The American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 38
THE *Christian Union* is grieved because the sale of acids for removing ink staiPage 1
THE Christian Union is grieved because the sale of acids for removing ink stains is permitted in this country, and says: “A little bit of the thou-shalt-not policy of Russia might make a useful ingredient in the devil-take-the-hindmost policy of our democracy. Under a paternal form of government, the sale of such a mixture as this would probably be prohibited.” Of course, what the Christian Union has in view is the ease with which checks can be raised by means of this acid; but the idea of making this the occasion of a plea for a paternal government, would be decidedly funny, did it not show the growing feeling in this country to make the Government everything to everybody. The “acid” referred to, which is generally sold under the name of “ink eradicator,” is used by thousands of honest men in their every-day business, and is fast coming to be considered as indispensable in every counting room. The editor of the Christian Union should provide himself with a “check perforator,” and thank his stars that he doesn’t live in Russia. State and Parochial Schools.
By Alonzo T. Jones
STATE supremacy and jurisdiction over church schools seems to be spreading like an epidemic. Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio have laws already in this line. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and other States are seriously proposing laws and even considering amendments giving the State jurisdiction over church schools. It seems singular that not only the evil in this thing itself, but the actual danger to the State lying in it, cannot be seen by those who are carrying forward the movement. First, the thing is evil in itself, because the church school is a private school. Those who establish it pay to the public school all the State demands, and then they take their own money and hire their own teachers to teach their own children, perhaps in their own houses; and then this movement demands that the State shall assume jurisdiction over these private schools, and authority to dictate as to the teaching in such schools. This is but to claim the right of the State to assume jurisdiction and authority to dictate in the private affairs of the people. But if the State has this authority in one thing, it may have it in everything that it chooses, and soon all private rights are gone, and nothing that a man has, not even his own person belongs any longer to himself, but to the public. The State is put above the people, and the people become only a part of the machinery of the State. This is directly the reverse of the American principle—the true principle of government. “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” These rights belong to the individual. They are his own. He may, in establishing government he does, surrender the personal exercise of certain of these rights; but he never does, and according to the American principle, he never can, surrender himself bodily, and yield to the Government any jurisdiction over his private concerns. The assertion of the rights of any such jurisdiction on the part of the State is but the assertion of the rightfulness of despotism, and springs from a spirit essentially despotic. Again, these are church schools organized for the purpose of teaching to the children of the members of that church the doctrines and religion of the church. In many of the schools, the preacher and the teacher are one and the same person, and the building which is the meeting house of the church on Sunday, is the school house for the children of the church members on other days. If the State may rightly assume jurisdiction over what is taught in that house by that preacher to the children of the church members during the week days, why may not the State also assume jurisdiction over what is taught in that house to the children and their parents together, on Sunday? There is no possible argument that will justify the first that will not likewise justify the second. And if the State may do this in these particular circumstances, it may do so in all places and under all circumstances. And then the distinction between Church and State is broken down and destroyed. This brings us to the second phase of this subject, the danger to the State which lies in this movement against church schools. As we have seen, the result is the destruction of the distinction between the Church and State, and is a union of the Church and State, instead of a separation. By the State thus forcing itself upon the Church, and really making the Church a part of itself, forcing it to be so, those churches will inevitably be driven to take298a constant and active part as churches in every department of the State. Because when the State assumes jurisdiction of the church schools to any extent, it becomes of paramount interest to that church to secure as much interest as possible in the affairs of the State, so that the Church through the officers of the State may recover jurisdiction over her own schools and her own affairs. And to this action the Church is driven by the action of the State in first assuming jurisdiction over the affairs of the Church. But in a government of the people just as soon as the Church, as such, becomes a part of the State as such, it remains only a question of time when the State in the proper sense of the word, will be gone, and all that is left of it will be but the tool of the Church in carrying forward her own schemes. The American principle of Government is the absolute and total separation between the Church and the State. The Church neither dictating to the State in anything, nor yet the State dictating to the Church in anything, but each one occupying its own sphere, and exercising jurisdiction in its own affairs only. We know the cry that is made in defense of this movement to give the State jurisdiction of the church schools,—the cry of danger to the State, and that it is necessary for the general welfare that the State shall do so. But this cry in the first place is a fraud. There is not a particle of danger to the State in anything that is aimed at in these laws; but even if there were some real danger there, it would be nothing at all in comparison with the danger to the State that will come inevitably from the slightest step taken by the State in assuming jurisdiction of church schools, or church affairs in any way whatever. Every man who believes in the separation of the Church and State, every man who believes in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, must oppose always and everywhere, every move to have the State interfere in any way with the workings of the church, or private schools. Another phase of this question we will reserve for next week. A. T. J. “THE voice of the people is the voice of God,” is as true to-day, as when spoken in a city of Greece two thousand years ago. —Clear Lake (Cal.) Press. Just about as true! For instance, when, a century later, the people crowded around the Son of God, shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” HE who seeks to transform the church of God into a political club-room, must ever be regarded as the enemy of our higher ideals of civil and religious liberty, and also guilty of a Pharisaism which has the effrontery to dictate methods to God himself. This paper believes that the race will be happiest when it takes God’s laws as they are, and enacts such laws for the regulation of human affairs as wisdom, tempered with justice, suggests.—Central City, Nebraska, Republican. Churchianity vs. Christianity.
