THERE has been a great deal said, in and out of Congress, upon the question of a national system of education. There is much still being said, and there is also much that is proposed to be done. Senator Blair, and many other senators, worked diligently to secure the passage of an act by which the United States Government should assume a considerable part in the control of the public schools in all the States. Then, again, Mr. Blair proposes, and large organizations of people support, a resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States, so that thereby the national Government shall be empowered to assume complete and total charge of the education of all the children in the United States. Then, again, Senator Edmunds proposes a bill for the establishment of a national university, for the higher education of people in the United States. In view of all these things it is proper to inquire what facilities and what qualifications the national Government has for educating the people of the United States, whether partially as proposed in the Blair bill, or totally as in the Blair amendment, or in a university course as proposed by the Edmunds bill? And happily, there is a means of answering to some extent, this interesting question. In the discussion of the Indian Appropriation bill, which we have mentioned in THE SENTINEL, of the past two weeks, some important items are given which throw light upon this question. There are, it appears, somewhere about thirty or forty thousand Indian children in the United States. These have been adopted by the United States Government. They are not only considered, but are called, wards of the Government. The Government has assumed the responsibility of their education; and how has it discharged this responsibility? Why, it is found that so far is it from being able to educate these few Indians, itself, that it has found it necessary to let out the work by contract to about fifteen different churches; and in the debate in the Senate it was claimed that this was necessary, and the best thing the Government could do in discharging its responsibility in educating the Indians. Now if the United States Government finds itself unequal to the task of educating thirty or forty thousand Indian children, how will it be able to educate all the children of the sixty-five millions of people in the United States? More than this, it was openly and soberly argued on the floor of the Senate, that the Government could not properly educate these Indian children without the aid of the churches. It was claimed by these senators that religion was necessary to the education of these children, and it was proper for the Government to unite with the churches in giving to the Indians such an education as only the churches can give. And this is clearly the view of the United States Senate, as is proved by the fact, that the appropriations of the past year are renewed to all the churches, with the addition of four new schools, with thousands of dollars each, to the Roman Catholic Church. This, therefore, being the view of the United States Senate in regard to the education of Indians, if any one of these educational measures proposed by Senators Blair and Edmunds, and supported by thousands upon thousands of the people in the United States—if any one of these measures should be adopted, how would it be possible to keep the national Government separate from the churches in carrying these educational enterprises into effect? A CALIFORNIA paper has the following note:— The Executive Committee of the American Sabbath Union has appointed the Rev. Edward Thomson, D. D., LL.D., the State secretary of the association for California, and district secretary for the Pacific Coast. He has appointed a district convention in San Francisco, for August 16, 17, 18. Bishop Fowler is expected to preside, and Bishop John P. Newman will assist. The California Christian Advocate says: “This will be the opening of what we trust may prove a successful campaign in the interests of Sunday reform. The American Sabbath Union has accomplished great things in other States, and we doubt not if the Christian people of every denomination will give Dr. Thomson and his co-workers a hearty welcome, that much may be done here.” We presume that this means the beginning of active work with reference to the coming State election. THE St. Paul Dispatch notes the fact that a new Russian war vessel is called The Twelve Apostles, and says: “Its presumable mission is to go abroad into all the world and preach the gospel of—fiendish despotism.” And that is about as near as any civil government can come to preaching the gospel. Civil government always smuts religion when it touches it. JUST as long as Protestants insist, against all their principles of separation of Church and State, that there shall be religious exercises in the public schools, they have no argument against the Catholics. The reading of the Bible, or prayer, in the public schools is a relic of a State church, such as we used to have; and the fear of dropping it lest religion should suffer, is the survival of the cowardice which used to make the Church think it would perish if it lost the support of the State.