The American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 41
A **RECENT** decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, holding that a barbePage 1
A RECENT decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, holding that a barber who kept his shop open on Sunday violated the statutes prohibiting all labor on the Lord’s Day except works of necessity and charity, provoked the following comment by the editor of the Albany Times:— ‘Why the Philadelphia judges should hold that it is Sabbath-breaking for a barber to shave a customer on Sunday, but not for the customer to shave himself, is one of those queer things that none but Philadelphia lawyers could fathom. If the shaving be work and labor, why is it not equally work and labor if performed by an individual upon his own countenance? And again, if Sunday shaving be work and labor, what is putting on one’s coat or one’s clean shirt to be called? Is not the one as necessary to a decent appearance at church service as the other? Does not a decent respect for the house of worship require a man to appear in it with a clean face, as well as in a clean collar and polished shoes? And if the law will not allow the barber to shave his cheeks and chin, why does it permit his cook to prepare his dinner, his waitress to serve it up, and him to eat it? Where does Sunday work and labor begin, and where does it end? They Agree on the Main Point.
By C. P. B.
WE have several times remarked that the only real difference between Romanists and Protestants on the educational question is, that the former want State aid in teaching Catholicism, while the latter want the State to pay for teaching Protestantism. We now propose to offer a little proof directly on this point. The Catholic Review, published in this city, is certainly a representative Catholic paper. In its issue of August 30, appeared an article, entitled, “Why Should Not the State Pay for Religious Instruction?” in which strong ground was taken in favor of that very thing. The Review says:— To make a man truly moral you must reach his conscience, and the conscience can be effectually reached only by the powerful motives and sanctions of religion which looks to the Author of conscience and recognizes the imperative obligation to obey Him. To bring those motives and sanctions to bear upon the life and conduct they must be enforced by definite, thorough and authoritative teaching of the doctrines and precepts of religion. . . . Banish God from your curriculum, or in any degree weaken the ligaments that bind the conscience to the throne of God, and by just so much you let loose the unbridled passions of men, and introduce knavery, insubordination and every evil work. Now, if religion be so essential an element in the formation of good moral citizens, why should the Government be so unwilling to encourage it in its system of education of the rising generation? Why, evidently, the State ought to encourage it. It ought to hold out every inducement in its power and be willing to furnish every facility to the different religious bodies for making religion the foundation and informing spirit of their system of education.
There is no mistaking the meaning of this language. It is a plea for State aid to parochial schools, for no Catholic would admit for a moment that the State can or ought to teach religion; the State should, however, pay the Church for teaching it, is the Catholic theory. And now let us turn to the Protestants and see what they say. In the Christian Statesman, of August 14, is an article, in which occurs this language:— Beyond doubt the God of storms is angry. As a Nation we have forgotten him. . . . Him and his word we have ruled out largely from the sphere of Government. We have said, “We will not have this man to rule over us.” This is the declaration of the fundamental law of our land, and the effects are to be seen in all the ramifications of our Government. The secular theory of Government is at the bottom of most of America’s woes. The Bible is ignored. It cannot be taught in the schools where our youth, who are to manage governmental affairs, are trained. Many of these youth get no religious training at home or in any Sabbath school, therefore they grow up practically heathen; unless they absorb some religion or religious convictions by social contact with good people, they will know but little about Christianity.
The meaning of this is also unmistakable; it is that, as a Nation we ought to see to it that our youth receive religious instruction, and that that instruction should be imparted through the medium of the public schools. And herein is the difference, and the only difference on this question between very many Protestants and the whole body of Roman Catholics, namely, the Protestants want the Protestant Bible and Protestant religion taught in the public schools, while the Catholics want the State to give them a portion of the school funds in order that they may the more easily maintain their own schools in which to teach the Roman Catholic religion. In either event the State would322pay for the teaching of religion, and in effect become a partner of the Church in the business of giving religious instruction. It follows that when they reproach one another for endeavoring to secure some advantage by an alliance with the State, it is nothing more than the pot calling the kettle black. The moral of all this is that there is but one proper course for the State to pursue in the matter of education, namely, to provide facilities for giving not an irreligious, but a purely secular education to all children not otherwise provided for, and leaving to the Church and to the home the teaching of religion. To attempt any other system would be to belittle religion and destroy our common school system. C. P. B. SAYS the Christian Statesman:— The platform of the Prohibition party, in Pennsylvania, retains the familiar pregnant acknowledgment of Almighty God as the source of all power and authority in civil government. It follows that should that party come into power it would attempt to define and to enforce the will of God, and herein lies the evil of such acknowledgment by parties and by governments. Every individual should not only acknowledge, but should yield allegiance to God for himself, and should do all that he can, by persuasion, to induce others to do the same, but political parties should do nothing of the kind for they are organized for the express purpose of administering the government, and as government is force, for a political party to make such an acknowledgment as that quoted above, is simply to avow the purpose to force upon all the people their interpretation of the will of God. God has not committed such power to men. A Warning for the Clergy.
