CHURCH and STATE by W. A. Colcord

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 23, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 46.

CHURCH and STATE

By W. A. Colcord

By W. A. COLCORD

CREED POWER AND STATE AID.

IT is natural for men not only to believe, but to desire that others shall believe as they believe. While, to defend truth, it may be necessary at times for men to stand alone, it is unnatural for any man to desire to do so. Belief and desire for uniformity of belief naturally go together. What a man believes he naturally desires to communicate to others; and what he tells to others he naturally wishes them to accept as true.

But what a man believes, and by what means he seeks to induce others to accept it, are important considerations just here.

The word creed comes from the Latin word credo, which means, “I believe.” But what do I believe? What should I believe? And what is the true basis of what I should believe?

Truth is what I should believe, to be sure. But what is truth? Christ has answered this question. “Sanctify them through Thy truth,” He prays; and then He adds, “Thy Word is truth.” John 17:17. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Rom. 10:17.

But instead of taking the Word of God as their creed, men have generally formulated creeds for themselves. Instead of saying, “I believe what the Bible says,” they have been prone to frame something else, and often something very different from the Bible, as the basis and expression of their belief.

And the more error it has contained, the more tenaciously, it seems, men have clung to their creed. As with the habit of taking intoxicating drink, belief in error generally gets a very strong hold on men. Once accepted, it is very difficult to dislodge. As with the inebriate and his wine, the more of error one has in his creed the more unreasonable, irascible, and dangerous generally, he becomes.

The proper means of extending belief in any doctrine is indicated in the Gospel commission: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature;” “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” The ambassador of truth preaches and teaches the Word and commandments of the Lord. He invites, persuades, and entreats men to believe, but depends upon the Holy Spirit to bring conviction and obedience. He gives his message, and leaves results with God. Those who desire the truth, he believes will accept the truth when they hear it. With Christ he says: “If any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not; for I come not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath One that judgeth him; the Word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.” John 12:47, 48.

But belief in error leads men to pursue a very different course. The advocates of error are not content merely to present their views, and leave their hearers to accept them or not, as they see fit. If milder means fail of making them believe what they think ought to be believed, they will resort to compulsion. As far as lies in their power, they will force men to comply with their ideas of what is right. This is what the Jews did in the days of Christ, and what the church has done ever since, whenever she has lost the grace of Christ. Finding herself destitute of the power of love, she has reached out for the strong arm of the state to enforce her dogmas and execute her decrees. Here is the secret of all human religious laws that have ever been enacted, and the secret of all persecution from the days of Abel to our own time.

Christ does not drive, but draws, men unto Him. The only compulsion which He employs is the constraint of love. When the church begins to seek for the support of the secular power, it is evident that she is devoid of the power of Christ—the constraint of divine love. This is the meaning of the statement in 2 Tim. 3:1-5, that in the last days men would have a “form” of godliness, but would deny the “power” thereof. While professing to be Christians, by appealing to the state to enforce their religious views, men deny the power of God in Christ to convert and reform men.

And a fact worthy of note is, that men generally work the hardest to have enforced by law the greatest error in their creed. Nebuchadnezzar never made a more positive or insistent decree than the one by which he commanded all to bow down and worship the golden image which he had set up. The most oppressive laws of Europe have been those requiring men to pay homage to the Papacy. And the laws which the Protestant churches to-day are laboring the hardest to have made and enforced are laws for the observance of the first day of the week as the Sabbath, while the commandment of God, as plainly as words can state it, says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath.” But thus it is, and thus it ever has been, the farther men in their belief get from the truth, the more state aid they require. But when they know the truth, and when they hold the truth as it is in Jesus, they know that there is nothing so powerful as the truth itself, and that genuine conviction and true conversion are wrought “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.”