p. 6 | A SACRED RIGHT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Jan 6, 1904

A SACRED RIGHT.

HUMANITY has been given rights which even divinity will not invade. Choice, choice, runs through the whole Gospel plan. God urges men with all the earnest pleadings of a loving Father, but only to choose. “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve,” said the prophet of God; and God Himself declares: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” Again: “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?”

God knows that to turn to Him means everlasting life, and that to turn away from Him means eternal death; yet there is no compulsion, no force. God wants men to serve Him because they prefer to do so—not because they fear to refuse.

Christ who came into the world as the chief herald of the freedom of conscience, declares of His mission: “If any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge Him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” And yet by Him and for Him the world was made.

Because God would not invade the sacred right of choice, the worship which He receives is the worship of the heart; of the soul, instead of the performance of dead, heartless, outward ceremonies; and because He would not invade that primal right, the only rule in the universe, when sin has been removed, will be the rule of love; the worship performed will be the worship which love inspires. The campaign of force, which crushed out consciences in its torture chambers, will then have been swept out of every portion of God’s dominion. Worship performed with a conscience free from the dictates of men is the only worship that is an honor to God. True heart-worship is the only worship that is not idolatry. In heartless forms and ceremonies we worship the custom or the law that requires them. When we yield to a law that is in opposition to the law of God, and obey that law in preference to His, we are worshiping the makers of that law rather than the Maker of the heavens and the earth. In such things we are professing to do what we do not do—we are hypocrites.

Notwithstanding this fact, custom has continually invaded that right of choice in religious matters. Bodies of religious men, forgetting the example of their Creator, have frequently invaded that right. A religious despotism in the earth has always claimed the right to invade that right; and men who have fled from the power of that despotism have taken with them, and exercised its wicked claim to the right of invading conscience, and have carried that invasion so far even as to commit murder; and all this in spite of all the Creator has done and taught, to show His followers that liberty of conscience is a sacred inheritance, and the right of choice a sacred right.

Paganism never has recognized that right, tho it has frequently tolerated the choice; but when paganism invaded the church and pervaded it, it brought with it the spirit of intolerance and persecution toward everything it did not control. The refusal to recognize that right worked itself out in the establishment of the Inquisition. It is what must follow when full sway is given to any government that claims the right to invade the right of choice in religious things. That institution and the claims which made it possible are arrayed against every precept and every practise of Christ. Many and cruel have been the dark deeds of that institution because of its refusal to recognize the sacredness of the right of choice. Claiming to do Christ service, the exponents of that system have inflicted upon their fellow-men the very sufferings that Christ spent the time of His earthly ministry in relieving. Christ never forced upon any person the worship of Himself or the recognition of His messiahship. And what Christ would not do men can not do and do right.

The Christian will seek to follow the example which Christ set. He respected the right of choice; He invited, but did not compel; He warned, but did not persecute. He has set us an example, that we “should walk even as He walked.”

The immediate future will give us many occasions for remembering these examples of Christ. Religious legislation is being insistently demanded, and deep plans are being laid for accomplishing it; but religious legislation means the invasion of the sacred right of choice. It is as wrong to yield to the demands of religious legislation in opposition to the commands of God as it is to enact the legislation that makes the demands. Sin is sin, whether we do it willingly, or at the demand of another. God wants men who will be loyal to Him no matter what the pressure from a disloyal source. The rights which He has given us we can not surrender to His implacable enemy. We must choose our master, and we must abide by the consequences of our choice.