INDEPENDENCE DAY by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Jul 1, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 25.

INDEPENDENCE DAY.

By Editor

IN a little from this the booming of cannon, the crack, and splutter, and fizz, and flame of Chinese fireworks, and the display of bunting, and spread-eagle, high-colored oratory, will announce the arrival of "Independence day," the "glorious Fourth." Against all these ebullitions from a purely human, patriotic, and political standpoint we have naught to say. But we wish to call the attention of our thoughtful readers to the vitally important fact that while all this outward pomp and show are observed, the foundation principles of this government, the principles which gave it greatness and worth, are lost sight of.

Two of the prominent foundation stones in the origin of the republic were the equality of men, and the absolute separation of Church and State, or religion and the State. Their voice was a reëcho of Christ's teaching through the great Reformation. They were new stars of hope in the political sky of the nation. They were magnets which drew the liberty-loving from the oppression of Church-and-State governments to "the land of the free." When the Civil War ended, the last blot was wiped from the escutcheon of national liberty.

But since the war two evils have rapidly risen, and are now assuming gigantic proportions, the one the power of wealth, which is fast enslaving men and forming the "masses" and the "classes," and the other a determined movement to unite Church and State under the misleading names of "National Reform," "Municipal Reform," and "Christian Citizenship." Of the two evils the greater is the last named. The professedly religious forces of the country, which ought to be the conserving forces in the light and influence of a godly life of loving service, in the uplifting of humanity by a pure Gospel, in being indeed the salt of the earth, have thrown themselves into the field of politics, have rejected the Gospel of love for the gospel of force, and are turning the boasted liberty of this nation into a legal fiction. The so-called "guarantees" of our constitutions read the same; the flag floats as proudly as ever in the breezes of heaven, but the liberty which these are supposed to guarantee and represent is gone, so perverted by the construction of courts and officials religiously prejudiced as to exist only in name.

The union of the Church and State will bring destruction to both. So it was in Rome. So it was in Judea. Form alone is not fact. Those who were most punctilious in observing the Passover crucified Him in whose honor the Passover was observed. It is possible for the very symbol of freedom to become the black beacon of hopeless tyranny.