CHRISTIANITY IN CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
THE President and the only living ex-President of the United States recently delivered addresses on the same Sunday, the former in the Lutheran church in Washington, and the latter before the Y. M. C. A. in Philadelphia. The Commoner quotes an expression from each, crediting Mr. Roosevelt with these words: It is an important thing for the people of this country to remember their rights, but, it is even a more important thing for them to remember their duties. In the last analysis the work of the statesmen and the soldiers, the work of public men shall go for nothing if it is not based on the spirit of Christianity, that spiritual, that moral, foundation, without which no country can ever rise to permanent greatness. And Mr. Cleveland is quoted as follows: A church is too often esteemed successful because men worth knowing, choirs worth hearing, and interiors worth seeing, are the rewards of attendance. . . . It is not worth while to blink at the fact that, without going far from home, we can gain a hint that nations called civilized, and even Christian, are liable, under strong temptation, to backslide to barbaric standards which permit war and slaughter to count for a people's greatness and reckon ruthless conquest among glorious deeds. There is one effective and constant preventive against such danger, and that is the sincere acceptance as guidance to national behavior of the honor, the love of peace, the devotion to justice and truth, the forbearance and inviolable good faith which grow out of genuine civilization and Christian spirit. To this the Commoner adds: It is a noteworthy fact that these two eminent men join in giving testimony to the fact that Christian morality is the solution of the problems of government as well as of the problems which confront the individual. This is all good sentiment, but it will not do to get the cause and effect transposed, as is the strong tendency of our time. Christianity morality never can solve the problems of government until it first shall have solved the problems which confront the individual. The so-called National Reform theory is that the government should set up a formal Christian morality, based in human law, and from this standpoint compel a formal Christian morality on the part of the individual, through which he must solve the problems with which he is confronted. This is the theory of all religious legislation. But its fruit is injustice in the beginning, with persecution in the ultimate. The only way in which Christian morality can effect governmental problems is through its effect on the people, doing away with even the apparent excuse for compulsory morality, or even the disposition to indulge in it. Christianity never yet suggested compulsory Christian morality. Such suggestion always originates in presumptive Phariseeism.