"NATIONAL REFORM" IS CHURCH AND STATE.
By W. N. G.
THE movement called National Reform, and advocated in its various cumulative phases by all the principal so-called evangelical churches and religious or semi-religious reform associations in which such churches are interested, was inaugurated by a single church for the special benefit of that church. The first step ever taken in this direction, and the first publication ever issued in advocacy of the principles involved, were by prominent representatives of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The Reformed Presbyterian, organ of that denomination, in the month of January, 1870, published an article on the subject, from which we take the following statements:— 1. "This important truth of the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the nations, was attained by our reforming and martyred fathers in Scotland, and has been transmitted down to us sealed with their blood, and is the precious and peculiar inheritance of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and distinguishes her from all the other evangelical churches in this and other lands. No other church professes to maintain this great principle in its practical applications." 2. "The distinctive principles of the Reformed Presbyterian Church are the principles, and the only principles, of National Reform." 3. "The proposed amendment of the Federal Constitution is an acknowledgment by the government that God is the author and source of all authority and power in civil government; that the Lord Jesus Christ is the ruler of nations, and that his revealed will contained in the Bible is the supreme law of nations. Now the association for National Reform proposes to have these distinctive principles of the Reformed Presbyterian Church adopted into the Constitution of the United States, and annulling any part of that Constitution that may be inconsistent with these principles." "The adoption of this amendment into the Constitution would be the government's doing, the highest honor to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the greatest benefit to our church." 4. "The principles of National Reform are our principles, and its work is our work. National Reform is simply the practical application of the principles of the Reformed Presbyterian Church for the reformation of the nation." In further proof of our position, we cite as authority the Reformed Presbyterian Synod. In 1885 that body said that this National Reform "is the tap-root of the Reformed Presbyterian Church." Again in 1886, in the report on National Reform, it said, "It is ours to hold up the ideals of God which have originated the National Reform cause." These utterances are sufficient to show that the success of the movement as originally designed would have resulted in a Reformed Presbyterian government for the nation. The growth of the National Reform cause, and its direct espousal by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, its virtual indorsement by the National League for the Protection of American Institutions, and its practical advocacy by the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, etc., has carried it beyond the control of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. It is no longer a distinctive feature of that church; as long as it was such its power for evil was insignificant. But the people should bear in mind that none of these later advocates of the principles involved have in any way sought to change the original purpose, namely, the control of the government by the church. The idea that the National Reform movement is a distinctively Reformed Presbyterian doctrine has been overwhelmed by the flood of greater denominations enlisting to sustain the cause; but the Church-and-State principle remains the same. It matters not whether the government be conformed to Reformed Presbyterian lines, or to lines consonant with the principles of any other religious denomination, or to religious principles upon which they all may conjointly agree, the result is practically the same—it is Church and State union. And the "Christian Citizenship" agitation, in the progress of which the Christian Endeavor Society has become the vanguard, is but the interdenominational force of the National Reform scheme. W. N. G.