GREAT LITTLE THINGS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 17.

GREAT LITTLE THINGS.

MANY of the great crises of the centuries turned on very trivial acts and incidents, the actors in which did not even dream of the momentous import of the act at the time. A single act of a hasty temper may involve nations in war; a wise word may heal a breach between great powers; but neither the impatient actor nor the wise speaker may know the effect of his doings. Each spoke out the principle within him.

The decrees of rulers and the decisions of judges, though designed to meet particular cases at the time given, have often been fraught with world-wide import, unrealized by those who uttered them. This is especially true of those decrees and decisions which result in evil. Little did the early fathers in the church realize that their "small" departure from the word of truth, their compromises with paganism, would result in the great apostasy, but they did nevertheless. Little did the Jews think that their enmity toward Christ and his teaching would result in the death of the Son of God. But it did, although they did not believe it, nor would they admit it after it had passed by. If they had known the evil which they were doing, they would not have done it. 1 Cor. 2:8. But they acted on a wrong principle, and that principle was not only evil in its result, but it blinded those who acted upon it. They did not intend to do wrong, but the carrying out of a wrong principle will ever result in wrong, whatever the intention of the one or ones who set it in motion.

Even the ambitious Constantine and the ambitious bishops of his time would have paused in horror if they could have seen the result of the development of one clause in the edict of Milan. It rent the church, formed a union with the State, made the Catholic Church, and caused the centuries of after bloodshed.

We are told that Justice Brewer in his now famous, or infamous, decision of February 29, 1892, did not mean to decide this to be a Christian nation in the sense of a judicial decision, "by force of statute or Constitution," and all this may be true.

It was not what Constantine and Licinius meant in the edict of Milan that developed the Roman Catholic Church and the union of Church and State, but it was what they said and the effect of what they said. It is not what Justice Brewer and the United States Supreme Court meant by their decision, but what they said and the effect of what they said. Justice Brewer may say what he pleases at alumni dinners or at Fourth of July celebrations, but when he declares, and the United States Supreme Court declares, in a solemn judicial decision that "this is a Christian nation," and that the commission of Ferdinand and Isabella to Columbus, the charter of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Walter Raleigh, the compact of the Puritans, the various colonial declarations, together with the Constitution of the United States, and decisions of various courts, "affirm and reaffirm" all this—it is quite a different thing. It does not matter what they meant, but what they said, and what is involved in what they said.

"Backward look across the ages and the beacon moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers from whose feet earth's chaff must fly, Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by."

And doubtless Mr. Justice Brewer did not mean all that has and will grow out of the decision which he delivered; but the principle was evil, and as the oak is in the acorn, so the evil of the Dark Ages was and is in that decision. It is not the intention of men which must guide the Christian in these evil days, it is principle, the principles of justice, truth, and liberty found alone in Christ Jesus and his gospel.