—Independent. It is of interest and profit further to inquire, what kind of an education it is that these Indians get, from the expenditure of so much public money through the churches? Children, whether Indian or white, are most forcibly and permanently taught by example. What examples have been set, in some things, by some of these churches, and in one thing by all of them? Senator Dawes spoke of one denomination, unfortunately he did not give the name of it, which in last year’s appropriations took pay for sixty Indian students, when they had but forty—a clear case of downright swindling. Are the Indians, which the United States Government paid this church for teaching, expected to follow the example of the church which taught them? And if so, would it not be better if those children were not taught at all? Is it necessary that the United States Government shall give to a church organization, thousands of dollars a year to set before the Indians and the Nation at large such an example of thievery? Again, there was an appropriation to the Roman Catholic Church, for the teaching of the St. Boniface School of Mission Indians in Southern California; and the result of one hundred and twenty-five years of Roman Catholic teaching of these Indians, is thus stated by Senator Dawes:— For a hundred and twenty-five years the Mission Indians have been under the education and influence of the Jesuits of the Catholic Church. They are to-day as incapable, though industrious and of good habits, of self support, as citizens of the United States, as babes. They are more than ever reliant upon those from whom they receive their instruction. They go in their temporal matters as they do in their spiritual, where they are advised to go by their superiors. They plant where they tell them to plant, and they sow where they tell them to sow; and when the Mexican Government secularized all that southern mission band, and took away the priests, those poor Indians, with as good personal habits as any white men in the country, were like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, and have been appealing to this Government for a protection, which, if they had been self-reliant citizens, they could have had in and with and of themselves under the law.
And although the result of one hundred and twenty-five years teaching by the Catholic Church has been to make these Indians as incapable of self-support as are babies, and that instead of this teaching causing them to be more self-reliant, it was only to cause them to be more dependent upon their instructors, even to depending upon them to tell them where to plant and where to sow, and to depend as much upon them to know what to do, as though they were children that had never been taught anything; yet to the Roman Catholic Church, the present fiscal year, there was appropriated not much, if any, less than four hundred thousand dollars of Government money to pay that church for the teaching of Indian children! Would it be possible to make a worse appropriation of the public funds than to give this money to the Roman Catholic Church for its service in teaching Indians to be grown-up babies, the more incapable the older they grow? Again, that Bureau of Catholic Missions, in the city of Washington in 1889, informed the Government that it desired to put up necessary buildings for the establishment of an industrial or boarding school, in the Black Feet Reservation in Montana, and asked that the Government might allow them the use of one hundred and sixty acres of land, on the reservation, for buildings and grounds. The Secretary of the Interior, on May 6, 1889, granted this request. The Catholic Church went ahead and put up the buildings, and then it demanded that the Government should grant public money for the support of the school, whereas at first they only asked the use of the grounds on which to build it. And they justified their demand for money by the Jesuitical argument, that when the Government granted authority to establish the school upon the reservation, “the implied, if not expressed, understanding was that the Government would contribute toward the support of the Indian children that might attend it.” And upon this argument a demand was made for money, for the support and tuition of one hundred Indian children—$12,500. This is but an example of the character of the Catholic Church everywhere, and any other church that begins encroachments upon the authority or treasury of the State is not far behind it. Such is the Bureau that Senator Dawes advertises as deserving of “the highest commendation.” And such are the men whom he takes “great pleasure” in commending to the country as “men worthy of confidence.” Now, is it intended by the United States Government that these Indian children shall be taught such things as are clearly set forth in these examples of the Roman Catholic Church, and that other church that was not named? It must be so, or assuredly the appropriations would not be renewed and the system would not be continued. But as that is counted by the Senate as the best thing that can be done by the Government in the education of the Indians, then we submit to every candid mind in the United States, Would it not be better for the Government to keep the public money, and let the Indians alone, than to spend more than half a million of dollars a year to teach the Indians swindling and trickery, by the example of these churches? In addition to all this there is the example of all these fifteen denominations together, of disregarding the fundamental principles of American institutions, and deliberately violating the spirit of the United States Constitution, in taking the money of the State to support the Church. If the Indians learn from this example to disregard the Constitution, and the fundamental principles of the United States Government in other things, as these churches and the Government are doing in this, then are the Indians benefited by the teaching which they derive from such example? Take this whole mixture of Church-and-State teaching of the Indians, with the dishonesty, the trickery, and the unconstitutionality that pervades it all, and how much are the Indians really benefited by such an education? Again, we say, if such is the result of a governmental attempt to teach a few Indian children, what would be the result of an effort by the Government to teach the children of all the people? In closing, we submit to our readers the following problem for solution: If the attempt of the United States Government to educate thirty or forty thousand Indian children, creates such a union of Church and State as is considered by senators to be impossible of divorcement, how strong a union of Church and State would be formed, in an attempt of the United States Government to educate fifteen or twenty million white children? Senator Reagan on Church and State.