By Carlos Martyn, D. D.
CHURCHIANITY may be defined as Christianity formalized. It is like counterfeit coin—current but false. Defoe wrote:— “Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil always builds a chapel there.”
Churchianity is this devil’s chapel. When Christianity marries the State, the natural, the almost inevitable product of the unnatural mesalliance is Churchianity. The Church is secularized. It is a department of the government. And, as every bargain presupposes a quid pro quo, in return for governmental alliance it makes itself a prop of the powers that be. Thus religion is transformed from a principle into an institution. What should be inward feeling and motive, runs outward and freezes into mere profession. Christianity is a business. The divine element evaporates. God is Deus ex machina. The ministry ceases to be a calling and becomes a profession. Men are preferred to this and that sacred office. The clergy are in form, servants of Heaven, in fact, officials of the State. Handling money, controlling patronage, dealing in sacred things for secular purposes, Christianity is hocus-pocused into Churchianity. In this country we have no State Church. Nevertheless, Churchianity is a naturalized resident. Because Churchianity is more than a system—it is a state of mind. Wherever form is put for substance, whenever the medium is regarded as the essence, Christianity crystallizes into Churchianity. We have a religious establishment, but no longer religion. We look for Christ and find—a church. We ask for bread and are given—a stone. Carlos Martyn, D. D., in the Arena. The Bible Is Religious Only.
By Alonzo T. Jones
THE Christian Union wants the Bible used in the public schools simply as history and literature, just as Xenophon and Homer are used. It says:— If our Catholic, Jewish, or Agnostic brethren object to opening schools with acts of worship, such acts of worship should, in our judgment, be discontinued. It is not the business of the State to conduct public worship against the objection of any considerable proportion of tax-payers, but, the use of the Bible as history and literature is no more sectarian than the use of Xenophon or Homer.
