ANOTHER CAUSE by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 8, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 40.

ANOTHER CAUSE.

By Editor

IN our General Articles department will be found an article with the heading, "Chapters in the History of Our Country," by Prof. Chas. Morris. These will be of great interest in showing the development of this country, and the waxing and waning of the principles of liberty. In this note we wish to call attention to another cause, in evidence at least in several of the colonies at that time, which led to the separation from the mother country. That cause was the desire for religious liberty, absolute freedom from state control of religion. This was notably manifest in the colony of Virginia, of which the Church of England was the established religion. The House of Burgesses of that colony adopted June 12, 1776, a Declaration of Rights composed of sixteen sections, the principles of every one of which found place in the later Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. A part of the sixteenth section read thus:—

"That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience."

This is a remarkable and splendid statement in a few words of what religion is, and of true religious liberty. The spirit of freedom grasped not alone civil liberty, but religious liberty, or freedom in the exercise or non-exercise of religion. Such sentiments then extended to religious bodies like the Presbytery of Hanover and the Baptists and Quakers of Virginia. Many of the inhabitants of the colonies or their ancestors had known religious tyranny in the Old World, and had seen the same monster spring into growth here. There was a hope that union and independence might break the monster's power.

In all this the devout and God-fearing student of history may see the overruling hand of a beneficent Providence. God was, from the discordant elements, framing a government where religion, both false and true, should have a free field and no favors, so that every soul might be free to choose the good or refuse the evil. Let the reader study history in this light. Let him read these "Chapters in the History of Our Country" in the light of God's overruling Providence.