By Editor
WE have the pleasure of presenting our readers with the speech of Senator Reagan, of Texas, on the subject of appropriation of public money to church schools. We wish there were many more such men in public place. Mr. President: The provisions of the bill under consideration this morning, and the discussion we have heard, and the condition of things in the country, show the wisdom of the framers of the Republic in providing in the first section of the first article of the Constitution for a separation of Church and State, while guarantying the freedom of religious opinion. The history of the world is full of the dangers of Church and State. The subject has given rise to as much trouble and as many wars as almost any other subject, and the framers of our Government desired, so far as the people of this country were concerned, to protect them from any such danger. Besides that, Mr. President, while all the States of the Union, I suppose, have their systems of free public schools, in all of them special pains is taken that those schools shall be non-sectarian and free from religious control, showing that the people of the various States have the same idea of the danger of the union of Church and State, which the fathers of the Republic had, and that they were determined to preserve the barriers against the union of Church and State. We find that for several years considerable appropriations have been made for the education of the Indians in contract schools,—schools conducted by religious267denominations; and we find a controversy between the religious denominations as to whether the Government has fairly divided its patronage amongst them. It is not unnatural that that controversy should arise when the Government commits itself to the policy of having religious schools. It is not unnatural that denominations large in number and influence, after receiving but a very small portion of that patronage in comparison with others, should say, “If this Government means to establish religious schools, it should divide its patronage amongst the various denominations equitably.” Mr. President, I have no partiality for religious schools by any denomination, and I believe that they are wrong by any denomination, and it is for that reason that I rose to make a few observations. In 1886, $228,259 was appropriated for these private schools. Of that sum $118,343 was given to the Catholic denomination. In 1887, $363,214 was appropriated for private schools, and of that sum $194,635 went to the Catholic denomination, in each case over half the amount appropriated. In 1888, $376,664 was appropriated to private schools, and $221,169 of that went to Catholic schools. In 1889, $530,905 was appropriated for this purpose, and $347,672 of it went to the Catholic schools. In 1890, $561,950 was appropriated for private schools, and $356,957 of that sum went to the Catholic denomination, leaving but $204,993 out of the $561,950 for fifteen other denominations that were interested in Indian schools; fifteen other denominations, perhaps embracing five-sixths of the religious population of this country, allowed $204,993 out of last year’s appropriation, while that single Catholic denomination received $356,957! The Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Dawes) assumes that this was because of the greater zeal of the Catholics. Perhaps so. Perhaps it was because of their greater aggressiveness; perhaps it was because of their greater anxiety to get control of the State and of politics. At any rate, there stands the fact that the fifteen other denominations received only about two-fifths of the entire appropriation—fifteen other religious denominations engaged in education. Is it surprising that they should make complaints? And are senators to be muzzled through fear of giving offense to an aggressive denomination? Are they to be intimidated and prevented from speaking on this subject, and doing justice as among the various denominations interested? So far as I am concerned that shall not influence me; and the way to get rid of this whole subject is not by adding one more to the number of Catholic schools, as suggested by this bill, and by the Senator from Massachusetts, but it is to separate the whole of these appropriations from the religious denominations and put the schools under the Government, and let its teachers and its agents instruct these Indians. It is urged here as a reason why this should not be done, that the religious denominations will do the work cheaper than the Government can do it, and it is assumed that they will do it better than the Government can do it. Mr. President, if they can do that, they can carry on education in the States cheaper, and they can carry on education in the States better, than the State government can do it. It is an admission that ought not to be made that the Government is incompetent to provide persons who can carry on these schools with advantage to the Indians. I recognize, in view of the relations which the Indians of the country bear to the Government of the United States, that it is the duty of the United States to do whatever it can do reasonably, to promote their civilization and their welfare, and whatever is reasonable and right and necessary to that end shall have my support. But I wish to be understood as protesting now, and for all time, against the union of Church and State in any educational department of this Government, and for the reason that it necessarily leads to the very troubles which have now