Yes; it is true enough that the use of the Bible as history and literature is no more sectarian than any other book of history or literature, but the Bible is not that; the Bible is neither history nor literature; it was not written for any such purpose. It is true there is history in it, but the only purpose for which that history was written, is religious. It is likewise true that there is a literature in the Bible, but the sole worth that it has as literature is the religion that is in it. Take the literature of the sermon on the mount, what is it worth without the religion that is in it? That was not spoken as a piece of literature; the Saviour did not declaim that to display his eloquence. It was spoken as the word of God; spoken by him who came down from heaven bringing the salvation of God to man, and it was to impress the thoughts of God upon the minds and hearts of men that Christ uttered it, and to take that idea and thought out of it, takes everything out of it; if it is not that, it is not anything at all. It is the same with any other part of the Scriptures, there are fine passages, there are heights of eloquence and depths of pathos, but whether it be height or depth, it is the inspiration of the religion of Christ that makes it so, that makes it what it is. There is another point in this. There is a good deal of sophistry about this idea of using the Bible as a history. We should like some of those who talk that way, to tell us in what the history of the Jewish people consists, that is of any material worth, aside from the religion. What value has the history of the Jewish nation if you take the religion out of it? They were not scientists; they did not cultivate art in any particular form. The form of government that they had was set aside by the Lord himself, and such a form is forbidden to be any more amongst men. Then, as a model government, it is worthless. In art or science it is worthless. The only thing in the history from beginning to end, the only thing that ever was in it, the only thing that was intended to be gathered from it, is religion. And if it be separated from its religious purpose, there is taken away from it all the value that it has. To prove this, attention needs but to be called to the record. Take up the history that is found in the Bible anywhere, and it is inseparable from the religious idea, and the religious thought. The history of Abraham, for instance, is that God called him from among his people to a land that He would show him, and that he went not knowing whither; that the Lord promised to him, when as yet he had no child, that his seed should be as the stars of heaven—innumerable, and that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. The seed referred to in that word is Jesus Christ, and the sole purpose of the history from Abraham to Christ, was to bring the people to him. And when he came and that people rejected him, their history, as connected with the Bible ceased forever. In fact, there is a period of more than four hundred years before Christ came, during which there is not a word of history; which in itself shows that the history of that people is not the object of the writing in the Bible. Again, start with the children of Israel, as they were about to leave Egypt, and it is but an account of miracle after miracle. In fact the whole story, from that time till Israel entered into the land of Canaan, for a period of forty years, is scarcely anything else than a record of a series of miracles. The Red Sea was divided that Israel might pass; then as they passed into the wilderness they came to the bitter waters which were made sweet that the people might drink. Afterward, water was more than once given to the people by Moses merely striking the rock with his rod; and then at Sinai, the Lord appeared in glory on the top of the mount, and also at the door of the tabernacle; and, to say nothing of the constant, almost daily, repetition of miracles, there was the pillar of fire by299night, and the pillar of cloud by day, constantly over the tabernacle, by whose direction they moved or remained. Thus it was all through the forty years wanderings in the desert of Arabia. When they passed into the promised land, it was when “the Jordan overflowed its banks.” The priests took the ark of God, and started into the water. As soon as their feet touched the water that which was above stood still, and that below flowed on. And so it stood till the whole of the host of Israel passed over. Soon after this they came to Jericho and laid siege to that city by merely marching around it once a day, for seven days, blowing trumpets of rams’ horns; and on the seventh day they marched around it seven times and then set up a mighty shout, and the walls of Jericho fell down. The siege was ended and the city captured. Not long after this there was a battle with the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land. They were defeated, but to make the victory forever sure, the sun stood still and the day was prolonged, so that there was no such day before nor after it. And so the whole history might be followed through, step by step, as it is written, from that day when the sun stood still, unto the last historical record in the Old Testament, and all the time the record is to be found inseparable from signs, wonders, miracles, and interpositions of the Lord. All of which demonstrates that the object of the Bible is not historical, but religious wholly. It also demonstrates that it is impossible to use the Bible as a history. And those who ask that it may be used in the public schools simply as history, know that this is so; and if it were not for its religious character not one of them would ever write ten lines of a plea for its use in the public schools as history. If the record of that people be so valuable, as a history only, as to make it essential that above all others it shall be used as a history, then why is it that those who want it so, do not insist that the history of that people since Bible times shall be taught also. But no such request was ever heard of, and never would be if the Bible were history only, as Xenophon or Tacitus is history. But these men, knowing that it is impossible for the State to teach religion, and knowing that it is wrong for the State to tax all the people in order to teach to all, the religion of a few—knowing all this they have not the face to ask that the Bible shall be used in the schools for what it is, and therefore they hope to get it used for what it is, by getting the State to adopt it and use it for what it is not. The plea is essentially dishonest, and it is difficult to see how those who make it do not know that it is dishonest. As for the New Testament there is no pretense that this is history in any sense. In the four gospels there is a sketch of the four years of the life of Christ, but the fullest of these contributions to the sketch says plainly, that no attempt is made to write a complete record because no reasonable number of books could contain it if it were written; but that that which is written, was written “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” The Bible record, from beginning to end, is but a record of Jesus Christ. This verse which we have just quoted not only tells the object of the writings of the gospel, but the object of the writing of the whole Bible, and that is that men might believe that Christ is the Son of God; and that believing they might have life through his name. He is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. He is the seed of the woman, that was promised before the first pair were driven from the garden. He is the one to whom almost the last words in the Bible are addressed, “Even so come Lord Jesus.” “He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,” all the way through the Bible. And therefore any proposition that is ever made by any one to teach the Bible, or to use it in any way, other than as the record of Christ, is to propose that the record of Christ shall be taught with Christ left out. It is, in short, only an attempt to rob the world of Christ and his gifts to men. And such will be the only tendency wherever the Bible is used for anything else than just what it is, namely, the revelation of God concerning his eternal purpose in Christ Jesus the Saviour of men. A. T. J. Talk Is Talk.
