TRUE WORDS | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 28, 1889

TRUE WORDS.

IN commenting upon the late address of the Pope to the Sacred College, the Christian Oracle (Chicago) says:—

"If there is anything clearly taught in the New Testament, it is the distinction between the State and the Church, the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of Christ. Nothing has so tended to weaken the power and influence of the cross of Christ as the assumptions of temporal power by those whose business it is to look after the things allotted to them."

These are true words, but their full force is probably not realized even by the men who penned them. Certain it is that thousands in our land to-day who suppose that they are opposed to all union of civil and ecclesiastical power are aiding and abetting the very movement which, if successful, will surely result in the establishment of a system modeled after the Papacy. Should the Blair Amendment, which provides that the principles of the Christian religion shall be taught in the public schools of our land, become a law, some tribunal must decide what constitutes the principles of the Christian religion; and what will that be but the establishment of an American Papacy?

It is true that "nothing has so tended to weaken the power and influence of the cross of Christ as the assumption of temporal power" by religious teachers; and yet, knowing this, the clergy of our own land are striving after civil power to-day as never before. The present almost universal demand on the part of the popular ministry for religious legislation will also greatly "tend to weaken the power and influence of the cross of Christ," but it will greatly strengthen the political influence of the churches and of the ministers, and that is why they are clamoring for it.