THE Municipal League is working hard to initiate the clergy as practical politicians, and it seems to be having very fair success in some quarters. The novelty of the business is not without its attractions for parsons who find their religious duties monotonous, and are glad of an opportunity to take a hand in political strategy. The League is trying to enlist both Christian clergymen and Jewish rabbis; but the Hebrew Standard warns the teachers of its faith to be on their guard against the allurements of these banded politicians. “We confidently hope,” it says, “that every Jewish minister will refuse participating in the affair.” It thinks that the ministers should attend to their appointed functions, and be content to preach religious principles of conduct, instead of electioneering for a political party. The advice is good. If the parsons can infuse the spirit of true religion into the community, there will be no need of getting up any so-called reform movement in politics. If every individual proceeds to reform himself, the government of the town is sure to be all right; and the purpose of religion is to bring about that individual reform. That is what the churches are for, and so far as they fail there, they fail in their spiritual mission. They cannot compensate for the failure by undertaking to begin at the other end and to teach men how to perform their secular duties. Their function is to purify men’s hearts and regenerate their souls, and when that work is done, righteous conduct will follow, necessarily. Neither is it probable that the parsons will contribute anything toward the purification of politics where politics require to be purified. When they start out to apply the methods of politics in their churches and church convocations, we all know that the devil rejoices over the prospect of a rich harvest of wickedness. The sweetness and harmony of religious fellowship are transformed into the trickery and bitterness of battle. The clergy enlisted by this League are going into politics as partisans of its particular ticket. Their congregations are divided, the great majority of them supporting the Democracy, against whom the League ticket is to be run. How, then, can there be peace and good will in the churches? Where will the pastors be after election, when the increased acrimony of the strife has left its results in heart-burning and disappointment, triumph and exultation? They will have to remain as political leaders, with such a remnant of partisan followers as they can retain, and their churches will be League churches, not Christian communions. The bond of union will be political, and not religious, agreement. The people who want religion only, will go elsewhere. Therefore we are not surprised that the Hebrew paper warns the Jewish rabbis to keep out of the trap set for the ministers by this League of self-seeking politicians. They are sure to be harmed if they are caught in it, and will be able to extricate themselves only after having lost in both moral and religious power and influence. Failure as politicians may teach them a useful lesson, but the obstacles in the way of their spiritual prosperity will be greatly increased and multiplied because of it. Yet many of them seem determined to find this out by actual experience.—The Sun. Keep Church and State Separate.
By A. T. J.
THE St. Louis Globe-Democrat runs into the same way of error with several other papers on the subject of the Bennett law and the opposition to it. It makes the opponents of the law to be “the opponents of the English language,” while they are nothing of the kind. They teach English in their schools; their children learn to speak English; they themselves learn it and use it on occasion. It is a total perversion of the question at issue to make the action of the opponents of the Bennett law to be against the English language or its use. The sole point at issue is whether the State shall assume control of the private schools and dictate what shall be taught there, or how it shall be taught. Again the Globe-Democrat misstates the question when it says:— In the matter of the regulation of the schools the people will not submit to dictation from any church or churches, however widely extended or powerful. In this contest there is no attempt whatever on the part of either of the churches concerned to dictate to the State in any way in the matter of the regulation of the State schools. It is strictly and really a denial of the right of the State to dictate in the matter of their own, private schools. As the State would be right in resenting dictation from any church in the matter of the regulation of the State schools, so any church is right in resenting the dictation of the State in the regulation of the church schools. Such action on the part of the churches is only allegiance to the principle of the absolute separation between Church and State. For, for any church to assume control of the State schools or dictate in any manner whatever what shall be taught there, or how, would be a union of Church and State; and it is none the less a union of Church and State when the State presumes to assume control of the church schools and dictate what shall be taught there, and how it shall be taught. Whoever pleads for the separation of Church and State indeed, will be an open straightforward opponent of the Bennett law, and everything like it. ’Sunday-Law Arrogance.
