National Reform Success Means Religious Persecution
Page 1
The American Sentinel
Nov 27, 1889
Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 27, 1889
National Reform Success Means Religious Persecution.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
This is most strenuously denied by all National Reformers, just as we should naturally expect; because if they should claim, or even admit, that the success of their movement would involve persecution, they could not proceed a step further. As a matter of course, we expect that they will deny that persecution will follow the success of their movement. Doubtless a great majority of them are sincere in this denial, because they have never taken the trouble to look to the end of their work; and of all people in the world National Reformers seem to be most oblivious to the teachings of history; but their denials amount to nothing in the face of the declarations that they have made from the beginning, and are still making. We will quote a few statements.
Before the first annual meeting of the association, an address to the public in behalf of the cause was prepared by the Rev. T. P. Stevenson, W. W. Spear, D.D., and Wm. Getty, Esq., in which the following statement was made:—
“It must be deplored that in a Constitution so universally and so justly admired and loved and studied by the American people, there is nothing to turn the mind of the nation to God, to inculcate reverence for the authority of his Son, or respect for his word.”
This shows plainly that the design of the National Reformers is to so modify the Constitution that the government will act as a teacher of religion. In the address of Dr. Johnathan Edwards, at the New York convention, in 1873, it was said of the Constitution:—
“We want to put the people into it; the people in full, with their deep and noble reverence for God, the greatest and best, and for his word as the underlying and paramount law.”
Again: In the Cincinnati convention, in 1872, Rev. A. D. Mayo, D.D., in an address on religion in public schools, said that “the State should teach the existence, sovereignty, and providence of God, and the duty of all men and nations to obey his laws; the spiritual nature, moral obligation, natural rights, and immortal life of man; the binding obligation of the morality of Jesus Christ as the only universal moral law; the acceptance of the New Testament morality as the moral constitution of every civilized State.” He further said that the State is bound to see that the religious morality essential to good citizenship is taught.
At a convention held in Monmouth, Ill., September 29, 1884, Rev. M. A. Gault said:—
“This movement includes the triumph of every moral reform. Every true reform is simply an effort to get back to some one of the ten commandments. If that law was recognized as the standard of legislation, and if public sentiment was educated up to that standard, it would do away with lying, stealing, intemperance, profanity, Sabbath desecration, licentiousness, murder, and every evil that now vexes society.”
These statements show that the proposed reform contemplates simply the adoption of the Bible as the law of the land. This was plainly declared by Dr. Edwards in the New York convention. He said:—
“If there be anything in the law of Moses which the coming of Christ and the subsequent overthrow of Judaism did not abrogate, let them be pointed out (and there cannot be many of them), and we are prepared to accept them, and have them re-enacted.”
We say that with such a Constitution as this, persecution would be inevitable; but as facts are better than arguments, we will give an instance illustrative of the working of such a Constitution in the past.
The New York Observer of March 22, 1888, contained the fifth of a series of articles on John Calvin, written by the Rev. James M. Ludlow, D.D. The articles were, as a matter of course, eulogistic of Calvin. The article in the issue referred to was upon the trial of Servetus, and the last days of Calvin. Having mentioned the visit of Servetus to Geneva, and his arrest and trial, the Doctor says:—
“The specific charge against Servetus was that of teaching contrary to the Bible doctrines; but this was only a specification under the more general charge of attempting to destroy the peace, and, indeed, the existence, of the Genevan State. The Genevans had adopted the Bible as a part of their constitution, and every citizen had sworn to defend it; Servetus was thus the foe to the civil order. It was in no sense an ecclesiastical trial, but one which belonged to the civil court, by which it was conducted. Calvin was an expert witness on the points raised, not a judge. That the animus was not that of religious rancor is evident from the fact that Calvin himself was at the same time in fraternal correspondence with acknowledged heretics, like Socinus. But when the heresy was made a lever for the overthrow of the republic, it became a different matter, and the Genevans would have been unworthy of their political existence if they had not been willing to defend it.”
The Genevans had a model National Reform government; and the burning of Servetus was a natural result, just as Dr. Ludlow says. And the fact that a man can be found who will apologize for the burning of Servetus, and who will say that it was not an ecclesiastical trial, still at the same time admitting that it was the result of the Bible being adopted as a part of the constitution, is sufficient evidence that if the National Reformers should succeed in having the Bible adopted as part of the Constitution, doctors of divinity and influential teachers would not be lacking who would defend persecution under it.
