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The Outlook

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 15, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 27.

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The Outlook

By Editor

"I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will look forth to see what He will speak with me."

LOVING DEATH.

COULD any right-minded person see death as it is, he would not choose it; and yet it is possible, it is more, it is common, for men to choose death by choosing the very thing which produces death. Thus is the Scripture fulfilled: "He that sinneth against me [wisdom] wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate me love death." Prov. 8:36.
Even thus it is with every nation which starts on the perilous path of union of Church and State. Those who advocate the placing of religious dogmas in organic or statute law would not choose the ruin of the State or the Church, which they seek to control in the State, yet nevertheless by choosing to unite the two by law in that very thing they choose the ruin of both.
It is this thing which many church-members are seeking all over the world to-day. Our Australian sisters are in the fierce struggle. Not long ago the Federal Convention appointed to draw up a constitution for the basis of a confederation of the colonies, rejected the religious declaration or acknowledgment of God in the constitution, as proposed by religious bodies in Australia, and now these bodies are storming the various parliaments of the colonies to accomplish their desire. For instance, the Presbyterian Assembly of Victoria, which met May 6, voted "that in view of the coming general elections, ministers be instructed to press upon the people [not the Gospel, or the Word, but] the imperative duty of supporting only such candidates as will vote for Scripture instruction in the State schools, and such as promise to maintain the recognition of God in the Constitution of the proposed Commonwealth."—Melbourne Age, May 6.
Other religious bodies are taking the same course, and the battle is on. But there are those on the other side. The Australian Sentinel and the Bible Echo are making a strong battle for Gospel liberty, and other noble men stand with them. Those who are contending for this religious state are working upon the superstitions of the people by attributing the recent earthquake, and the drought now existing in Australia, to the refusal of the Federal Convention to acknowledge God in the constitution.
We need not argue as to what the results will be in Australia, if the parliaments yield to the demand of these earnest yet deceived religious people. It was written all over the so-called Christian countries in blood and fire and flame, during the Dark Ages between the sixth and eighteenth centuries. It looks good—the seed sowing—but its fruit is ruin to both Church and State thus united. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." May the conflict in Australia turn on the side of liberty and truth, not only for the sake of those who must ultimately meet persecution if it turn otherwise, but for the sake of those who will be forced to persecute the innocent, to maintain "national dignity."