The Flag of Our Country.
By Editor
It is a beautiful combination set forth on our first page of "Old Glory" and the "Bird of Freedom." But they are worthless, only as they represent the principles for which they originally stood—that of civil and religious liberty, that of the rights of the individual. There has been a wide departure from this. The rights of the individual are lost in the mass, and in that loss is the loss of the freedom of the mass and the ruin of the republic. It has ever been true that as a church or a country departed from its high ideals, it became more devoted to mere symbols, and worshiped the form while it lost the fact. So Israel of old forgot the law of God, but worshiped the ark, and went into captivity. God wrote upon the history of that people in the letters of death, "Ichabod"—"the glory is departed." When saved from a great plague of fiery serpents, which came in consequence of their sin, Israel's faith in the power of God to save was symbolized by a brazen serpent hung upon a pole. The serpent was nothing; the faith which it symbolized was divine. Centuries later, when that people had departed from God, they worshiped the serpent. A stalwart reformer had the courage of God to break the detestable thing, and call it what it was, "Nehushtan"—"a piece of brass." It is easy to see—it does not even require a God-anointed vision—that the flag is being made to stand for principles which the fathers never knew, for tyrannies against which they fought. Oftentimes the bold man who protests is called a traitor. In this way our symbols of liberty will become the symbols of tyranny; and then the brave reformer who would drag the dishonored tri-color to the ground and call it a rag or a piece of cloth would pay dear for his temerity and truth. Yet it is living principle, not a worship of symbols, which saves men and nations.