By A. T. J.
IN the Christian Union of July 26, Dr. Lyman Abbott, the editor, says on the question of Sunday:— The current notion that Christ and his apostles authoritatively substituted the first day of the week for the seventh is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament. This statement is undoubtedly true, as any one may satisfy himself by carefully reading the New Testament. It is also the view held by other leading Protestant doctors, notably Dr. Schaff, and by other leading publications, for instance, the Christian at Work. In the same paper from which we make the above quotation, in “Home Talks about the Word,” Emily Huntington Miller on the subject of Christ, says:— He taught by his example. He always kept holy the Sabbath day. Now it is absolutely certain that Christ did not keep the first day of the week, but the seventh day according to the commandment, the day which all the Jews were observing. There was never any controversy about whether that day should be observed or not. The contention raised by the Pharisees against the Saviour was not whether that day should be kept, but how it should be kept. The day, therefore, which Christ kept holy was not the first day of the week; and, as he taught by his example, it is evident that there is no force whatever in his teaching by example in favor of the observance of the first day of the week. This is the doctrine and this is the logic of these two quotations from the Christian Union. This is the truth as acknowledged by these two writers, and this journal. And being the truth, what basis is there in revelation, religion, or reason, for all these preachers and associations so urgently demanding the enactment of laws and the strict enforcement of the laws already in existence, to compel people to respect the first day of the week as the Lord’s day, the Sabbath day, or the Christian Sabbath? Such statements as these from those who believe in the observance of the first day of the week, plainly shows what THE SENTINEL has always insisted upon, viz.,323that the movement to secure the enactment and enforcement of Sunday laws, is nothing more nor less than a scheme of ambitious preachers to secure control of the civil power to force upon people their own will for the will of God. Such a thing would be bad enough if it were truly the will of God which they sought to enforce; but when it is their own will that they intend to put in the place of the will of God, and compel people to obey it as the will of God, then it is infinitely worse. The scheme is nothing less than an effort to put themselves in the place of God, and so to erect here a living likeness to a power which did that same thing before; that is, the Papacy. A. T. J. Should the State Regulate Morals?
By H. F. Phelps
THIS is an important question, and one that every American citizen should understand, and be able to answer intelligently. In order to have a more correct understanding of the question it will be necessary to define the terms used. “Morality is the relation of conformity or non-conformity to the true moral standard, or rule. . . . The conformity of an act to the divine law.” The “divine law,” is universally acknowledged as being “summarily contained in the Decalogue,” written by the finger of God on the tables of stone. From this, it is plain that morality pertains solely to God, having reference to man's relation to his Maker. It must also be just as plain that, with these, civil governments or civil rulers can have nothing to do. For civil governments were ordained to rule, not in the things of God, but in the things pertaining to civil matters—the relation of man to his fellow-man or to the government itself. Civil government therefore can have no right to enforce or regulate acts of conformity or non-conformity of its subjects to the divine law. And an attempt, even of this kind, is only an attempt to regulate matters of conscience, and civil government can have nothing to do with conscience. It is true, in every sense of the word, that, “Sabbath desecration is to be deplored.” But, as the Sabbath is an institution of heaven, and the command for the Sabbath is found in the moral law, and all moral questions pertains to God's government, the observance or non-observance of the Sabbath should be left to the individual conscience of every subject of civil government. And farther, if the above propositions are correct, the civil government has no right whatever, even to try to enforce a moral question, a question that pertains to man's relation to his Maker; and it must be clearly seen, that to attempt such a thing is exalting the civil government above God himself, for God never forces obedience from his creatures. It will never do to say that this is a temperance measure, for if a person who drinks, knows that he will be prohibited from getting it on any one day in seven, he will get enough on the day preceding, to supply his supposed needs. Then, again, what may or may not be considered a desecration of the Sabbath, can only be decided by an appeal to divine law. And here, again, we are met with differences of opinion and interpretation. Thus again we see this must be left to the individual conscience, and not to civil authority, unless we adopt the principle that “might makes right,” and then let questions of conscience be settled by majorities. Lord Macaulay ironically says, that in matters of conscience “majorities are all right, when I'm in the majority; but all wrong when I'm in the minority.” To illustrate still farther, we will take the case of the infidel. Has he no rights? He has no convictions or scruples as to the Sabbath. Would it be right for the Christian, who might be in the majority, to compel him to observe a Christian institution? It would be all right and proper if it would be right for the infidel, who might be in the majority, to declare that there was no Sabbath, and compel Christians to labor on the Sabbath. But if one is wrong so is the other. It must, therefore, be clear to all, that the only position for the civil government, or local authorities, is simply to protect every man in his rights; the Christian in keeping the Sabbath, and the infidel in not keeping it. If we should try to compel a man who is not a Christian, to act as do the Christians, we should only make a hypocrite of him who otherwise might be a good citizen, and thus he would become a dangerous man, and hence a dangerous citizen. Let us be consistent, and look at this question from the stand-point of the Golden Rule. “Therefore all things, whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Keep Them Separate.