But note that it is denied that the burning of Servetus was persecution, or that his trial was an ecclesiastical trial. It is stated that his heresy was made a lever for the overthrow of the government. But how could a heresy affect the government?—Simply because the Bible had been adopted as a part of the constitution—not necessarily the Bible as it reads, but the Bible as interpreted by those in authority; and, therefore, whoever differed in opinion from the established belief concerning the Bible, was talking treason and violating the civil law. If it be denied that the execution of the law in such cases is persecution, then there never was persecution; for when the early martyrs were put to death it was only because they were violating the laws of Rome. James and Paul were beheaded simply because their conscientious convictions in regard to the Bible compelled them to violate the civil law of Rome. And so with what we have been accustomed to call the Roman Catholic persecution in the Dark Ages. If the trial of Servetus was not an ecclesiastical trial, and his execution was not religious persecution, simply because in differing with Calvin concerning the Scriptures he was going contrary to the law of the State, then the Catholics never persecuted anybody; for Cranmer, and Ridley, and Huss, and Jerome of Prague, and thousands of others who were burned at the stake, were tried and put to death for disobeying civil laws. The laws of the church were the laws of the State. The one who defends the burning of Servetus must likewise defend the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day, and the destruction of the Huguenots and Albigenses. All these people were put to death simply because the Bible, as interpreted by the priests, was a part of the civil law of those countries. The Catholic Church says that all these persons were punished by the State as law breakers. This is in one sense true; but they neglect to state that the church apprehended them, and priests tried them. The Inquisition found them guilty of violating the ecclesiastico-civil law, and they handed them over to the State for punishment, recommending them always to mercy, but expressly stipulating that they should be burned at the stake; and the civil power, as the servant of the church, was bound to obey.
Let the State become the servant of the church again, according to National Reform ideas, and let anybody’s interpretation of the Bible, we care not whose, become a part of the civil law, and the same thing will take place again. It cannot be otherwise, for the State is bound to enforce whatever laws it enacts. If it enacts laws concerning matters of faith and doctrine, then it is bound to punish the man who differs from the established faith. But such punishment is simply religious persecution.
The cool way in which Dr. Ludlow disposes of Servetus, finds a parallel in the way that men defend the enforcement of Sunday laws at the present time. Says he:—
“If there was one place in the world the fugitive should have avoided, it was Geneva. The laws of that place he knew were very strict. Calvin had long before warned him not to come there to disturb the peace. The people of that commonwealth had the right to protect their political existence. They had fought for twenty years to get rid of Catholic tyranny, and were now in a life-and-death struggle with the Libertine element. Yet Servetus turned up in Geneva. His purpose was clear. Here the Romish Inquisition could not follow him, for the Calvinists would defend him against that. But while thus receiving their hospitality, he could get a dagger under the fifth rib of Calvinism by siding with the Libertines.”
We say that this is simply abominable. The man that could coolly write such a paragraph as that would be a worthy companion of Loyola, and a ready tool of the Inquisition. He says that Calvin had warned Servetus not to come to Geneva to disturb the peace, and that the people had a right to protect their political existence. But what was their politics?—It was Calvinism. Servetus’ disturbing the peace did not consist in beating drums, or doing noisy work during public service, or in making any demonstrations whatever, but in writing and talking against Calvinism, as Dr. Ludlow himself says. The sum of his offense was opposition to Calvinism. For this and this alone he was burned. And a professed Protestant in this century and in this decade, upholds the cowardly and blood-thirsty deed! Yet there are men found who say that this is too enlightened an age to allow such a thing as persecution for religious opinion.
Such talk is very similar to that indulged in by the advocates of National Reform Sunday laws. They want to protect the peace of society, they say. It was only two weeks ago that a friend of ours was talking with another gentleman concerning the barbarous Sunday law of Georgia and the conviction of Mr. Conklin for cutting saplings in the woods on his farm on Sunday. Instead of expressing the contempt and indignation which every right-minded man must feel at so outrageous a law as that of Georgia, and at the persecution of an inoffensive citizen, the gentleman seemed to take his conviction as a matter of course, and threw the blame all on Mr. Conklin, saying he knew what the law was before he went to work; he need not have suffered if he had been of a mind to avoid it. If he had not known the law, there might be some ground of pity; but when he knew the law and deliberately violated it, nobody but himself is to blame for the result.