By R. F. COTTRELL.
The following quotation from the Buffalo Christian Advocate, of May 15, 1890, is credited to Rev. Dr. Thomas Dixon, a Baptist minister, of New York:— This Nation was founded on the Decalogue and the ten commandments. The men who landed at Plymouth Rock, landed on their knees. The foundations of this Republic were cut from the quarry of God's eternal granite. Its foundation stones were laid in cement made with the tears and blood of Christian men and women. The man who has outgrown the Decalogue and the Golden Rule, has outgrown his usefulness in this Nation. This has the true National Reform ring. The argument is, This Nation has been a Christian nation from the beginning; therefore our Constitution must be revised so as to permit legislation on the Decalogue and the ten commandments and the Golden Rule, in order to make this a Christian Nation. The tears and blood of Christian men and women, with which he says the foundation of our Nation was cemented, most naturally call to mind the persecutions of Baptists, Quakers, and others, before the formation of our peerless Constitution, the recurrence of which it was wisely designed to prevent. When men undertake to legislate for God and enforce his law, tears and blood flow as the result. To say a man has “outgrown his usefulness in this Nation,” implies a desire for his banishment. Bigotry and intolerance go hand in hand. On the evening of August 26, a banquet was given in the First Congregational Church, Oakland, California, by the Congregational Club, in honor of Rev. Dr. R. R. Meredith, of Brooklyn, New York, who was its guest. Many pastors of Congregational Churches in San Francisco, and the surrounding towns, were present. In response to several addresses, in which warm fraternal sentiments were expressed toward himself, Dr. Meredith said that two thoughts had been uppermost in his mind during his journey across the continent, and his thirty days’ visit on the Coast. These thoughts were Christianity and the country. Of the former, he said: Strictly defined, its essential spirit is a missionary spirit. From its institution down to this day, its true work has been missionary work. The Church, which is the embodiment of Christianity, is necessarily a missionary society; that and nothing else. Jesus Christ, the author of Christianity, and the founder of the Church, was himself strictly a missionary; for he came to seek and to save them that were lost. As to the country, he firmly believed that God had, for centuries before it was settled, kept his hand upon this land for a peculiar purpose, keeping out the old nations until an appointed time. And this peculiar purpose, he believed, was to establish on this continent a nation in which the political and religious institutions should be kept utterly separate; in short, a nation in which there should be not the shadow of a union of Church and State, and no State support for church schools. And he thanked God for that purpose; for Christianity needs no aid, no support, from the State. Christianity has power within itself to stand alone; to accomplish its own mission; and should the day ever come in this country, when the Church, as in an hour of great temptation in the third century, joins hands with the State to accomplish her aims, that will be her day of peril, and will seal the fate of the country. So far as Dr. Meredith’s utterance is concerned, it is all right; but the trouble is, he does not realize what may constitute a union of Church and State. The fact that he says, “Should the day ever come in this country when the Church . . . joins hands with the State to accomplish her aims,” etc., shows that he does not realize that the Church is quite generally doing that very thing now, in asking the State to teach religion in the public schools, and to maintain Sunday300observance. And so, in spite of his opposition to Church and State union, he may be expected to lend a hand to help it on. Yet we are glad of such utterances, for they call people’s attention to the danger attending a union of Church and State, and so prepare them to oppose it when we show them that the principle of such a union is embodied in Sunday legislation.—Signs of the Times. Christianity and the State.
