“When the church turns to the state for aid, and asks civil government for strength and support, it rejects God’s word and power.”
THE Bible tells us, in the first chapter of John, that Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, and that He “lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” It does not follow that He will save “every man that cometh into the world,” or that they will even so much as hear of His existence; but He imparts to every man, though born in heathen lands, and educated by heathen teachers, a sense of the distinct difference between right and wrong, although his sense may be low, and his standard imperfect.
Doubting God’s Ability
WHEN Jesus Christ went back to heaven, He commissioned His followers to go forth and be “the light of the world.” Matt. 5:14. Then He prayed to the Father that He would keep all those who believed on Him, from the evil in the world. John 17:15.
To doubt God’s ability to keep a man from sin is to question His power and government. To doubt His willingness to keep His people from evil is to doubt His word and love.
When the church turns to the state for aid, and asks civil government for strength and support, it rejects God’s word and power. When Israel asked for a king to be at their head, the Lord said to Samuel, “They have rejected Me.”
God’s government is founded on the principle of love, with a constitution of two “great commandments” of love to God and love to one’s fellow beings.
Turning to the State
GOD does not save men as nations, or as churches, but as individuals. The church as a body rejected God in the days of Constantine, by turning from the Lord to the civil government for help and strength. Then followed the most cruel torture and death of millions of the best men and women on the earth. The strength of civil power is compulsion by physical force.
After centuries of bloodshed, there were those who saw glimmerings of light, and they declared for the right of choice without persecution; but the root of the evil was not fully destroyed. Russia established her national church, with the czar at its head. England under Henry VIII united the church to the state, with the king at its head instead of the pope. Germany gives indorsement to the system by permitting each state to decide what support it will give the church. France has, until very recently, given government aid and support to the church. Turkey holds to the Mohammedan belief that the sword is the proper power with which to enforce religion. Austria, while professing liberty in matters of religion, constitutionally demands that her reigning monarch must be a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
Nations Have Gone Astray
THUS the great nations of earth now engaged in deadly conflict have had their religious education under this great error of depending upon the human power of civil government, and not upon the power of God’s divine love. While nations and churches have gone astray from God, He has had, and still has, in all nations and all churches, faithful individuals who walk in the best light they have seen.
The spirit of war is the natural outcome of the state’s enforcing the doctrines of the church, as her power is compulsion by physical force. The present strife of nations shows the moral failure of a religion united to the state. The pure religion of Jesus Christ has not been on trial by nations, but it has been fully tested by millions of individuals, who have stood for truth in love under every conceivable trial, with God alone to sustain them.
Dangers Threaten
THE government of the United States of America was founded upon the true principle of an entire separation of church and state. But grave danger threatens both, in the persistent efforts that are made to obtain legislative enactments, state and national, to enforce the doctrines and religious institutions of the church. Every state in the Union, except California, has already placed on its statutes some kind of law to protect and enforce the church institution of Sunday rest.
A bill is now pending in Congress, known as H. R. 491, to authorize the postmaster-general to exclude from the mail any publication containing any article “which tends to expose any race, creed, or religion to either hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy.” Such a law would cripple the power of the press to expose the greatest errors or the vilest practices when held under the name of religion, because the exposure of such would “tend” to bring them into “contempt.” If we desire liberty and peace, let us keep the church and the state forever separate, according to the true Christian religion. Only then will each prosper.