But when the National Reform American Sabbath Union movement succeeds, it will not be necessary for the person to work in order to disturb the peace. Servetus disturbed the peace of Geneva by writing and talking against Calvinism, because Calvinism was the politics of Geneva. And so when the State “re-enacts the fourth commandment,” as Mr. Shepard and Mr. Crafts say, Sunday will be a State institution, and the individual who talks against that institution by declaring that the fourth commandment requires the observance of the seventh and not the first day, will be a disturber of the public peace. As much as this is contemplated in the statement which we have before quoted from the Western Christian Advocate, edited by Rev. G. W. Bothwell, D.D., of Oakland, Cal. Speaking of the petition against a Sunday law and the union of Church and State, in his issue of March 22, Mr. Bothwell said:—
“Most of the States make provision for the exercise of the peculiar tenets of belief which are entertained by the Adventists. They can worship on Saturday, and call it the Sabbath if they choose; but there let their privileges end. Instead of thankfully making use of concessions granted them, and then going off quietly and attending to their own business as they ought, they start out making unholy alliances that they may defeat the purposes of their benefactors. None of these bills are aimed at them; but if they fail to appreciate the fact, they may yet call down upon themselves such a measure of public disfavor as that legislation embarrassing to them will result.”
This is simply a threat of punishment, that will be meted out to those who shall dare to protest against national religious legislation, and shall dare to teach that Sunday is not the Sabbath. It will not be necessary for them to work on Sunday; if by their preaching according to their conscientious convictions concerning the word, they strike against the established religion, they will be considered as violators of the public peace, and will meet with punishment.
Finally, as demonstrating conclusively, even to those who cannot draw conclusions, we quote the following bold declaration from a speech by Dr. Mayo in the Cincinnati National Reform Convention. Speaking of the people of the United States, he said:—
“They will plant in the great charter of liberties an acknowledgment of the nation’s dependence on Almighty God, and its duty to conform to the laws of religious and Christian morality. They will protect the rights of every citizen, and persecute no man for his religion until that religion drives him to disobey the law which expresses the will of the majority concerning the moral duty of the citizen. And that will is always open to revision by constitutional means.”
We do not know how anyone can ask for any stronger proof than this that the National Reform movement contemplates persecution. And note, it is not even claimed that the persecution will be for actual violation of the law of God, but for acting or thinking contrary to the will of the majority concerning moral duties, with the express understanding that that will may change at any time.
Any person who can defend so outrageous a scheme has no sense whatever of what constitutes liberty. If any National Reformer can explain these utterances so as to make them harmonize with the golden rule, and with simple justice, the columns of the SENTINEL are open to him.
E. J. W.
Teaching Constitutional Principles
THE Times of this city is in favor of teaching the principles of our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in our common schools. It would certainly be a step in the right direction, but would no doubt be bitterly opposed by those who denounce our Constitution as atheistic, and who contend that governments do not “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But the fight against the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as it is, is on, and we may as well meet the issue squarely; and we know of no better way of doing this than by teaching the rising generation to love our free institutions.
Sunday Laws and Religious Liberty
The following item from the New York Christian Advocate contains a thought worthy of note:—
“Twelve hundred St. Petersburg merchants have declared themselves willing to close their places of business on Sunday, with a view of keeping the day as it is understood in the United States and Great Britain. The movement cannot succeed. The Greek Church compels cessation of work in whole or in part on more than seventy man-made holidays. Until this is reformed the people will have to work on Sunday.”
It should be remembered that those Sunday-law advocates who demand that all shall rest on Sunday, insist that such a law does not interfere with religious liberty, from the fact that it does not forbid the keeping of any other day. But it will readily be seen in the light of this item from the Advocate that it does practically forbid that very thing, from the fact that few can afford to be idle two days in each week. And a law requiring all to keep Sunday is in effect a law that they shall not observe another day.
But even granting that all could afford it, who has the right, in equity, to impose a burden of this kind upon even a few for conscience’ sake? There can be but one answer, namely, that nobody has any such right. The trouble is that the observance or the non-observance of a Sabbath is a matter which lies wholly between each individual and his God, and no man nor set of men has any right to interfere in it.