come up, and to controversies between religious denominations as to who shall use the money of the Government in this business of educating the Indians. It is an unseemly and unnatural condition of things in this country, and an improper condition of things, one that ought to be frowned down, and voted down, and put out of existence. There is no more reason why the Government of the United States shall make an alliance with religious denominations for education, than that a State should make an alliance with religious denominations for educational purposes. It is wrong, it is dangerous, it is mischievous, and I had hoped that the Committee on Indian Affairs this year, would take some steps towards breaking down this union of Church and State upon this subject. Instead of that, the chairman of the Committee consents, and they have agreed to add one more to the number of Catholic schools, although they have refused to add any other for any of the Protestant denominations. They allow the aggression to go still further. Mr. President, that is wrong, and if no other senator moves, I shall move to strike out the St. Boniface school from the provisions of this bill. I thought it right to make this statement in view of the mischief which underlies this whole system. Now, I desire to say one more thing in reference to what was stated by the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Davis), that this matter about the education of the Indians in the Blackfeet Reservation, I think it was, originated in 1885, under a promise, a pledge I believe he said, of the Secretary of the Interior, that Catholics there should have the control of the schools, and he promised to provide them with one hundred and sixty acres of land on which to place them. Mr. President, is it so that a pledge of the Secretary of the Interior is to control the policy of the Government? Is it so that a promise of the Secretary of the Interior is sufficient title for land, no title being made by authority of Congress or law? I do not assent to either proposition. I do not assent especially to a proposition, fraught with as much mischief as it is, to either the origination of a policy or the grant of the land. Prohibition Sunday Laws.
By Alonzo T. Jones
THE platform of the California State Prohibition Party, says:— We favor the enactment of a law requiring one day in seven as a day of rest, as a civil institution, but providing that where any individual habitually rests from labor upon a certain day of the week, such person shall not be required to rest upon any other day, but providing further that in no case shall intoxicating liquors be sold upon such rest days. This is another instance of the underhanded means by which the religious legislationists of the day, seek to secure laws enforcing their religious views. This statement is considerably involved. It does not say what is intended; and it pretends to say what it does not mean at all. First, “We favor the enactment of a law requiring one day in seven as a day of rest as a civil institution.” If a law were enacted in the very words here used, requiring everybody to rest “one day in seven,” the people who framed the above declaration would not admit for a moment that it was a right kind of a law. Next, after demanding a law that shall require one day in seven as a day of rest, it also requires that a provision shall be embodied in the law that “when any individual habitually rests from labor on any particular day of the week, such person shall not be required to rest upon any other day.” Will the Prohibitionists of California please explain how a person can rest from labor on a certain day of the week without resting one day in seven? And if the law which they want is to require only that people shall rest one day in seven, and any person is found who actually rests a certain day in the week, then what is the use of making any provision for his benefit? This betrays the fact that is not expressed,—that they intend that the law shall fix the one day in seven which they want as a day of rest. This intention, therefore, made it necessary that they should insert the provision that where any individual actually rests upon a certain day of the week, such individual shall not be required to rest upon any other day. Nor is this all. They not only intend268what they would not express, that they mean that the law shall fix the particular day; but they intend that the day shall be Sunday. Therefore this platform declares, in fact, for the enactment of a Sunday law. This we know by the documents that are sent out as campaign documents under the platform. R. H. McDonald, who is one of the leading Prohibitionists of California, was a member of the convention, and is an active worker in the campaign. He sent out circular letters to the newspapers, urging “upon all men of influence and conscience, the necessity of giving their aid in helping to remove from our country its terrible scourge, the liquor traffic,” in which he appeals to the members and friends “of the First Congregational Church, corner Post and Mason Streets, San Francisco,” and laments that “our Sunday or Sabbath day is widely desecrated” and “God’s holy day desecrated and put to shame.” In another document he and Mr. C. C. Clay and Wm. M. Cubery, announce that they have banded themselves “together with others interested, to do all we can for the securing of a Sunday law in this State, or one day in seven as a rest day.” It is addressed to the “fellow-citizens and the friends of the Sunday law, or one day in seven as a rest day,” and it says to these “respected friends” that they “herewith will find enclosed a number of extracts from opinions of distinguished individuals on the Sunday law, or one day in seven as a rest day.” Now, as it is evident that the Prohibitionists of California mean a Sunday law, and that only, why didn’t they say so? Why did they cover up their real meaning? Why is there such a juggling of phrases to hide what they want, rather than a plain statement of it? We hardly think they will succeed in catching the people of California with such chaff as that.
