CHURCH AND STATE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 4, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 18.

CHURCH AND STATE.

THE separation of church and state in France goes on with so remarkable rapidity and emphasis that the abolishment of the concordat must soon follow, and all the convention between Rome and the republic be at an end. Premier Combes dares much in this persistent progress, and yet, tho at every move it has been prophesied that 'twould be his last, he still goes on. The expulsion of the "religious" from France left him secure in his parliamentary majority, nor have other and different issues resulted in shaking the government. Now the Eastertide has been characterized by one of the most revolutionary measures, in the stripping from all the law courts the crosses, crucifixes, paintings of saints, and all religious works and emblems, and choosing Good Friday for the day of executing this order. Paintings four centuries old, and a quarter of a century old, ceiling decorations of the latest date, and of long ago,—many hundreds of ivory, silver, and gold images of Christ and crucifixes,—have been equally doomed. But there is a difference between this iconoclasm and its predecessive movements in history. Not wild and rude mobs despoil the sanctuaries—the priests in their churches will not be disturbed, only the houses of the common law will be dissevered from the church of Rome; and the religious decorations will not be destroyed, but as works of art will take their place with hundreds of others of such nature in the grand Louvre gallery. The spoils of many an altar, of many a cloister, are there already, and this is only significant as a decisive step in the turning of the church out of the courts, where it has no business,—and as a notice served upon Rome that the people must order, and not the pope or the Roman machine.—Springfield Republican.