They Are One.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
The Christian Statesman, of September 5, contains a report of the Lakeside Reform Assembly, by the editor, T. P. Stevenson. This assembly was a joint convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the National Reform Association. The first three days were devoted to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union work, in which addresses were given upon “Woman Suffrage” and “Sabbath Observance.” Addresses were delivered on “The Limits of Religious Liberty,” and “The American Sabbath, and How to Maintain It.” After noting the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Conference, Mr. Stevenson introduces the work of the days devoted especially to the National Reform Association, with these words:—
“There was no perceptible transition between the foregoing exercises and those properly relating to the National Reform Association.”
This strikes us as very significant. It shows how rapidly the great Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is losing sight of the object for which it was established, and is becoming simply a National Reform organization. The meetings of one cannot be distinguished from those of the other.
From Mr. Stevenson’s report, we would not get the idea that the subject of temperance was mentioned in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Conference. Of course we are not to suppose that the subject of temperance was entirely ignored, but the report warrants us in believing that temperance received less attention than woman’s suffrage and Sunday legislation. We are sorry that this is so. We are sorry that in combating religious legislation, which is evil, and only evil, we are placed in antagonism to the work of a professedly temperance organization.347We believe in temperance of the strictest kind, and wish to support every temperance measure and every temperance organization; therefore we hope that the women of the National W. C. T. U. who believe that it should be devoted exclusively to temperance work—and there are very many of them—will be able either to convert the national association, or else to form a branch which will work in a legitimate way for real Christian temperance, and which we can support.
E. J. W.
A Pagan Theory.
By Alonzo T. Jones
At Bay View, Mich., the past summer, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union held a school of methods, at which Prof. E. E. White, superintendent of public schools of Cincinnati, made a speech on “The Duty of the Hour,” in which, according to Miss Willard’s report in the Union Signal, he made the following statement:—
“You must either concede the right of the State to teach everything or deny the right of the State to teach anything. We must take conscience as the compass and put reason at the helm of the ship of State or we cannot weather the gale. The family, Church and State, should in a holy alliance gather about the cradle.”
This is a part of the plea for the establishment and enforcement of religion in public schools. It is not true that the State has the right to teach everything or nothing. The State has no right to teach religion. In the first place, it cannot do it without establishing a State religion, and a State religion is not genuine religion at all, but is only a wicked mixture of worldliness with the forms of religion, and amounts to nothing but religious despotism; and such a despotism is the worst of all. Instead of being an educator and an enlightener, such a government crushes out freedom of thought, and ends only in ignorance and superstition; and ignorance mixed with superstition is worse than ignorance alone; and when the superstition is enforced by governmental power the evil is increased a thousand-fold.
If it be indeed true that the only alternative is to concede that the State must teach everything or nothing, then we will take the latter, and deny the right of the State to teach anything, because it is vastly better for the State to do nothing than for it to attempt to do what it is impossible for it to do, with the inevitable result—the establishment of a religious despotism enforcing superstitious forms by governmental power.
But, although it is not the right, and is not in the power, of the State to teach religion, the State has a right to teach something. It has the right to teach the rights and the duties of the citizen as a citizen to his fellow-citizens and to the State. This it can do; this it has the right to do; and there its rights and its powers end. It has no right to undertake authoritatively to declare what are men’s duties to God, or whether there is any God. That is for the individual to find out for himself, and to render according to the dictates and the light of his own conscience. When it shall ever come to that place where the State presumes to put itself above the parent in his relation to his child, and shall put itself between the parent and his child, and dictate what religion that child shall be taught, such a State is unworthy to stand for an hour. The right of the parent to the religious care and instruction of his child is paramount and absolute. And to the parent and the child this right is worth more than all the States in Christendom. That some parents neglect to exercise this right and fail to give to their children religious instruction, can never justify the State in usurping the place of the parent and destroying the right, either of those who neglect it or those who exercise it.