A. T. J. How They Stand.
By F. A. LASHIER
THE meeting of the National Educational Association, convened at St. Paul, Minn., July 8.
After the addresses of welcome, a number of responses were made. The following extracts from the sayings of prominent men of the country show the attitude they sustain toward the subject of religious liberty. President J. W. Strong, of Carleton College, addressed the assemblage eloquently on behalf of those institutions of the State which are not under State control, and for the educational interests of Minnesota. He said: “But there are in Minnesota other educational interests not under its direct control. Our private schools and our seminaries of learning are not technical parts of our system, but they play a great and important part in our work of education. These parts are in nowise antagonistic to each other, but aim at what the State can never give, a moral and religious training and symmetrical development, which in ordinary schools is not to be had. . . . We do not ask the State to teach religion, but we hold that for her own sake she must guard well religious liberty.” Dr. W. T. Harris, of Washington, D. C., said: “In your proffers of free education, we recognize a devoted interest in the fundamental principles of good government, and while your schools are conducted on this broad basis of virtue and intelligence, let us urge that to enhance their good work there must never be a substitution of school work for that of the Church; nor can it be done with safety.” IN these days when religious legislation is being pushed in every quarter, the true relation of Church and State cannot be kept too prominently before the people. We are not surprised that zealous church-members feel pressed in spirit because of the ungodliness that is sapping the life out of churches, and should be anxious to see something done to stay the tide of worldliness; but we would have them remember that to do a thing which Christ has never authorized, but has forbidden, is as bad as doing nothing. One evil can never be checked by another evil. The following extract from an article in the Presbyterian Quarterly for April, 1890, will help some to a clearer idea of what both the Church and the State may, and may not do:—
“From all that has been found in the word of God it will be seen that, under the New Testament dispensation, Church and State are intended by our Saviour to be absolutely separate and distinct. They are different spheres, touching at no point. They contain, to some extent, the same people, and take cognizance of the same sins and duties, under the same moral law, but deal with the people from a different point of view, with different ends in view. The State seeks temporal ends only, and requires civic duties. The Church seeks moral, eternal salvation. The State uses brute force; the Church, the sword of the Spirit. Incidentally, Church and State render assistance to each other, but they can only do so (lawfully) incidentally. The Church teaches the people morals, and instills submission, while the State affords protection. To summarize: 1. A foundation principle is that the moral law covers all of man's original duties, is personal in its application, but requires him to perform each branch of his duty toward its appropriate object. Duties are owed to God, other men, self, the Church, the family, the State, society. The individual owes his duty toward each, and each may hold him bound to perform the part due to itself; the Church may hold him responsible for the part owed to her; the State may hold him responsible for the part due to it, etc., but only God can hold man bound for his whole moral duty. 2. The Church is a spiritual body, seeking spiritual ends, and using spiritual means to accomplish them. Her allegiance is given to Christ, her spiritual Head. She has no lawful connection with any civil government, has no commission to indorse any, nor to support any, nor to destroy any, but is enjoined to teach submission to such as God may set up wherever Christian people live. 3. It is the business of the Church, by her standards and from her pulpits, to seek to declare the whole counsel of God. This will involve the teaching of the moral law in its bearing upon duties owed to God, man, the Church, the State, the family, society, commerce, letters, etc. The Church is to enforce all the moral principles taught in the word of God and all the details therein given. . . . The Church knows no State, further than to teach the people their duties toward any State which God in his providence may set up, and to see that her people lead exemplary lives in whatsoever positions they may occupy. The State knows no Church as such; she only knows individuals who constitute the State, and she requires of them only civic duties. So long as Church and State keep within their legitimate spheres, there can be no conflict between them.” The Civil Sabbath.
