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Lessons on Religious Liberty

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 26, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 13.

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Lessons on Religious Liberty

By W. F. MARTIN

The State

"The family, the church, and the state are divine institutions demanding alike our obedience, in their proper sphere of jurisdiction. The family is the oldest institution, and the source of church and state. The patriarchs were priests and kings of their households. Church and state are equally necessary, and as inseparable as soul and body, and yet as distinct as soul and body. The church is instituted for the religious interests and eternal welfare of man; the state, for his secular interests and temporal welfare. The one looks to heaven as the final home of immortal spirits; the other, upon our mother earth. The church is the reign of love; the state is the reign of justice. The former is governed by the gospel, the latter by the law. The church exhorts, and uses moral suasion; the state commands, and enforces obedience. The church punishes by rebuke, suspension, and excommunication; the state, by fines, imprisonment, and death. Both meet on questions of public morals, and both together constitute civilized human society and ensure its prosperity."—Schaff.
"Secular power has proved a satanic gift to the church, and ecclesiastical power has proved an engine of tyranny in the hands of the state."—Id. See Matt. 18: 21, 22.
Civil governments are limited to the confines of their boundaries. Religion is limited only by the limits of the human race. See Jer. 27: 4-7; Dan. 3: 14-18.
Roger Williams first advocated the American principle; that is, that government should have nothing whatever to do with the control of religious belief. See Rom. 14: 10-12; 12: 19; 1 Cor. 2: 14; 1: 26; Matt. 11: 25, 26. Man as God's avenger has always been a demon. Rev. 1: 9; 2: 10.

The Church

"Jean Paul Richter tells us that 'the life of Christ concerns him who, being the holiest among the mighty, the mightiest among the holy, lifted with his pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.'"—Geikie.
"No one will accuse the first Napoleon of being either a pietist or weak-minded. He strode the world in his day like a Colossus, a man of gigantic intellect, however worthless and depraved in moral sense. Conversing one day, at St. Helena, as his custom was, about the great men of antiquity, and comparing himself with them, he suddenly turned round to one of his suite and asked him, 'Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?' The officer owned that he had not yet taken much thought of such things. 'Well, then,' said Napoleon, 'I will tell you.' He then compared Christ with himself and with the heroes of antiquity, and showed how Jesus far surpassed them. 'I think I understand somewhat of human nature,' he continued, 'and I tell you all these were men, and I am a man, but not one is like him; Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires; but upon what did the creations of our genius depend?—Upon force. Jesus alone founded his empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for him.'"—Id. See Acts 28: 23; 2 Cor. 5: 11.
"The ark of God was never taken till it was surrounded by arms of earthly defenders. In captivity its sanctity was sufficient to vindicate it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on the threshold of his own temple. The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of the great mystery of the grave. To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength that it is part and parcel of the common law."—Macaulay. See Matt. 4: 8-10.
"Secular power has proved a satanic gift to the church, and ecclesiastical power has proved an engine of tyranny in the hands of the state."—Schaff.
"This only I know, that there is salvation in no other name than in the name of Jesus Christ, the crucified, and that nothing loftier offers itself to humanity than the God-manhood realized in him, and the kingdom of God which he founded—an idea and problem not yet rightly understood and incorporated into the life, even of those who, in other respects, justly rank as the most zealous and the warmest Christians! Were Christ in deed and in truth our life, how could such a falling away from him be possible? Those in whom he lived would witness so mightily for him, through their whole life, whether spoken, written, or acted, that unbelief would be forced to silence."—De Witte. See Ezra 8: 22, 23; Heb. 4: 12; Cant. 6: 4, 10.
W. F. MARTIN.