The State can never of right have anything to do with forming any alliance in which the church is concerned, whether about the cradle or anywhere else; and any alliance of the State with the family with reference to the cradle must end with its simple pledge of protection to both the family and the cradle. The child belongs to the parent and not to the State. Both the dictum and the theory that the child belongs to the State is pagan and not Christian; and throughout this whole discussion in behalf of religion in the public schools by the would-be leaders of thought, there is a current that is carrying them, and those who follow them, into downright paganism. It is true they profess to be doing it all in the name of Christianity, but the theory of the State which they maintain is the pagan theory; and when they propose to sanctify it with the form of Christianity as the State religion, then the result is a system exactly conformed to that of the Papacy, and is essentially papal.
A. T. J.
Building on the Sand.
An exchange quotes from the words of Rev. Dr. Strong the following concerning the “civil Sabbath”:—
“Rev. Joshua Strong, secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, in the course of an excellent discourse on ‘The Civil Sabbath,’ recently delivered, has this to say regarding the grounds for its observance:—
“We observe two Sabbaths, entirely distinct in origin, character, and authority—the one civil, the other religious. The latter is divine in its origin and authority, and sacred in character; the former—the civil Sabbath—is wholly human in its origin and authority, and secular in character. Because these two Sabbaths coincide, they are very easily and commonly confounded, and there results much popular misconception as to the meaning and value of Sabbath laws. . . . Much bad blood and much injury to the cause of Sabbath observance result from the common failure of both the enemies and friends of Sabbath laws to perceive that they are wholly secular, and that they in nowise depend for justification on the divine authority and sacred character of the religious Sabbath. If the words, “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,” had never been uttered, there would be exactly the same ground for Sabbath legislation which now exists,—a ground full, broad, and solid.’”
“The tenable grounds, therefore, on which legislation regarding Sabbath observance rests, are these, namely: ‘First, the duty of the State to secure to every man the right to rest on the Sabbath; and second, the duty of the State to guard the leisure of the day from uses subversive of its object as a day of rest, and uses dangerous to public morals.’”
The position here laid down by Dr. Strong—one of the most thoughtful and able American writers concerning national questions—is as strongly put as it is possible to make an illogical position. He fails to recognize the fundamental truth that “Sabbath keeping” is primarily and only a religious act, and that the benefits which come from it to man’s lower nature, and to the so-called “non-religious interests of a community, come only when the abstinence from labor is brought about through religious conviction. In other words, the expression “civil Sabbath” is at once and always contradictory; this is shown by the fact that in all places, and on the part of all individuals where rest is induced without religious conviction, Sabbath keeping and its blessings disappear. The “continental Sunday,” of which so much is said, and concerning which so much fear is expressed, is the unavoidable result of a social and civil system from which the idea of a divinely-appointed Sabbath has been eliminated. When a religious conviction does not control, abstinence from labor induced by social customs, by mere desire for relief from the fatigue of labor, or by the compulsion of civil law, must result in holidayism, the character of which will be determined by the religious and moral atmosphere of the time. Holidayism thus induced has always resulted in much positive irreligion and immorality.
The statement that the State must “secure to every man the right to rest on the Sabbath,” finds no counterpart in existing Sunday legislation. If that be all which the State may do, it can only declare that each man shall be free to cease from labor on Sunday if he choose so to do. The moment that it forbids labor, it has passed beyond the matter of guaranteeing rest, and has introduced compulsion. The evident confusion into which so clear a thinker as Dr. Strong falls, must continue until men cease to teach the illogical and impossible theory that there can be a “civil Sabbath.” We shall escape from the thralldom of this inconsistency only as we rise from the lowland into which the pagan-born State-church theories out of which Roman Catholicism grew, are wholly laid aside.
—Sabbath Recorder.
That Unwritten Agreement.
By R. M. CAVINESS
BISHOP FOSTER urges that there was an “unwritten agreement” made between the observers of Sunday and the observers of the seventh day; that the former came to America first and established the keeping of Sunday; that the latter in coming afterwards tacitly agreed to keep the laws. By this “unwritten agreement” the keepers of the seventh day were bound to keep Sunday also. This mode of reasoning is worthy only of the Papacy and the Inquisition. It is the argument of tyranny; but let us see how it would work in another case.
When America was discovered the Indians were the undisputed owners of the continent. So far as the whites were concerned, the Indians established themselves here first. They had certain “unwritten” laws regulating warfare, the chase, and social life. A solemn council determined the fate of the captives taken in war. Certain ceremonies were performed before undertaking the chase. The women were obliged to do all the drudgery, that the men might the better be prepared for war and the chase. By the working of these “unwritten” laws Sunday was as much used for the chase as any other day. In fact, they “had no Sunday.”
