A Misconception and Perversion
By Glenn K. Emmert
A FUNDAMENTAL misconception of society seems to be held by many leading religious men of the times. And this misconception manifests itself in practically all the present religio-political movements. Government is primarily a contrivance to restrain evil men from their lawlessness, and to make those civil who will not be moral. In their blind, selfish desire to live by a rule that works wrong and injury to their fellows, they must be restrained. To restrain these predatory ones, and thus protect the jeopardized rights of the rest, is the truest office of government. Even the effort of a government to preserve its own continuance, that "first law of self-preservation," has no pre-eminence over this; it becomes a means to an end, the protection of individual rights. This may be a more or less commonplace ideal of government and of government's relation to society, but it has gained a good report wherever and whenever it has been in vogue. It works good and not evil. It secures equal consideration to the lowliest as well as to the highest member of society. As much of freedom, order, and justice as are attainable in our imperfect world are gained by this system. But this leaves the State very simple in its purpose. It is not a soaring, ambitious system of control that would embrace every aspiration and duty known to mankind. It does not make the State a personal entity having moral responsibility; which it is not, as to the first, and can not have, as to the second. Now there are impulses and purposes to whiten the aspect of society, to clear its blackened name, through influences that are planned to be exerted in the political field of society, through the institutions and departments of government. A new expression of this is the impulse, scarcely yet a movement, to bring the system of high schools into "vitalizing touch with Christianity," to make them a force to tell for Christian righteousness, since they are part of the political system. And back of this all is the idea that the State, which is the political expression of society, should be the fostering parent, of moral reform. A consequence quick to follow is the plan for which numerous institutions, clubs, etc., are working,—for the State to direct the recreations of its young men so as to save them. That the religious forces, addressing themselves to the morality of man; and the civil power, coercing to obedience; and all of society in its broadest sense, are parts of one whole system, is a misconception of things as they are or as they should be. But this misconception of the relations of Church and State is advanced as the basis of coming reform. The character of all the institutions of society is to be molded anew. But the fatal point is that these leaders in social reform seek to take over in the Christian name the various institutions and social activities of this world. They seek to vitalize the community with religion, and thus to save the people to "the best that is in them," in the same large and easy way that they were lost. But over all this splendid false dream God has written "Babylon." From Abraham to Lot, from Moses to the last converted soul that walks in newness of life, God has bidden them to separate from the life of the community wherein it was bad, and the old associations. The institutions of society were not brought over and reformed. All the clubs and pool-rooms, all the institutions of government, were relegated to the junk heap so far as the saving of any one was concerned. It is still the same. The Lord works effectively through the yielded mind of the sin-stricken soul. But the human way of salvation is ever to reverse God's order, and that is ultimately to lose the soul, and incidentally to subvert the society, their agent of reform.