EQUALITY OF RIGHTS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 23, 1907

EQUALITY OF RIGHTS.

No man acquires any additional rights as a man by joining any society, association, or organization. The true civil government has no right to recognize any segregation or association of this kind.

John Smith is a man and a citizen. As a man and citizen under any just government he has equal rights with every other man and citizen. He may join the Methodist Church or the Catholic Church, or any other religious denomination; but his church affiliations have given him no added right of recognition by the government; they have bestowed upon him no rights to which his fellow citizens outside of all church folds are not entitled. He may combine his business with the coal trust, beef trust, or any other trust; he is entitled to no consideration from the government because of this. He may join every labor union in America, every lodge,—social, beneficiary, or otherwise—any political party; but these add not one iota to his rights as a citizen and as a man. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is still his equally, and only so, with all other citizens.

He may feel that his labor union is working for the uplifting of the laboring men, and that opposition to it is against the good of the laboring men, but his fellow citizens have the equal right to think and labor to the contrary. Whatever may be his belief—even tho it be wholly right—he has no right to impose it upon others without their free and full consent in profession and practise. And the converse of all this is true. The demonstration of these theories must be left to time, and their acceptance to the free will of the convinced citizen.

The right to believe and practise, or not to believe, the right to buy and sell, to labor for what and for whom and when one will, vests in every citizen equally. So long as he does not contravene the equal rights of his neighbor he is free to believe, or not to believe, to teach, to practise, but not to compel.

Trades-unionists assume that he who opposes labor unions, or he who maintains an absolutely neutral position, are foes to labor and mankind. Let them hold it as a theory if they will, but they have no right to seek to enforce their theory upon others.

Other men may believe, and some doubtless do believe, that unionism as at present exploited is the most evil thing for the laboring men that ever found standing among them. They have the right to believe this and teach it as they will, but no right even to seek to enforce it upon others.

The devout, consistent Roman Catholic believes that all hope of salvation lies within the fold of the Roman Catholic Church, and that to reject that church is to abandon all hope. Some have believed this so consistently, supremely and unwisely that they have sought to compel acquiescence in others; and the result has been untold persecution. The Roman Catholics have the right to believe as they do, even tho their belief be wrong, but they have no right to enforce their belief, or to seek to enforce it upon others, be the others Protestant or heathen. The same is equally true of any religionist, or no religionist.

These propositions seem so self-evident that their mere statement is superfluous, and yet almost everywhere are they ignored—by Capital and Labor, in Church and Society. And yet they are vital. On the maintenance of them in their integrity rests the stability and perpetuation of the republic. Their destruction in the hearts of men, and their consequent elimination in public life presages the utter ruin of this government, this nation, this world. And thus has the "more sure word of prophecy" spoken. When things, institutions, mere materials, or the schemes, plans, or theories of men, are counted superior to men, wo betide. God has ordained civil government to protect men from men who can not control themselves. God has placed His church here to save thru Christ Jesus men who can not save themselves. But when the governments of earth refuse to do the one and the church rejects the other, both State and Church must be set aside, and Christ must come to render justice and judgment; and upon those who have ignored or rejected His way will fall the destruction they have invited; they will reap the fruit of their own sowing. But those who trust in Him shall be saved.