By W. T. Harris
It seems to me clear that it is better to separate religious instruction from secular instruction, and to place it in a different school—a school connected with the church. . . . If the pupil leaves the secular school and repairs to the church for a religious lesson, the impression made upon him is much stronger than the same lesson given in the secular school in connection with secular lessons. Careful observers of the effects of the religious lessons placed on programmes of schools in Germany, and Austria, and other nations, tell us that where the secular studies are taught according to the true method the pupils are prone to hold in a sort of contempt the contents of their religious lessons. They are apt to bring their critical intellects to bear on dogmas and become skeptical of religious truth altogether. It is well-known that the people of Germany are much given to skepticism. Its educated class is famous for its “free-thinking,” so-called. The French educated class, all of which was in its youth under parochial school influence, is atheistic. All Protestant nations are agreed that there should be a separation of Church and State. The Catholic laity all over the world is nearly unanimous in the same opinion. I think that even the Catholic priesthood, at least in the United States, holds this view. The separation of Church and State implies the separation of Church and school. The Church and State are separated in the interest of the perfection of both. . . . The concession made in Savannah, Poughkeepsie, and a few other places, viz: a compromise which permits Catholic religious exercises before and after school in the school room, or which permits the teacher to wear the garb of some Catholic order—the garb of the sisters or the priesthood—militates against the public character of the school and cannot be conceded as a possible compromise.—W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, in Independent. Strengthening the Hands of the Enemy.
By C. P. B.
THE Truth Seeker, of this city, occasionally says some very good and sensible things. Here is a sample:— The State should not pay for religious instruction in the public schools, for the reason that it is not the State's business. Religion is a question for each person to decide for himself. The public schools are for the children of every one, and it could not be otherwise than a wrong inflicted upon some child to have religion taught therein—some Freethinker, some Protestant, some Catholic, some Jew. And for the State to provide schools for each sect would be impossible. It would ruin the people to pay the taxes to support them. There are some two hundred sects of Christians in the world, and the United States has samples of about all of them. Schools would have to be multiplied forty-fold. There is no feasible plan to educate children in public schools that will not work injustice except to make them strictly secular, and leave their religious education to their parents. This is sound; but not so with this precious bit of baseless assertion from the same article:— It seems to be necessary to continually remind the priests that morality has nothing to do with religion. Morality appeals to the experience of mankind. It cares nothing about faith, nothing about sacred books. Morality depends upon facts, something that can be seen, something known, the product of which can be estimated. But morality has much to do with religion, and we doubt not that even the Truth Seeker admits it practically, even if it does not as a theory. We have known the Truth Seeker to remark upon the immorality of professed Christians as something not in accordance with their profession. Why, if morality has nothing to do with religion? The Truth Seeker certainly knows better.324 But we quote again from the same article:— The State should not teach religion for another reason. Religion is the enemy of the State, in that it diverts the attention of men from this world to another, and teaches them to sacrifice this world to that other. This weakens the ties that hold families and States together, and has a tendency to reduce society to anarchy. The paper that uses such arguments (?) against the teaching of religion, is simply strengthening the hands of those who would make our public schools auxiliary to the Church. Every unprejudiced man knows that true Christianity, is not “the enemy of the State.” Both Christ and the apostles taught submission to rightful authority; and while Christianity teaches that a good hope of eternal life should be the first and great concern of every man, it also exhorts to diligence in business; and every infidel in the land knows that wherever you find a good Christian, one who is really worthy of the name, you find a good citizen, a good neighbor, and a good husband and father. Christianity guards the family, and cements family ties as nothing else can, and it is surprising that the Truth Seeker should deny it. The editor of that paper should read the twelfth chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans, and learn what practical Bible Christianity is. C. P. B. The Divine Basis.
