THE "PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS."
By G.
AMONG the "unalienable rights" for which the Declaration of Independence stands are the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." As the theory and the language of the Declaration aims to guarantee a protection in these rights to "all men," it logically follows that every individual citizen, and every individual accepting the guaranty even temporarily, is under obligation to acknowledge and respect the right of every other individual. This government was originally a compact of individuals for this very purpose. In no other way can the rights of all be made secure in a selfish, and, consequently, sinful, world. For this reason, purpose, object, "the powers that be [civil governments] are ordained of God." Rom. 13:1. The obligation being mutual between individuals, the claim to security in what would ordinarily be deemed personal right is logically forfeited, or limited, when the individual fails to regard the rights of others. For instance, when a person's actions become a menace to the lives and liberty of others (not when his "persuasion, religious or political," is repugnant to them), it is the province and the duty of the government to restrain him, or to restrict his liberty of action (not of sentiment or conscience) to the extent that is necessary to the security of others in the exercise of their rights. "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil." This scriptural reference to "rulers" contemplates rulers imbued with a spirit of justice and a desire for the good of all. Perhaps in no sense was there a greater necessity for reformation in governmental function than in the protection of men in their right to the "pursuit of happiness." And no element ever was so inclined to interfere with the free enjoyment of this right as the votaries of religion. Furthermore, this interference never has been carried to such an extreme as by those who have professed adherence to the Christian religion. This, too, in face of the fundamental Christian principle, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." It has been in the matter of the pursuit of happiness that the advocates of civil-law religion have ever deemed it their prerogative, through the machinery of government, to dictate bounds of action on the part of their fellowmen. Religious zealots—whether Roman Catholic, professed Protestant, Greek Church, Mohammedan, or the generally-recognized heathen of whatever name—have always deemed it essential to good government to restrain the non-religionist in his idea of pursuing happiness, and to compel him to at least formally acknowledge the essential importance of their religious dogmas. So extensively grounded had this idea become that a government without an establishment of religion in its legal policy was indeed "a new order of things;" and, in the Old World, was looked upon as near of kin to anarchy. But the Declaration of Independence paved the way for the Constitution of the United States, with its direct provision that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" and that forbids the government to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." And on this Fourth of July it might be well for the people to think soberly for a moment, and note the strong tendency to drift away from these fundamental principles.