By A. F. Ballenger
THE advocates of Sunday legislation are making vigorous efforts to convince the country, that they are working only for a civil rest day in the interests of the laboring man, and are disavowing all attempts at religious legislation. Without questioning their sincerity in making the denial, we will endeavor to show that it is religious legislation, and as dangerous to religious liberty as though it was asked for in the name of religion. First, the Sabbath is the Lord's day, and God has commanded man to keep it holy. The duty to keep a Sabbath is therefore a duty we owe to God. Said Christ, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” For the Government to demand that we render to it the duty which God demands of us, is to require us to render to Cæsar that which belongs to God. Second, it is argued that the Sabbath is two-fold, having a religious, and a civil side, the latter being within the jurisdiction of the civil Government. Without stopping to discuss the position in itself, we will apply it to the first and second precepts of the decalogue. It will be269admitted at once that the worship of idols is degrading, and has a tendency to degrade man physically; but who will say that the Government should pass laws defining who the true God is, and demanding his worship on physical or sanitary grounds? Though it were admitted that there is a sanitary as well as a religious phase to the Sabbath, that does not make it a proper subject for legislation. Man needs sleep, but the Government does not retire its subjects at 9:30 P. M., and awaken them at five in the morning. It is necessary for man's physical well-being that he have food, but the Government does not say how much or when he shall take it. At this point in the discussion it is stated that man has a right to rest one-seventh part of time, and that one man's right to rest demands a law compelling all to rest. According to this reasoning, one man's right to marry demands a law compelling all to marry. The position to say the least is absurd. Let us next notice whether the demands for Sunday legislation are in harmony with the statement that only a civil Sabbath for the benefit of the working man is contemplated. Why, if this be true, do they propose to close the libraries on Sunday? Why close the theaters and other places of amusement? Why stop the running of Sunday excursions, so much patronized by the working man? These measures are manifestly in the interests of the religious idea of the day. The Fourth of July is a civil rest day, in the true sense of the term. All can rest if they choose, but such a day as this is farthest from their ideas of a civil Sabbath, and betrays the motive which actuated these so-called reformers. In one breath they declare for a civil Sabbath, and in the next deplore the sin of Sabbath breaking, and the tendency toward secularizing the day. Who are behind this movement? is a fair question to ask in determining its character. Not the working man, for there is not a workingman's organization in the country that is active in support of the measure. The fact that there are organizations among them to remove almost every grievance both real and imaginary, except the rest day, is indirect proof, at least, that it is not considered by them as a grievance of importance. Some are opposed to it, fearing the religious aspect which we have mentioned. This is shown from the appearance of Millard F. Hobbs, Master-workman of the Knights of Labor, of the District of Columbia, before the Committee having in charge the Breckinridge Sunday bill, and his speech against it. The fact that this civil-Sabbath legislation is being urged by the American Sabbath Union and other religious bodies, gives us reason to doubt its civil nature. “Do men gather figs of thistles?” Nor can we expect to reap a civil Sabbath from the sowing of the American Sabbath Union, based on the following article of its constitution:— ART. 2. Basis.