Washington and Lincoln

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 22, 1910

Washington and Lincoln

Lovers of Liberty

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL well said, in his stirring poem "The Present Crisis": > "Where to-day the martyr stands, > On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands. > Far in front the cross stands ready, while the crackling fagots burn, > While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return > To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn." But a Greater, eighteen centuries ago, said in words yet living:

"Ye build the sepulchers of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets." Matt. 23: 29, 30.

Yet the very men who so spoke, crucified the very Author of Liberty. Will this generation, this people, rehearse in their history the oft-repeated story of the ages?

Last February, 1909, was the centennial year and month of the birth of Lincoln. The same short month brings the yearly memorial of the great Washington. The greatness of both these men is extolled, monuments and memorials to their fame are erected, and their sepulchers are garnished; yet, alas, the principles which made them, which they lived, which one fought and the other died to maintain, are neglected or forgotten.

What are those principles? — Freedom — civil and religious freedom, barred neither by tyrant's decree nor papal bull; neither by autocratic rule in politics nor by decree of councils in religion.

George Washington's principles of religious liberty are embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States, both of which documents felt his molding hand. The former declares:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain UNALIENABLE RIGHTS; that among these are LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS; that to SECURE THESE RIGHTS governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."

These are wonderful truths. For their amplification see article in another column, entitled "The Basic Principles of Americanism."

The Constitution, Amendment I, reads thus:

"CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Fearing that fullest liberty was not distinctly enough guaranteed in the Constitution, the Ephrata Community, a seventh-day Christian body, near Philadelphia, on whose little press was first printed the Declaration of Independence, wrote to Washington expressing their fears, to whom Washington replied:

"If I had the least idea of any difficulty resulting from the Constitution adopted by the Convention of which I had the honor to be President when it was formed, so as to endanger THE RIGHTS OF ANY RELIGIOUS DENOMINATION, then I never should have attached my name to that instrument. If I had any idea that the general Government was so administered THAT LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE WAS ENDANGERED, I pray you be assured that no man would be more willing than myself to revise and alter that part of it so as to AVOID ALL RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. You can without any doubt rememberthat I have often expressed as my opinion that EVERY MAN WHO CONDUCTS HIMSELF AS A GOOD CITIZEN IS ACCOUNTABLE ALONE TO GOD FOR HIS RELIGIOUS FAITH, AND SHOULD BE PROTECTED IN WORSHIPING GOD ACCORDING TO THE DICTATES OF HIS CONSCIENCE."

Washington fought for religious liberty as well as civil.

To these principles Washington was irrevocably committed. Out of these principles grew the mighty Lincoln and his love of freedom, expressed in a thousand ways. We make two quotations from among many. In Lincoln's speech made at Trenton, N. J., Feb. 21, 1861, with the memory of Washington exhaling its fragrance about him, he said:

"I am exceedingly anxious that that thing [liberty],—that something even more than national independence, that something that held out A GREAT PROMISE TO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD TO ALL TIME TO COME,—I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and THE LIBERTIES OF THE PEOPLE shall be perpetuated in accordance with the ORIGINAL IDEA for which that struggle [the Revolution] was made; and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty and of this His almost chosen people for perpetuating the object of that great struggle."

In a speech in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, where the great document was signed, Lincoln said:

"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the SENTIMENTS EMBODIED IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. . . . It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the mother land, but that SENTIMENT IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WHICH GAVE LIBERTY not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and THAT ALL SHOULD HAVE AN EQUAL CHANCE. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . . . If this country can not be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it."

But in the light of these principles, there is no room for Sunday laws, or any other law which will discriminate between classes on account of religious belief or practise when this belief or practise does not infringe or trench upon the equal civil rights of others.

The other day the United States Senate, through sophistry and cant, passed to the third reading a Sunday law, a religious law, a law which discriminates between men civilly because of religious belief. If passed into a statute law, there are a multitude of dogmatists who long to enforce by law their own views, who will call it holy, sacred, vital, and its opposers traitors. Such laws recall the sentiment expressed by that great American, Lowell:

"Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends?" "Think you Truth a farthing rushlight, to be pinched out when you will With your deft official fingers, and your politicians' skill? Is your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden out of sight, That his block eyes may not see you do the thing that is not right?" "But the Destinies think not so; to their judgment-chamber lone Comes no noise of popular clamor, there Fame's trumpet is not blown; Your majorities they reck not; that you grant, but then you say That you differ with them somewhat,—which is stronger, you or they?" "Patient are they as the insects that build islands in the deep; They hurl not the bolted thunder, but their silent way they keep; Where they have been that we know; where empires towered that were not just, Lo! the skulking wild fox scratches in a little heap of dust."

Religious legislation, or civil law to enforce religious dogma, held by many or few, means ruin to the churches or church which demands it, and ruin to the civil power which yields to the demand.