RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 10, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 41.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

What Prominent Men Have Said.

NOW that a wave of sentiment is passing over the land favoring the enactment and enforcement of semi-religious laws, it is well to know what eminent men have said upon the subject.

George Washington, who was President when our national Constitution, that great bulwark of our liberties, was adopted, said of that instrument: "If I had the least idea of any difficulty resulting from the Constitution adopted by the convention of which I had the honor to be President when it was formed, so as to endanger the rights of any religious denomination, then I never should have attached my name to that instrument. If I had any idea that the general government was so administered that liberty of conscience was endangered, I pray you be assured that no man would be more willing than myself to revise and alter that part of it, so as to avoid all religious persecution. You can without doubt remember that I have often expressed my opinion that every man who conducts himself as a good citizen is accountable alone to God for his religious faith, and should be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his conscience."

Thomas Jefferson, the framer of the Constitution, said: "Almighty God hath created the mind free; all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion, who, being Lord of both body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercion on either, as was in His almighty power to do."

James Madison, a signer of the Constitution, said: "Religion is not in the purview of human government. Religion is essentially distinct from government and exempt from its cognizance. A connection between them is injurious to both."

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the State and the church forever separate."—U. S. Grant.

"The whole history of the Christian religion shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power than of being crushed by its opposition."—Macaulay.

"Many thus imagined that the doctrine of the Gospel requires the support of the civil power. They know not that it advances without this power, and is often trammeled and enfeebled by it."—D' Aubigne.

"Secular power has proved a satanic gift to the church, and ecclesiastical power has proved an engine of tyranny in the hands of the State."—Dr. Philip Schaff.

"Prescription has no part nor lot in the modern government of the world. The stake, the gibbet, and the rack, thumb-screws, swords, and pillory, have no place among the machinery of civilization. Nature is diversified; so are human faculties, beliefs, and practises. Essential freedom is the right to differ, and that right must be sacredly respected."—John Clark Ridpath.

"There are many who do not seem to be sensible that all violence in religion is irreligious, and that, whoever is wrong, the persecutor can not be right."—Thomas Clarke.

"Where legal enactment begins, moral suasion ends."—Christian Union.