform Party are not idle, and the prejudice which they have to overcome is only nominal. The friends of the Sunday feel that something must be done. Since there is no divine command for Sunday observance, nothing by which they can appeal to the conscience of the people, Sunday desecration is increasing very rapidly. In their desperation they see no remedy but to adopt a plan which, as the Independent says, is the surrender of the fundamental principle upon which the American Government is based. The student of prophecy and of the signs of the times can see clearly that the time is near at hand when the people of the earth will respond with alacrity to the demand "that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound by the sword, and did live." When that time comes, may we be found among those who are heeding the command from Heaven, to "worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters."
E. J. W.