By Rev. W. B. Judd
WHETHER we view the relation of Christianity and the State historically or practically, we are forced to the conclusion that it is a question interwoven with the very fabric of national life. When Christ came, though surrounded by the ritualistic service of the Jew, and the magnificence of Roman rule in civil affairs, he taught a spiritual worship freed alike from priestly and civil control. He established his kingdom not on coercion, but on love. When the Holy Ghost was poured out, Christianity, free from the shackles of State control, took giant strides forward. A new power had come into the world, and so great was its progress, that one hundred and six years after the ascension of Christ, Justin Martyr wrote: “There is not a nation of Greek or Barbarian, or of any other name, even of those who wander in tribes and live in tents, amongst whom prayers and thanksgiving are not offered to the Father and Creator of the universe by the name of the crucified Jesus.” From that time the Roman Empire and the kingdom not of this world were in deadly struggle for supremacy. Christianity taught the meaning of manhood, crossed local boundaries and united unsympathetic peoples. The world thrilled with moral electricity. Notwithstanding her obscure origin, her imperfect organization, by the enthusiasm of her followers for the divine truth she contained, the Church triumphed over the empire and reached the throne of the Cæsars. The prophetic visions of Isaiah seemed fulfilling,—“Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall rise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” Constantine embraced Christianity because he saw the waning power of the old gods, and the growing power of Christ. He united Church and State to the detriment of both. Its results were evil, and that continually. Christianity was made popular and the Church became filled with unconverted heathens. The State fixed the standard of orthodoxy, spirituality became paralyzed, and men sought by flattery and intrigues to rise to places of power. Missionary enterprises became fewer, the theology of the Church introduced works as a part of the system of salvation, and the Dark Ages threw their shadow athwart the path of progress. The Inquisition with its cruelties came from the union of Church and State, as effect from cause. For when the Papacy had arisen and asserted supremacy over the governments of Europe, the State became the tool of the Church to punish heretics in property and person. The worst feature of European history for twelve hundred years came from that union. It was also a standing menace to free inquiry and reform.—Rev. W. B. Judd, Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J., in Converted Catholic. An Opportunity.
By C. P. B.
THE World complains that “the closing of the season at the summer resorts of fashion finds the participants in the life at these places as satiated and fagged out as they were at the end of the winter.” “They have,” says the World, “simply changed the scene, and the form of social dissipation, which makes so many of our fashionable women haggard at thirty, and old at a time when they should be either in their prime or just entering upon that beautiful and poetic period described by the French wit and philosopher as ‘the youth of old age.’ To substitute breakfast parties, luncheons, balls, dress parades, and other forms of rivalry, feasting and excitement, in the country, for the pleasures of town in the winter, is to divert vacation from its uses, and to rob a change of its intended benefit. It is a part of the national habit of ‘burning the candle at both ends,’ which causes our women to ‘fade early,’ and gives us so many broken down or prematurely aged young men. It is a pity that a people with such a capacity for work should not be able to cultivate more of a genius for repose.” Does not the World know that there is such a thing as paternalism in government? and that this dissipation in the resorts of fashion affords an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the benefits to be derived from the fatherly care of the police power of the State? Why in the name of the logic of the American Sabbath Union does not the World get a clause tacked on to the Sunday law requiring these people “to cultivate more of a genius for repose,” or at least to repose more, whether they cultivate the genius or not? Possibly those ministers who are so profoundly concerned about a civil rest with at least a moiety of religious regard, could be induced to incorporate something of this kind with the measures which they are now pushing so vigorously both in and out of Congress. If the paternal theory is worth anything, it certainly ought to afford protection to those who are compelled by that most relentless of all tyrants, Fashion, to neglect the taking of much needed rest. C. P. B. They Seek Executive Authority Also.