Now when the Mayflower landed a small company at Plymouth, did not these individuals tacitly agree to keep the laws of the red men? When William Penn bought land of the Indians was it not the “unwritten agreement” that whoever should settle on this land would keep the laws of the red man? Whenever settlers came to America would they not be bound by this “unwritten agreement” to keep Sunday as the Indians kept it? How is this, anyway, Mr. Foster? Do not the Indians’ claims antedate yours? Then, too, the whites were in the minority. They were not even one-seventh of one per cent. of the population.
R. M. CAVINESS.Keokuk, Iowa.
He Don't Belong.
By N. J. Bowers
When the field secretary of the American Sabbath Union was “swinging round the circle” last summer, he gave two addresses at Fresno, Cal. Among other questions sent up for him to answer at one of his public meetings, was this one, “Do you indorse the principles of the National Reform Association?” The evasive answer came with readiness, “I don’t belong to that party.” After a somewhat lengthy and rambling talk he said, “I am not ashamed of it.” Then it seems he doesn’t “belong” but has a “warm side” for it. His sympathies are for it and with it. Does he sustain the same relation to it as he does to the Knights of Labor? At their general assembly last year at Indianapolis, he told them that he was so closely in “accord” with their “principles” that he had almost decided to become a Knight himself. He said if he did not it would be because he believed he could “advance” their “principles better as an outside ally.”
Dr. Crafts gets apparently much “worked up” when anything coming from National Reform sources is brought to bear upon his work. He immediately repudiates it. It is almost pitiful to notice how much pain the galling imputation gives him. He don’t belong, it isn’t his purpose, etc., yet he’s “not ashamed of it.” Can he “advance” its “principles better as an outside ally”? Can he do it more service where he is, just as he can help the Knights more by not belonging to them?
Now let us look at one or two of the principal results wished for, which spring from National Reform principles. The words about to be presented are not those of obscure and indifferent men, but those of leading and zealous advocates:
“Constitutional laws punish for false money, weights, and measures, and, of course, Congress establishes a standard for money, weights, and measures. So Congress must establish a standard of religion,” etc.—Dr. Blanchard, in Pittsburg National Reform Convention in 1874.
“It is the duty of the State, as such, to enter into alliance with the church of Christ, and to profess, adhere to, defend, and maintain, the true religion.”—Secretary J. M. Foster, in Christian Statesman, 1884.
“To be perfectly plain, I believe that the existence of a Christian Constitution would disfranchise every logically consistent infidel.”—Secretary W. J. Coleman, in Christian Statesman, Nov. 1, 1883.
“Of course a government organized on a basis embracing Christianity could not, with propriety, intrust those with office who are hostile to its characteristic faith. And none of this class have any right to claim that they should be legally eligible to office with those who are bona-fide citizens.”—Christian Nation, September 15, 1886, National Reform organ, New York City.
Secretary Foster, in speaking of the National Reformed State, says:—
“The expenses of the church in carrying on her aggressive work, it [the State] meets in whole or in part out of the public treasury.”—Christian Statesman, March, 1884.
Lastly:—
“But shall we take—is it right to take—public money to teach principles, enforce laws, and introduce customs to which many members of the community are opposed?—Most certainly. The gospel from its very nature is aggressive, contemplates the rectification of corrupt, disorderly, and degraded human nature, casts down every high thing that would exalt itself against the knowledge of God, and brings every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”—Wm. Somerville, in Christian Nation, July 7 and 14, 1886.
Here we have a few things—quite a small crop—growing out of National Reform principles, viz.: 1. Congress to establish a standard of religion. 2. The State to enter into alliance with the Church—Church and State union. 3. Disfranchising infidels, which means everybody “hostile” to the National Reform idea of Christianity. 4. “None of this class” to be treated as “bona-fide citizens.” 5. Providing public money to carry on “the aggressive work” of the church, the preachers to be fed out of the “public crib.” 6. It is right to so use the public funds, because the gospel is “aggressive” and “casts down” everything that would “exalt” itself against it. In other words, nothing must stand in the way of the National Reform régime, not even the United States treasury, and Dr. Crafts is “not ashamed” of such principles! N. J. BOWERS.
Fresno, Cal.