By W. H. M.
An awakened moral conviction throughout the land must precede civil Sunday statutes, otherwise such legislation will be loose and below the divine standard. The natural rules of construction upon which language is founded, and the inexorable necessity for a certain consecutiveness in mental action, make it well nigh impossible but that falsehood and misstatement should often bear unconscious and unintentional testimony to the truth. It is so in this case. Before there is likely to be any legislation upon the Sunday question purely on a civil basis,—that is, before purely civil Sunday statutes will ever be passed, and the religious statutes upon Sunday observance be expurgated from the law books,—there must be “an awakened moral conviction throughout the land;” otherwise such legislation will certainly be below the “divine standard.” But what would be the divine standard of “civil Sunday statutes”? We have the divine standard of religious Sabbath statutes in Exodus 20: 8, 9, 10: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” However, this law would not apply in any respect to Sunday, as the day mentioned in the divine statute quoted is the seventh day, and Sunday is the first day; it is manifest, therefore, that we must look elsewhere for the divine standard. No human court of law would accept the assertion in Exodus, “The seventh day is the Sabbath,” etc., as authority for a law on the statute book of any State, that “no servile labor shall be performed on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday.” Certainly not, the discrepancy is too patent. Such an assumption would be preposterous. A careful search of the divine statute book from the first phrase, “In the beginning,” at the opening of Genesis, to the “Amen,” which closes the last chapter of Revelation, fails to produce a single precedent; Sunday must therefore stand solely upon its own worth as a secular day, with such extra dignity as human laws may have conferred upon it. Finding no standard then by which human legislation may regulate itself as to the day in particular, it will be necessary to consider the other branch of the question, and ask what divine standard we are given by which to regulate civil Sunday legislation, as well as all other civil legislation? Upon this we have the authority of Christ himself in Luke 20: 25; and Matt. 22: 21, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” And again in another place, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” The divine standard by which all human legislation must be governed is here given. The first principle laid down is that that which is God’s is extra judicial, entirely, and cannot be trenched upon by civil regulations, either to be added to, detracted from, or in any way to be made a subject of adjudication. Civil Sunday statutes, then, must be confined solely to such regulations of civil affairs, upon that day, as is acknowledged to be fit for the maintenance of good order and general civility upon the Fourth of July, and other legal holidays. For if it is a religious regulation it conflicts with the “divine standard,” and if purely civil it must contain no religious element. All civil Sunday statutes must also be strictly impartial; there must be in them nothing whatever which might not be equally applicable to any other day; otherwise they will be found to conflict here and there with the standard, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” When will there be “throughout this land” such an awakening of “moral convictions” as will raise our civil statutes to the divine standard? And when will the law-makers, and those who appoint them, understand that the statutes of God are his, and that he has drawn an unalterable line of demarkation between them and the civil regulations which he has granted man the privilege and the ability of establishing for himself? If it were possible for that day ever to come, there would be found in it no “loose legislation” in which men would go outside their legislative sphere to enforce or interpret divine laws, or under the title “Civil Sunday” to enforce a religious Sabbath. W. H. M. An Answer to Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts on the Sunday Amusement Question.
