THE TWO GREAT PROTESTS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 15, 1902

THE TWO GREAT PROTESTS.

What their Repudiation Means.

SINCE the inauguration of the present national policy, and because of the unconstitutional positions which have been taken in various national moves, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence have become the subjects of unsparing attacks. The object of these attacks is to prove those national movements right by proving the principles of those historic documents wrong.

One of those principles most frequently attacked is that "all men are created equal." That statement has been declared ambiguous, unreasonable, absurd, ridiculous; and yet he who will read and study that document will see that the expression quoted is but a mirror of the spirit of the whole document, that the document itself explains the expression; that there is no ambiguity in it except what is read into it by its enemies; that it is perfectly reasonable and perfectly true.

The purpose of those who subscribed to that declaration of principle was to show the world that here was to be a nation in which every man was to be the equal of every other man before the law, as in truth he was the equal in the court of heaven. It was not to teach that all men were born with the same talents, the same powers of intellect, the same amount of inherited means, or the same number of pounds avoirdupois; and yet all these absurd interpretations have been applied to that expression that "all men are created equal." The fact that such guesses could be made by thinking men shows how little the spirit of that honored document is understood to-day. The document itself interprets the meaning of that phrase. Upon the truth of the principle enunciated in that phrase the framers of that document demanded their rights as men before the bar of the world. The law of the land or the court of justice which grants to one man favors or privileges which it withholds from another, out of regard for the positions which the two men occupy, is doing an injustice to one, no matter what the position of the other.

The Declaration declares that all men shall be on an equal footing before the law; that as all have equal rights, those rights shall be recognized. The colonists felt that they were being deprived of their rights; that they were regarded as a subject nation, a vassal nation, paying tribute. That was repugnant to their sense of the equal rights of men, and so they founded a nation upon that principle which is also a principle of the Gospel, the equality of men as men. None but they who wish to lord it over their neighbors will be found objecting to the principle involved.

Certain men or associations have demanded that this nation be established upon the principles of the Christian religion. They forget that it was established in very truth upon those principles. Those principles were freedom of conscience and the equality of mankind. But they who are working for that end are demanding that the government shall rule in the realm of conscience as well as in the realm of civil affairs, and they declare that the doctrine of the equality of men is a delusion and an absurdity. In yielding to that demand the government must admit the falsity of the principles upon which it was originally founded, and put in their place principles which are false in reality; it must admit and exercise its right to supervise and control the religion of its subjects; it must look upon men not as equal before the law, but as great or humble according to wealth or birth or social position, and then render verdict in accordance with position.

But the establishment of this nation was a powerful protest against such a course as that. The protestants refused to submit to a course of procedure which put them and their posterity on a lower level than that of the men who called them subjects, and which denied to them what it freely granted to their neighbors and relatives across the sea. Later they refused to be bound by the principle that the government has a right to control the conscience of the people, to supervise religion. Therefore the Declaration of Independence; and therefore, following that, the Constitution of the nation, founded upon the protest. Here was Protestantism in civil things, as the Reformation was Protestantism in religious things.

Now, the protest of the Reformation was made much earlier than the protest of the Revolution; therefore it would be natural, if a retrograde movement should take place along the line of both protests,

that the Protestantism of the Reformation would be the first to suffer. And so has it proved to be. Protestantism does not now stand for what it did in the early days. The gulf of separation is fast narrowing, and professed Protestantism is now more ready to apologize for those acts and principles against which the great protest was made, than it is to condemn them.

Just so has it come to be with the protest of the Revolution. Refusing longer to stand by the principles of the Declaration and of the Constitution, and repudiating the protests which those instruments uttered, the nation is fast drifting back to the espousal of the very principles against which its founders protested. The repudiation of those honored principles was the first step, and in the espousal of the opposite principles, the backward movement was complete.

That is what has occurred in the nation; but that backward movement was accomplished in individuals before it was possible in the nation. The completion of this movement in the nation, shows the extent to which it has succeeded in the individuals composing the nation. The professed Protestant who repudiates the protest against the principles of the Papacy, has, in his own case, bridged the chasm and gone over. Just so he who repudiates the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution, has accepted and gone over to the principles against which they are a standing protest. The principles of that protest were right principles because they are in harmony with the principles of justice, of humanity—of Christianity. The oft-repeated demand that this government be established upon the principles of the Christian religion, is a misleading one, because, so far as any such thing could be done, this nation was already so established; and one of those principles was the utter separation of Church and State. Further than that, their demand carries with it the intention that the government shall control or supervise the religion of the land; and that is entirely out of harmony with the teachings of the Author of Christianity.

The work of the great double protest is being assailed from every side, and the great retrograde movement is now in full swing. It is essential that every soul in the land should understand just what is involved in these backward tendencies of the present time. There is danger in them, danger to the nation and danger to each individual in the nation. The lethargy of death is stealing over the world. The sophistry of the deceiver is a sweet lullaby to many an imperiled soul. Let us hear and heed, and establish ourselves upon the Everlasting Rock, standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, that we be not swept to ruin on the tide that threatens now to overwhelm the world. The retrograde movement on both these lines is a movement away from truth and back to doubt and darkness, error and oppression. It is not of God, and does not minister to salvation. It builds up men at the expense of man; it makes the froward great, and crushes the humble; it puts itself in the place of God, and sits in judgment on the consciences of men; it exalts error, and puts its heel on the neck of truth; it builds up self, and lords it over the heritage of God. All that and more is in the repudiation of the two great protests. S.