GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS by T. B. Snow

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 6, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 18.

GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS.

By T. B. Snow

BY T. B. SNOW.

THERE are certain rights with which every man is endowed by his Creator. There are the "certain inalienable rights" referred to in the "Declaration of Independence." It is not in the power of government to give these rights, for God gave them—everyone has them. Neither can government take them away. It is our right to enjoy our God-given rights.

Government might prevent us from exercising our right, but it could not take away our right to enjoy our rights. These rights are called "Absolute Civil Rights," and include "personal security," "personal liberty," the right of "private property," and "religious rights."

The right of personal security is the right of protection from injury to our lives, body, health, or reputations. The right of personal liberty is the right to go where we please, and may be modified by law only as to the way we may take to go where we please. So to go where I please I must go by the public highway, and not through my neighbor's field. To go through my neighbor's field to his damage is uncivil, hence the civil law interposes and prescribes the way I may go and the way I must not go. The right to private property is the right to acquire property and enjoy it peaceably. Religious rights include the right to worship God in whatever way one thinks best, when he pleases or not at all, and to make known his religious belief.

These are the natural, inalienable, absolute rights of man. Liberty is the freedom to exercise these rights. Civil liberty is freedom to enjoy the rights secured by civil law. Civil rights may be forfeited. For instance, if one man steals from another, he has infringed the right of that man, for the man from whom the property was taken had the right to peaceably enjoy his possessions. The one who took the property, thus infringing the right of the other thereby, forfeited his right to so much of his property or time as the law demanded as a fine or detention in custody. He would also forfeit his right to "go where he pleased" for the time being.

The right to worship God cannot be forfeited. The man who had committed the theft would have the right to repent, to ask God for pardon, to worship him. These natural rights should not be enforced by law, for if enforced they cease to be rights, and become obligations. The right of "private property" includes the right to amass a fortune; but suppose one has no desire to do this, should the law compel him to do so?

The right of "personal liberty" includes the right to go where we please. I choose to go to Chicago, but it would be tyranny to compel me to go. Religious rights include the right to be a Methodist, or a Baptist, if I choose, but a law to compel me to be either, or prevent my being neither, would be unjust in the extreme.

Let us apply the above reasoning to our own time: In the State of Tennessee some Christian people, supposing that they had the right to worship God in their own way—"according to the dictates of their conscience"—refrained from all unnecessary labor on Saturday, the seventh day of the week, attended their meeting, and in thus obeying the injunction not to "forsake the assembling of themselves," offered God their worship. They then, supposing that the right to "go where they pleased," to earn thus daily bread, and that the right to acquire property and to peaceably enjoy it, were still theirs, proceeded to exercise these natural rights by going quietly about their work on Sunday. Now it must be seen at a glance by any candid person that if exercise of the natural right to worship God as a Methodist, or as a Baptist, or as a member of any other sect, or not to worship him at all, is allowable and just, it must also be allowable and just for one to worship him as an Adventist. But to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience was to obey him by keeping the Sabbath holy. The only way those Adventists knew which day to keep holy was what the Bible said about it. They read in Ex. 20: 8-11 that the "seventh day is the Sabbath," and proceeded to act in harmony with that command. The State of Tennessee utterly ignores the right to worship God as Adventists think is right.

It virtually prohibits any person becoming an Adventist, on pain of imprisonment or the chain gang. It ignores the right to acquire property except what may be acquired by five days' labor in each week, unless a person chooses to worship God contrary to his conscience, which would really be no worship at all. It makes crime of an act which is manifestly the inherent, inalienable right of every person. So far as the State is concerned, it is just as much the right of a person to go when he pleases as to go where he pleases. He may go Sunday or Monday as he chooses. All have the same right, and any law that takes away either of these rights savors of bigotry and oppression.

But it may be agreed that the State may, by prohibiting a certain act, make it a crime. A decree issued by Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 6: 7-9) made it a crime against the State for anyone to worship God in harmony with his conscience, for thirty days. One could not pray to God or ask a favor of any man on pain of being cast into a den of lions. The law to compel all the subjects of the king to worship the golden image (Dan. 3: 5, 6) was another instance of religious legislation. The crimes committed by Daniel and the three Hebrew children were crimes in precisely the same sense that working on Sunday is a crime. The government of Babylon legislated on religious matters, and every legislative act of that government on the question was an act of injustice, tyranny, and oppression. This kind of legislation at any time or in any place can be nothing less because it takes away or prevents the exercise of an "inalienable right." The above references to decrees enforced by the king plainly show that there are some things that a government has no business with.

The natural rights of one are the rights of all. One man has just as many rights as ten men. The rights of the minority are just as many, and just as sacred, as the rights of the majority; and unless "might makes right," the oppression of the minority is just as wicked as the oppression of the majority would be. The oppression or persecution of one man is the same in principle as the oppression of a thousand. From these facts it is clearly evident that there are some things with which majorities have no business.

Government can have no business with any man's religion, or how he worships God, when he worships, or whether he worships at all. They can have no business whether a man is a Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, or Adventist. It can be the business of no one whether I believe in God or not. If I do believe in him, in his creative and redemptive power, he has given me the Sabbath, by the keeping of which I show that belief. If I do not believe in him, no State law can compel me to believe. If it compels me to keep the Sabbath; it simply compels me to act as though I believed. But to act as though I believe a thing I do not believe is hypocritical; therefore an enforced worship, or the keeping of the Sabbath enforced by law, is simply hypocrisy to avoid the penalty of the law.

If those religious bigots who are persecuting those of another faith, want to know what rights every man has and ought to be allowed to exercise, let them imagine the persecuted ones in the majority, and trying to force them, against their honest religious convictions, to keep Saturday after they have conscientiously kept the day they believe to be the Sabbath. Let them imagine themselves fined, thrust into prison, or the chain gang, because they worked on Saturday. Let them ask themselves, "Could we stand that?" "Would we like that?" "Would we like to have our neighbor do so to us?" Where they have done this, let them remember to "do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." When they do this, when everyone does it, the rights of each one will be respected and protected by all.