—The basis of the American Sabbath Union is the divine authority and perpetual obligation of the Sabbath, etc. Granting, for the sake of argument, that it is a civil Sabbath that is desired, the difference is realized with them by a simple change in the name of the measure. The changes which transformed the Blair Sunday bill from a religious measure as introduced in the Fiftieth Congress, to the one now before that body, which they insist on calling a civil measure, were changes made in the title and the terms used in designating the day, the prohibitions and the penalties remaining the same. It would not greatly console a man who was behind the bars for doing honest labor in violation of such a law, to tell him he was not suffering from the operation of a religious law, as the title of the bill had been changed. Such a law would work hardship in the case of one who observed another day, although it were a civil enactment. To compel a man to rest on another day besides the one he believes God requires him to observe, is to rob him of one-sixth of his God-given time,—time which he needs to employ in providing for himself and family. To say that the law in most cases exempts such persons, does not remove the objection, as the exemption generally admits of such private work only, as will not disturb others, and must to a certain extent operate against the individual. There is, however, in these exemptions one of the strongest proofs that the measure is religious in character. If laboring on Sunday is made a crime, how can the crime be changed into a virtue, as in the case of an exemption, simply on the ground of religious convictions? Other laws are not placed on this basis. Laws against polygamy do not exempt because of religious convictions. On no other than a religious basis can it be argued that what is considered a crime in one individual is lawful in another. In one particular there is a striking parallel between this movement and the one which crucified our Saviour. The charges made against him before the Sanhedrim were all of a religious nature; blasphemy, claiming himself to be the Son of God, and speaking against the temple; but when his accusers appeared before Pilate, and found that he would not listen to these charges, they placed their accusations on a civil basis, declaring him to be an enemy of Cæsar in stirring up the people and refusing to pay tribute. These advocates of Sabbath legislation hate the civil Sabbath, that is, a Sabbath devoted to reading Sunday newspapers and pleasure seeking, as badly as the Jews hated Cæsar; but knowing the opposition of the people of the United States to religious legislation, they come to Congress, asking civil support for a day which in their Constitution they declare based wholly on “divine authority.” We are not opposed to the Sabbath or Sabbath reform; on the contrary we are in favor of both, but they must come by moral suasion, instead of an appeal to civil law which is dangerous to both civil and religious liberty.—A. F. Ballenger, in Home Missionary. MANY of the good people of Burlington are urging on a movement, through mistaken zeal, to force the observance of Sunday as a day of rest and religious worship. Their motives, however pious, are sadly at fault—alike antagonistic to the spirit of our Constitution and the teaching of the divine Master. However right according to his conscience, it may be for the Christian to set aside the first day of the week for reflection on the goodness and mercy, and for praise and worship of the Creator, there can be nothing but harm arise from the effort to coerce others not thus inspired with the spirit of worship or veneration, or who prefer other days or methods of manifesting their religious beliefs and duties. State enactments cannot invoke a moral force that does not exist in the masses of the people. First implant in the hearts of men a love for truth, goodness, and righteousness, and no use of policemen’s clubs or courts or other punitive measures will be needed to inspire adoration of the Creator’s works, or compel the keeping of his holy commands. The individual and not the State must be the one to whom teachers and pastors should appeal. “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Sunday, as the Christian Sabbath, is a religious institution. Its enforcement no more devolves upon the State than does that of the rite of baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, or other forms, symbols or ceremonies. The object of government is civil order and welfare. Its province does not extend to spiritual affairs.—Western Herald, Burlington, Iowa. THE Christian Index and Southern Baptist says:— The only governments in the world which are Christian, according to the Catholic Review, are those of Spain, Austria, and Ecuador. If this is true, then it is also true that a Christian government is no great gain to a people—a conclusion which refutes the assumption which it follows. The fact is that, in the sense of the New Testament no government is Christian, and least of all among civilized nations the governments that are Romanist.