By Chas. F. Parmele
On Sunday evening, September 14, the Kings County Sunday Observance Association held a meeting in the Fort Greene Presbyterian Church, in Brooklyn, N. Y. Although not very numerously attended, considerable interest and enthusiasm was manifested on the part of the speakers. That which first impressed a portion of the audience, was the multiplicity of titles used to designate Sunday, and the fact that each of the speakers had one of his own. It was called, “Sabbath,” “Christian Sabbath,” “American Sunday,” and “Our day.” Of all the titles used, we thought the last most appropriate, for certainly the amount of husbanding needed by this day, and from this class of religio-political guardians, would indicate its human origin, and dependence upon human support. Dr. Taylor, Recording Secretary of the American Sabbath Union, told how attempts had been made in legislative halls to overthrow the day, and then presented a very forcible argument to show the perpetual existence of the Sabbath, and truthfully remarked, that “you can’t legislate the Sabbath out of the world, any more than you can legislate God out of the world.” Now in all candor we fail to see why it is necessary to make so much ado to have a day protected as the Sabbath, by human enactments, as this organization seeks to do for Sunday, except on the ground that it is “Our day,” and nothing more. Rev. Taylor had much to say in regard to the opposition by rum, and railroad corporations, to all Sunday laws. He spoke of the many Sunday excursions, especially in New Jersey; and significantly remarked that “one church [Presbyterian he thought], has been almost broken up by these Sunday excursions.” The Rev. Edwin P. Ide aroused some profitable reflections by saying, “I am not afraid of corporations, but of the apathy of the Christian churches.” After this speech, the president, Rev. A. A. Robbins, frankly admitted the truthfulness of Mr. Ide’s statements, and also added that in an attempt by himself and others, to get the aldermen to enforce the law with regard to the delivery of ice-cream after ten A. M., on Sunday, they were told that nothing could be done, for it was principally the church people who wanted the cream. In an appeal for means to help in the work of the organization, one of the members spoke of the violation of Sunday laws as being a “sin,” and said, “because of a lack of means, we cannot punish them [those who break Sunday laws] until it is too late.” Thus the clergy seek to make men good by law, and set themselves up as proper persons to punish evil-doers. Strange Reasons.
By S. O. LANE
SOMETIMES when men are working for an object which in itself is not likely to meet with public favor, they give strange reasons for their course of procedure. This is forcibly illustrated by many of the excuses given for trying to force the observance of Sunday upon this Nation by those who style themselves National Reformers. In the book, “The Sabbath for Man,” by W. F. Crafts, some very strange arguments are used to show why the laboring man should be made to keep Sunday. The author argues that Sunday, if kept, will give a man one third as much time for studying as he would get in a college course in the same time; also by keeping Sunday twenty-one years, a man would have as much time for mental improvement as he would get in a common college course. And further, that a life of seventy years of well-spent Sundays would give one’s mind opportunity for improvement equal in time, to three college courses. From this reasoning it would seem that the main object of Sunday legislation is a purely educational one. Then he goes on to say that many of the Sunday-keeping workmen of a few years ago are the capitalists and leaders of to-day. Here this zealous advocate of Sunday legislation attempts to prove that the working man needs to keep Sunday to better his financial condition, and also he needs it to give him influence and power. Thus he gives as results of good Sunday keeping, education, wealth, and influence—things which human nature most earnestly desires. But there seems to be a serious objection to these arguments, and that is, that notwithstanding the predicted results of compulsory Sunday observance are so much to be desired by the laboring man, he himself is not much in favor of having his rights restricted on even one day of the week; and therefore is not in favor of Sunday legislation. So after using the foregoing arguments, which Mr. Crafts calls “great facts,” he thus explains why the laboring man, generally, does not favor his Sunday-keeping schemes:— Blind to these great facts, a Shoe Lasters’ Union in Brooklyn, at the publication of the new Penal Code of New York in 1882, adopted a paper which thus describes the Sabbath laws:— We learn with regret that the churches are joining hands with tyranny and capital for the purpose of suppressing liberty, and oppressing the laborer—
Sentiments representative of many labor organizations, which show that holiday Sundays prevent those who follow them from learning the A B C of political science, and keep them in such ignorance of the true meaning of liberty that they mistake its champions for oppressors. According to this, the poor laboring man is indeed in a dilemma. He has never taken advantage of his Sunday “educational” privileges, and so is blind—so blind that he cannot see his only source of education. The only way to get him out of this difficulty, Mr. Crafts thinks, is to force him to keep Sunday until he learns to appreciate these great blessings of education, wealth, and influence, and until he learns the “true meaning of liberty.” This is what Mr. Crafts and his friends who have probably kept Sunday long enough to appreciate these “great facts,” purpose to do for the benefit of the laboring man. It is a useless expenditure of time to point out the fallacy of such arguments, as any thoughtful person, whether he has properly kept Sunday or not, can see the foolishness of such reasoning; but one is reminded by the course which these “reformers” propose to pursue, of the kind parents who tied their son to the bed-post Sunday morning, and left him there till he could repeat the hymn beginning— Thine earthly Sabbaths, Lord, I love.
