The American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 27. (7/31/1889)

The American Sentinel

Jul 31, 1889

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1889

The Civil and Religious Sabbath

IN a recent article in the Union Signal, Mrs. J. C. Bateham says of the Blair Sunday-Rest bill: “All our arguments for the bill are based upon the civil Sabbath, not because we do not appreciate the religious aspect of the case, but because we think that it has nothing to do with a bill before Congress which must be sustained by other than religious considerations.”

Commenting on this the Christian Statesman severely asks:— “Does the writer mean to say that the obligation of the fourth commandment is not binding on nations and governments as well as individuals? . . . In other words, have nations nothing to do with the Christ who is Lord of the Sabbath? One chief purpose of the Blair Sunday-Rest bill is to set the Government itself, in its Post-office Department and at other points, in a right attitude toward the Sabbath. Are there no religious considerations which bear on the question of the adoption or rejection of that measure?”

We are surprised at the native simplicity of the Statesman. Of course all the arguments for the bill are from a civil standpoint simply and only because its friends know full well that the American people are afraid of religious legislation. But this policy makes it none the less true that the underlying motive is the exaltation of Sunday as a religious institution. The work of the American Sabbath Union and its various auxiliaries is identical with that of the National Reform Association, namely, as stated without challenge by Rev. W. D. Gray, secretary of the Missouri Sabbath Association, to change that feature of our fundamental law which accords with the Declaration of Independence when it declares that “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” To state the matter in the fewest possible words, Mr. Gray might have said: “The object of this movement is to destroy religious liberty in the United States.”

To Crush The Liquor Traffic?

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

On Sunday evening, June 30, the Pennsylvania Sabbath Association held a meeting in the Salem M. E. Church, Philadelphia, at which several active workers for a Sunday law were present. One of the principal speakers was Lewis D. Vail, the attorney for the Law and Order Society. After speaking of the continental Sunday, and arguing that the working men would be great sufferers by its introduction into this country, Mr. Vail spent the greater portion of his time talking about saloons and licenses. Speaking of a recent Supreme Court decision, he said:—

“The Supreme Court says that their location is not a matter of public convenience, and they can all be located in a solid block, if they so elect. These so-called wholesalers can sell at any time on a week day, and eventually they will sell on Sunday. They will send their own men to the Legislature, and will work to control every branch of the Government. What you and I have to do is to fight for this control of the Government, and vote only for men who are pledged to work for good laws and for a better observance of the Sabbath. You may rest assured that God will look out for his Sunday, but we must do our work. God will grind this glorious country into powder if we disobey his laws. If a so-called Christian man votes for a man opposed to God’s law, even if he belongs to a dozen churches, the devil will get him at last.”

One need not take long to determine from the above what the Law and Order Society regards as the greater evil, the liquor traffic or Sunday work. Mr. Vail seems to feel very bad to think that the liquor-sellers are in danger of controlling every branch of the Government, and that they will locate their saloons anywhere they please. But the only remedy he and his Law and Order Society have in mind is, to fight for the control of the Government, and when they get this control to—do what? To crush out the liquor traffic? Oh no; to stop the sale of liquor on Sunday. The Law and Order Society has not yet got educated to the idea that selling liquor on any other day of the week than Sunday is disorderly.

If Mr. Vail really thinks that Sunday belongs to the Lord, he would do well to leave it with him and trust him to take care of it; but we cannot avoid the suspicion that the reason why he and the other leaders in the Sunday-law move are working so zealously for Sunday laws is, that they do not believe that God has any regard for Sunday any more than for any other day; and they are afraid that if they leave it with him the law will not be enforced, and they are determined to make people keep Sunday whether or no.

Rev. Mr. Redner, speaking of the prevailing disregard for Sunday, said the trouble was not so much with the chief justice and the other justices as with Christians, and professed Christians. That is exactly the point. Sunday is a church day; it is one of the days which “the church,” according to the catechism, commands to be kept holy along with Christmas, New Years, Easter, St. Patrick’s day, etc. But a large majority of professed Christians do not carry out the commands of the church. They disregard the obligations which they took upon themselves when they joined the church; and because of this disregard of church law, by those who belong to the church, the Sunday is not kept as a holy day. And now certain leaders in the church are knocking at the door of Congress with all their might to induce that body to pass a law to enforce the observance of Sunday.

In other words, they are asking Congress to come to the help of the churches, and compel church members to obey its laws. This is the sole object of Sunday legislation, and stamps the movement for Sunday laws to be purely a step toward the securing of Church and State.

E. J. W.

‘Religion and the State.

