3751 - For Weal or Wo by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 21, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 20.

3751 — For Weal or Wo

By Editor

Is it not a fact that when the world shall have established the initiative and referendum system of government, the greatest opportunity of the ages for weal or wo will then be at the world's door for its action? Is not this point the pivot upon which the destiny of the governments of the earth will have been determined?

Presumably so. The initiative and referendum system might be used, doubtless will be used, in many cases for good. And yet there is within it all the potencies of evil; and that is especially true when it will be invoked, as it certainly will be, in religious questions. Many times, for a little while, for a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months, until the deed shall have been done, the passions of people may be kept by demagogs at white heat, and in those moments of passion they will do things that eternity may not be able to recall. In that case the demagog would use the initiative or the referendum to play on the passions of the people. When this Government was founded, the people thought it wise to place upon themselves some restraints, so that there would be time to look calmly over their actions. And yet merely political things may be reversed. As we before remarked, the great danger will lie in this,—that this appeal to the people will lead the people by these methods to endeavor to determine the religion of the State or the Government. Or legislators themselves, pestered as they are with demands for religious legislation, will say they will submit it to the people; and the people, not properly instructed regarding the rights of men, will yield to the religio-political demagogs, and will set themselves up as the criterion, or the judge, of religious matters. And so the world will be swung from bad to worse, until we have the universal union of Church and State, a government professing to be of God, yet against God. That is the very thing against which we are warned by the great threefold message of Rev. 14:6-14. Applied to civil rule, we have no argument to bring against it, except the danger of passing upon things too hastily; but applied to religious matters—and it is as true with the people as with the legislature—no man or mass of men has or have the right to come between the individual soul and his God. Religious matters, or matters of conscience, are not proper matters of legislation in any form. There is, however, this danger which we may mention, and that is the danger of legislating for the majority, when the proper object of all true governments is to protect the weak and the minority.