FAR back in the days of Moses, when a people had been delivered from involuntary servitude, we find the first recorded use of the word "Liberty." It occurs in this expression, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
It is more than a coincidence that these identical words should have been cast on the bell that was to ring out to the American people their proclamation of liberty from the rule of a country beyond the sea. While that bell had been tolling from its tower, circumstances had been educating a people in the love of liberty. With eyes opened by a divine hand, they had been enabled to see the violation of principles of truth and justice in the liberties which were denied them. Because they had been taxed without representation, because they had been looked upon as subjects rather than as equals, they made this declaration to the world: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," etc. It was a principle new to the nations, but in itself as old as Creation. It simply meant that the circumstance of birth could not justly give to any man a preeminence in rights over another. It was a bold statement to make; but it was true, and they made it. It was a broad foundation on which to build; but it was a solid one, and they built upon it. They built wiser than their day, and they built wiser, I fear, than the majority of their posterity in this day are able to appreciate. Without that foundation, the structure they reared could not have stood a hundred years; and a departure from that foundation will see that structure ruined in much less than a hundred years from the date of the departure.
Because they had been deprived of many natural rights, they declared that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Because they had been ruled by one who claimed the inherited right to rule without any regard to the authority of those he ruled, and had suffered under that rule, they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the outspoken principle that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;" and because those principles were not recognized nor those rights allowed, they declared that "These United States are, and, of right, ought to be, free and independent states." From those plain declarations of principle, and the firm stand which they took upon them, there grew up what was then an anomaly among the nations, an anomaly which persisted by virtue of the principles upon which it was founded.
Now in these later years the remembrance of those principles is fading away, as fades the ink in which they were written. The outlines of those immortal words are dimming to obscurity to-day, and he must look with keen eye who would see those principles in the deeds and words of many of those who are formulating public sentiment to-day.
Civil Freedom Was but Half the Battle.
When that freedom had been achieved; when the nation had been set upon its course, its founders came to realize that the freedom of the body amounted to but little without the freedom of the soul, the mind, the conscience. So they began to set their house in order upon this matter. Even before the Declaration of Independence was put into words, the Colonial House of Burgesses of Virginia, on June 12, 1776, adopted a Declaration of Rights, the following being a portion of one of its sections:
That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.
When the Declaration of Independence had been adopted and published, we find that the Presbytery of Hanover, in Virginia, together with the Baptists and Quakers, sent up a memorial to the General Assembly of Virginia containing these words:
In this enlightened age, and in a land where all of every denomination are united in the most strenuous efforts to be free, we hope and expect that our representatives will cheerfully concur in removing every species of religious as well as civil bondage. Certain it is that every argument for civil liberty gains additional strength when applied to liberty in the concerns of religion; and there is no argument in favor of establishing the Christian religion but may be pleaded with equal propriety for establishing the tenets of Mohammed by those who believe the Alcoran; or, if this be not true, it is at least impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith without erecting a claim to infallibility, which would lead us back to the Church of Rome.
Bunker Hill Monument.
They had seen the injustice of religion established by law—in other words, a union of church and state. They had been whipped, and burned, and banished under such a régime. So they declared as they did, and then went further and said: "We beg leave farther to represent that religious establishments are highly injurious to the temporal interests of any community. . . . Neither can it be made to appear that the Gospel needs any such civil aid."
Naturally the established church was strongly opposed to the cutting off of its financial state aid, its exceptional prerogatives, and advantages over the other sects, just as the British Government was opposed to the severance of its civil and political jurisdiction over the colonies themselves; and so the battle for religious freedom was being waged in the colonies themselves at the very same time that the battle for civil and political freedom was being waged by the colonies against the mother country. Thomas Jefferson declared that struggle for religious freedom "the severest contest in which he was ever engaged." The struggle for religious freedom prevailed, and the established church was disestablished on January 1, 1777.
Later Attempts to Subvert Liberty.
Later attempts were made to commit the country to the virtual reuniting of church and state through the passage of laws for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion." It was another titanic struggle, with Jefferson and Madison championing the cause of religious freedom. They declared that "the enforced support of the Christian religion dishonors Christianity;" that "the religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate;" that "it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties;" that "the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects;" that "the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion, according to the dictates of conscience is held by the same tenure as all our other rights."
The attempt to commit the country at that time to a union of religion and the state was enthusiastically beaten, as well it deserved to be. And so there went into the chief document of the state of Virginia these identical words of Jefferson’s original draft, with the expressed hope "that they would endure forever;" "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; opinion in matters of religion shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect civil capacities. The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of man."
So well had the people of these days become imbued with the justice of the principles therein expressed, that every one of the original thirteen states incorporated the principle, if not the exact words, of the above quotation into their constitutions. As other states were added to the union, this principle so vital to true religious liberty was incorporated into their constitutions also, until now forty state constitutions are so declaring themselves.
In the Fundamental Law.
The national Constitution itself was not allowed to close without its own declaration upon this point; and so the very last clause of the last article but one declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." But it was not thought that even this sufficiently guarded the religious freedom of the people. So the very first amendment to the Constitution declares that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an6establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
With the Declaration of Independence speaking as it does; with the Constitution of the nation speaking as it does; with the Constitutions of forty of these states speaking as they do; and with the history before us of the struggle that was waged by the founders of the nation for religious liberty; it would certainly seem that the people of the United States had spoken plainly enough, and that the lesson had been learned well enough, so that never again in this land could religious persecution raise its head to hurt or punish any for "worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences."
State Governments.
But in spite of it all, the principles of church-and-state union whose logical sequence is, and always has been, religious persecution, has been retained, upheld, and promoted in nearly all the states—so far have their legislators lost sight of the principle upon which their own religious freedom rests, the principle upon which the nation was established, the principle "on which the Gospel was first propagated, and the reformation from popery carried on"!
As the battle for civil freedom and the battle for religious freedom were carried on at the same time, by the same people, so the forgetting of the political principles and the religious principles of the nation are going on at the same time, among the same people. As the fathers of the nation declared it "impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith without erecting a claim to infallibility, which would lead us back to the church of Rome," and as the magistrate is now permitted to do that very thing in every prosecution of a Christian for the violation of a Sunday law, it is evident that that claim has been to all intents and purposes erected, and that the nation is now being led just where they said it would be.
Time to Take Alarm.
If it was "proper" in those distant days "to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties," it must be eminently "proper to take alarm" at the multitudinous experiments that are made to-day along that line. It certainly is very proper so to do when men in these days have been condemned repeatedly to the "chain-gang," to prisons, and to the payment of burdensome fines for worshiping God according to the dictates of conscience. Out of the persecutions suffered by the Baptists and Quakers and others because of their mode of worship grew the guarantees of religious liberty that were incorporated into our national and state constitutions. But now we have the persecutions as they had them then, and that in spite of the supposed guarantees of religious freedom. America, who should have stood as a light and pattern to the world, who fought the battles of mankind and won, America, the asylum for the oppressed, has forgotten the most vital principle for which she stood, the freedom of the consciences of men. The great hand of an oppressive church is now grasping the seats of government in state and nation, as the founders of this nation warned us it would do when the people departed from the principles of religious liberty.
