TOLERATION AND LIBERTY.
By Philip Schaff
THERE is a wide difference between religious toleration and religious liberty. The one is a concession, the other a right; the one is a matter of expediency, the other a principle; the one is a gift of man, the other a gift of God. Toleration implies more or less censure or disapproval. We tolerate or endure what we dislike, but cannot prevent. The most despotic Governments are tolerant toward subjects who are too numerous or too useful to be killed or exiled. Russia tolerates Romanists, Protestants, Jews, and Mohammedans; Turkey tolerates "Christian dogs," and likes them to prey upon each other; but woe to him in either country who apostatizes from the State religion, or attempts to induce any member of the same to apostasy. "Toleration is first sought and granted as a favor, then demanded and conceded as a right, and at last spurned as an insult." In a free country nobody wants to be tolerated for his religious opinions or sacred convictions. Religious liberty is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable right of every man. It is founded in the sacredness of conscience, which is the voice of God in man and above the reach and control of human authority. There is a law above all human laws. It is written, not on parchment and tables of stone, but on the heart of man by the finger of God. It is that law which commands with the categorical imperative, and which filled the philosopher Kant with ever-growing reverence and awe. "We must obey God more than man." He and he alone is the Author and Lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to interpose itself between them. "Every man stands or falls to his own lord." Liberty of conscience requires liberty of worship as its manifestation. To grant the former and to deny the latter is to imprison conscience and to promote hypocrisy and infidelity. Religion is in its nature voluntary, and ceases to be religion in proportion as it is forced. God wants free worshipers, and no others. Toleration is an intermediate state between religious persecution and religious liberty. Persecution results from the union of Church and State; toleration, from a relaxation of that union. Full religious liberty and legal equality require a peaceful separation of the spiritual and secular powers.—Philip Schaff, D. D., LL.D., in N. Y. Independent of April 18.