By W. A. Colcord
THERE is a class of men lecturing through the country at the present time, who unquestionably take unwarranted positions on the subject of the conduct of the people on Sunday, and what is proper Sunday observance; and they wish to force everybody to conform to their ideas. We use the term force in its most literal sense, that of physical compulsion. That these men have a perfect right to their ideas as to what is proper Sunday observance, and also by tongue and pen to labor to persuade men to endorse and adopt them, no one for a moment denies. But the doctrine of coercion which they advocate is radically wrong, and deserves to be frowned upon by every intelligent citizen and lover of civil and religious liberty. These men are trying to work the people, or one class of people, up to such a pitch of religious zeal that they will demand that their ideas on religion shall be enacted into law, and forced upon all classes,325irrespective of their religious convictions or non-convictions. Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts is a prominent lecturer among this class of religio-political enthusiasts. He endeavors to prove that all amusements on Sunday should be prohibited by law, and claims that this can be done on a purely civil basis. The way he says it can be done is by asserting that Sunday amusements are not only sins against God, but “crimes against man.” Now we submit that when an amusement on Saturday is acknowledged to be a harmless entertainment to mankind, it will be difficult, on a civil basis, to show that it is crime on Sunday. There is no law in logics or physics within the realms of civility by which this can be shown. Such a thing is impossible. It might as well be argued that the sun’s rays shining on a certain day are detrimental to vegetation. Divest Sunday or any other day of its religious character, and the absurdity of the claim that harmless amusements, on that day, are crimes against men, will at once appear. Did not some regard Sunday religiously, no one would be heard decrying Sunday amusements. This is confirmed by the fact that none but the religious, or those catering to religious influences, are heard asking for laws to suppress them. This being so, Mr. Crafts’s statement that these things are prohibited, or asked to be prohibited, “not because Sunday amusements are regarded by Christians as sinful,” is certainly false. The truth told, this is just the reason the prohibition is asked. Christians have the same rights in civil matters as other men; but they have no right whatever to force, by civil measures, their religious customs and ideas upon those who differ from them on religious questions. They may observe whatever day they please, and the Government protects them in the exercise of their rights, so long as they are civil. But they have no right, whether in the minority or majority, to institute measures whereby they can force all to conform to their religious ideas and practices. In other words, they have no right to deprive other men of their rights. Sunday amusements will break up no churches if the church members stay away from them, which it is their undisputed privilege to do. And if any of the members persist in attending them, there certainly is no civil law prohibiting the other members from “churching” them. Neither are there any Russian laws in this country to prevent any church from preaching, praying, writing, talking, singing, and pleading against such things as “sins against God;” but they should remember that sins against God are not within the purview of civil government. If they will read their Bible they will find that God says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” The sphere of the Church is moral suasion; but law in civil matters means compulsion. When men talk law they talk force; but the great commission of Christ to his disciples was not, “Go ye into all the world and force men to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” but to “teach them.” The best way we know for Sunday observers to preserve that day as the Sabbath, is for them to keep it and teach others to keep it. And there is nothing to prevent them from doing this; but for them to try and preserve it by forcing others to keep it who do not believe in keeping it, at least as they do, is both un-American and un-Christian.—W. A. Colcord, in Iowa State Register. FREETHINKERS have discovered that they, as well as the Mormons, might easily be disfranchised under the Idaho test oath. Commenting upon that oath, and how it would affect seventh-day Christians should Idaho adopt a rigid Sunday law, the Truth Seeker says:— It occurs to us also that the Freethinkers are in the same boat. It is true that infidels do not teach as a religious duty that labor on Sunday is particularly righteous, but they do teach that it is just as righteous as working on any day. This they do from a common-sense standpoint, which would come under the statutory description of “otherwise” than as a religious duty. Therefore, if Idaho shall by law define labor on Sunday as a crime, and disfranchise all who advise, teach, counsel, or encourage it, the Freethinkers of the State, and they are legion, will have to be hypocrites or be classed with Mormons and deprived of their voting rights. So it is with a great many other things which are artificially made crimes by legislation. In some States, like New Jersey, for instance, speaking contumeliously of Christ is blasphemy, and blasphemy is a crime. Yet there are thousands of Freethinkers, particularly in the boundless West, who . . . do speak of Christ in just that manner. . . . But suppose Idaho should borrow New Jersey’s blasphemy law. . . . And with a prohibitory law, beer-sellers would be disfranchised, and so would all anti-prohibitionists who advise resistance to the law. . . . The oath, therefore, very plainly goes too far. If it should be rigorously administered, the voters of Idaho would be diminished to an extremely small proportion of the population. Most people object to one or more of their State’s statutes, and suppose Anarchists Tucker and Pentecost, who object to all laws, should move out to Idaho—why, two of the most intelligent and best citizens of the State couldn’t get within miles of the polls. It is indeed apparent that the Idaho test oath does, as we said a week or two ago, go too far. It ought to be abolished. The Bible in Our Public Schools.
