AN INIQUITOUS PRINCIPLE AND ITS FRUITAGE.
WHEN we admit the principle of religious legislation, we admit the rightfulness of the grounds upon which the Catholic orders of France refused to obey the law of associations. That law required that the various orders declare the full purpose of their organization. The Jesuits and others held that to obey the law would be to admit the existence of a power above the church. The claim that to obey the law of associations would be to recognize a power higher than the church, is a claim that can be made only by those who believe in the union of church and state—not a union even in which the two are equal, but one in which the state is completely under the domination of the church. Any law based on the independence of the state is, to those holding such belief, a law which makes the state a higher power than the church, a law which makes the state a usurper of the church's prerogatives. To them it is the right of the church to control in all the affairs of men, civil and religious. Civil liberty is to them rebellion; the separation of church and state, treason; and religious liberty a heresy not to be tolerated in any place or in any degree. Stern, unyielding, dictatorial, and illiberal as this is, it is all perfectly logical, if we admit that it is the business of the church to control in the civil affairs of men. And that is what we do admit, when we admit the principle of religious legislation. If it is proper to legislate on one religious question, it is equally proper to legislate on all religious questions. Legislation upon any religious question is legislation in the interests of some church or religion. The moment that any government legislates in favor of any religion or any church, that moment it becomes a director in the affairs of that religion or church, and so a union is formed in fact, if not in name. And the moment that such union is formed, church interests assume the controlling hand, the church becomes dominant and the state subordinate. It is true that those who are working for religious legislation do not admit that the logic of their demands is seen in the history of Jesuitism. It is a fact, nevertheless. At first they demand religious legislation only in a few matters; but, in yielding that, the state allows the principle, and opens the gate to any and every matter that the church may fancy is for the good of the people or for its own interests. Insofar as the state permits itself to legislate at the behest of the church, it is permitting itself to be controlled by the church, to be made a tool of the church in carrying out its purposes. In that is seen the injustice of the assertion that the state, and not the church, was responsible for the persecutions of the Dark Ages. The church controlled the state during that epoch of affliction, and those who suffered martyrdom suffered it because that fallen church adjudged them guilty of heresy. The condition was possible only because the state had admitted the principle of the right of religious legislation, and had allowed the church to carry it through to its logical result. Notwithstanding Christ's own declaration in the matter; notwithstanding all the persecutions which the world has been called to witness because of the failure of men to believe and follow Christ's teachings in this matter; and notwithstanding the further fact that the liberty and enlightenment and prosperity of this great country are due to its acknowledgment of the true principle of religious liberty,—we are drifting, rapidly drifting, back to those unchristian practices from which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were the expression of a righteous revolt. The epoch of decline in real religious liberty began when the Supreme Court threw open the door to religious legislation by declaring this a Christian nation. The nation has started on that road, at whose terminus stands the Jesuit and cruel religious persecution. It must come to that before this nation could come its subjects to worship. See Rev. 13:15. The Jesuit has been driven from France, but the principles that made the Jesuits possible are being forced upon our own fair land by the advocates of religious legislation. The Jesuits are the ripened fruit of that un-American principle; but that un-American principle has been already planted in this country, and will soon bear its own ripened fruit.