It is presumable that this boy liked rather to play or go a-fishing than to attend church. His parents enjoyed church privileges and were very anxious that their son should learn to love and reverence the day as they did, and the only way they could see to accomplish this happy result was to force him to rest on Sunday, and learn to repeat sacred hymns until he learned to love to spend his Sundays in this way. It resulted, probably, in the same way that all compulsory Sunday observance would. There is a blessedness in keeping the Sabbath, as there is in doing all of God’s commands, which none but those who are Christians in fact can appreciate. He who feels this blessedness has the least disposition of all men to attempt to force it upon others, because it came to him in quite another way, and he knows it must come to others in the same way that it came to him; and he has learned that Christ’s kingdom is not a kingdom of force, but its ruling element is love. “The Sabbath was made for man”—for his highest good intellectually, physically, and morally. It was given to him as a reminder of his obligations to the true God, the fear of whom “is the beginning of wisdom.” Man was not made for the Sabbath,—he was not made to protect it by law, or in any other way. God will do that work for his own day, and in his own good way. S. O. LANE. Letter From New Hampshire.
By Ira W. Russell
Keene, N. H., Sept. 8, 1890. EDITORS AMERICAN SENTINEL—Dear Sirs: Through your courtesy, or that of some mindful friend, I have received several copies of THE AMERICAN SENTINEL. Each succeeding number has but confirmed the good opinion I had of it from the first. It is indeed a tower of strength—a veritable Samson demolishing the pillars and supports of both arrogance and ignorance, as manifested through sectarian bigotry. I wish it continued, and enclose a year's subscription, one dollar, therefor. I sent for and obtained, of you, some weeks ago, “The National Sunday Law,” which, for sound argument and logic, backed by historical and other facts, is unequalled by anything bearing on the subject, that has come to me. The efforts of Senator Blair to promote temperance and educational interests, apart from sectarian influences, are to be commended. But that he should be influenced to oppose constitutional liberties, which he was chosen to protect and maintain, is not only a matter of surprise to many of his former supporters, but to all whose sense of honor and justice is superior to their desire to bring others to their standard of thought and action. The attempt to hoodwink the public into the belief that the Sunday-rest bill is secular in its intent and object, is a subterfuge too transparent to mislead any but those whose mental ability is too weak to distinguish between right and foul injustice, or those ever ready to accept the religious tenets of their spiritual teachers without examination. Force bills, or measures, may be allowable in some directions, but never in denying the right of conscience in matters of religious beliefs or Sabbath observances. It was in view of the intolerance of the church, of its “history traced in blood”—disgraceful to the lowest order of barbarians—that the framers of our Government wisely ordained that Church and State should be widely separated. And it is indeed a matter of surprise that in this progressive day and age, there should be found in our national councils, men so unmindful of the rights of the people they were chosen to protect, as to thus lend their influence to weaken and abrogate the safeguards of our constitutional rights and liberties. CHRISTIANITY and Churchism are two very different things. Christianity is a scheme of virtue and benevolence for the elevation of mankind. Churchism is a scheme of churchmen for power, plunder, and persecution. Our fathers utterly repudiated Churchism, refusing it either power or money; but said nothing of religion proper. The Churches of Rome, Russia, England, Turkey, and Mormondom are as far from Christ as day from night. In the United States is the only true Church with power to persuade; but none to tax, persecute, curse, or injure. Our fathers placed it just where it should be.—Political Record, San Francisco, Cal. “Has civil government,” inquires the Orleans Herald, “any right to administer divine law?” Certainly not; for civil government to attempt such a thing would be to put itself in the place of God, and destroy individual responsibility to God.