THE following synopsis of a sermon preached at Freehold, N. J., by Rev. W. J. Gill, of Englishtown, is from the Freehold Transcript:— “Let everybody read the Bible,” said the speaker—“thoughtfully, prayerfully, earnestly—but not carelessly, presumptuously—perhaps even brazenly—in the school room or elsewhere. Do not secularize the sacred volume. Do not lay unworthy hands upon it, nor force it on the unwilling. Righteousness is not imparted by rule, arbitrarily. But ‘the righteous shall inherit the earth.’ Do not fear that our public schools will become godless. The Bible will be read and reverently taught in other ways and all appropriate places. It is the business of the religious world to see that it is,—of the Christian denomination to carry it into every consenting household, and popularize it in every wise and proper manner. The work is theirs and they will do it. They cannot delegate it to the secular, or the sinners, the godless or the alien. Nor should they seek to. Interpretation of the inspired word should be committed only to competent, I had almost said, to consecrated instructors. Cherishing it, and holding it in reverence themselves—interpenetrated and enthused by it, they will teach it in the love of it, and commend it to others because of the beneficent influence it has visibly exerted upon their own lives.” Mr. Gill premised by saying that he had something to say on what might be termed “State Religion in our Public Schools.” “Bible reading,” he said, “and prayers in our public schools are a relic of the old State religions. The Puritans of New England, have in the main, the honor of originating our common schools, and with them they established a State religion in these schools as well as in the church; and by extreme severity they enforced conformity so long as they could. The public finally refused to tolerate the Congregational Church as the State religion supported by enforced taxation. The public school is a State institution and therefore its religion is a State religion, a State church. Its minister is the school teacher who is paid by the State for conducting certain specified religious exercises and devotions. Now, it is a generally admitted principle in America that religion should be voluntary, and not imposed by the State, and the support of it enforced by penal legislation. That principle demands the extinction of State churches in our public schools. Religious exercises should not be enjoined on the teacher; for if enjoined they are to be paid for by taxation. Therefore let all laws requiring prayers and Bible reading as a religious exercise be repealed. If we are to have a State religion in our public schools we shall always have the poorest religion in the largest quantity, for the religious body which has the lowest grade of spiritual life, and the most developed spirit and organization for political action and influence, will have its creatures and adherents most largely in these places, and receive the largest proportion of public money. Thus in proportion to their numbers the Catholics are now receiving from five to twenty times as much as the Protestants, all over this country; and they are annually increasing that proportion, and anticipate a coming time, not far off, when they shall have all; and nothing else is their aim and demand. In practical meaning and force the Bible is a sectarian book. It is Protestant and anti-Papal. This the Papists have confessed by their hatred and fear of it, and by their steady and cruel persecutions of its readers, for more than a thousand years. Therefore it is not right to force them to hear it read in the public schools and to pay for the reading. Besides, a growing number of these public school teachers of religion are Catholics, and to require them to read the Bible is a species of persecution; and they will read it in such a way and select such passages, as will make a burlesque of the whole affair. The same may be said of all who have not a true spirit of devotion, and a loving reverence for the sacred book; and very many are lacking here, who are otherwise excellent teachers. They are not educated to be religious, but secular, teachers; and only as secular are they hired, or should be. It is their secular knowledge and ability which determine their grade and standing. And for a bad or irreligious man to be the leader of public worship, is not only absurd and offensive, but deleterious to religious life and feeling. Next, consider also who it is that usually appoints these teachers—‘ward politicians,’ a phrase which has become a synonym for what is beneath even the average moral and spiritual worth. These326men are the directors of our State religion. They are, or they appoint, the trustees of our public schools, and so they appoint the ministers of our State church. How much will they be concerned for the religious qualifications of these ministers, and how well qualified are they to judge of fitness for such an office? Clearly the whole affair is absurd, as a method of fostering religion, and utterly contrary to the spirit of our free institutions. It is an anachronism which ought to be corrected.”