By Editor

[We take this article from the Journal and Messenger of May 23, a Baptist paper published in Cincinnati, Ohio. Our readers will understand that it is an editorial review of a contributed article written in advocacy of National Reform. The arguments presented by the Messenger will not be lost upon candid, thinking men.]

On our second page will be found an article entitled National Reform, written by the Rev. J. M. Foster, secretary of the National Reform Association. It is an effort to justify the purpose of some of our fellow-citizens to bring about such a union between the Church and the State that the latter may become the executive of the former. It is the result of adherence to the old idea of the theocracy as it existed in Israel and pertained to the Hebrews, previous to the appointment of their king, and even subsequently. It is the result of a failure to distinguish between the nation Israel and the true spiritual Israel, between the “seed” and the “children” of Abraham. It is an effort to apply the principles governing the

relation of child and parent to those who are aliens and strangers to the family and the covenants.

It is a mistake constantly making in matters pertaining to reforms, that the State stands in the place of God, and that its business is to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is sin and what is not sin, and to legislate accordingly, forbidding and punishing sin, as such, because it is condemned in the law of God. It is an effort to load upon the State the responsibility of taking the “vengeance” out of the divine hand and punishing the evil doer, not simply because of his offense against society, but because of his offense against divine law. And all this is, as it seems to us, a mistaken view of the province of government.

As we understand it, government is a social compact, in which the individual surrenders to the State certain natural rights, in view of the promise, expressed or implied, on the part of the latter, to prevent or punish the infringement of those rights by any other member of the same society; and only when it is doing for the individual what he has a natural right to do for himself, only when it is protecting the individual against interference with his natural rights, or is preventing him from interfering with the natural rights of another, can the State be regarded as in its proper place. The State has a right to protect itself from harm, because thus it protects its individual members from harm; it has a right to promote the temporal interests of its citizens, and thus it promotes its own interests. Take, for example, the sin of lying; there can be no doubt that it is one of the most grievous and most prevalent of sins; and yet the State takes no cognizance of it, except when it is in a court of justice, or when it is shown to have been specifically injurious to another citizen. And so we might go on through the long catalogue and show that it is the business of the State simply to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of all their natural rights, and whatsoever is more than that cometh of evil. By these principles we, as Baptists, have always stood and ought to stand. We recognize one Master, God, the eternal, the unchangeable, the just. . . . For our religious beliefs and practices we refuse to give account to men, and the further the State keeps away from us, as it pertains to these things, the more it will be doing the will of our Master.

The State has no right to enter into the place of God and punish any citizen, because of his sin against God. It has no right to punish sin, as sin. For the sinfulness of his acts the individual is amenable only to God himself. It is for the injury imposed upon his fellow-man—upon society—that the State takes cognizance, and its penalties should never have any other end than the prevention of the recurrence of the offense, either as to the same individual or as to another.

It is no part of the business of the State to teach religion or to look at questions from a religious standpoint. It has been sufficiently demonstrated that men cannot be made truly religious by law, and that attempts to make them such result in the most despicable hypocrisy and corruption. It was the mistake made by the Puritans in New England that they made religion a matter of statute law, and required all officers to be members of a church. The result was the “half-way covenant” and the condition of things found by Jonathan Edwards and set forth by him in his account of the religious condition of the country when he awakened to it, about the year 1740.

It is true that the Puritans attempted to set up a theocracy in New England, and that they required everyone to be religious, to attend the church, to pay tithes, to observe certain fast and feast days, and especially to observe the Sabbath, according to their ideas; and because some Baptists and Quakers refused to conform to the ideas of the authorities, they were whipped and banished, and even hanged. Fortunately for us as a people, the Puritans did not settle the whole country, did not control all the colonies. In many things they were far superior to all others, but their defects were serious, and it was only after their good things had been fused with the good things of some others that the resultant was what we now delight in. It was as when two kinds of ore are brought together in the furnace and the resultant is a superior grade of iron. So it was when some other good things from some other sources were smelted together with the Puritan ideas, that the best results were obtained. And, much as we to-day rejoice in what has come to us from New England, we like it the more because it has been transfused and modified by the good elements in other colonies. This country has made a great improvement in its moral tone and fibre since the Baptists effected its deliverance from the danger which menaced it under the first draft of the Constitution. Let us not forget our mission.

Religious Despotism and Political Power

“ALL religious despotism commences by combination and influence, and when that influence begins to operate on the political institutions of a country the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.”—U. S. Senate Report, 1829.

The Constitution Is Not a Theocracy

It is ridiculous for any one to say that the fathers of the Constitution had any idea of establishing an atheistic nation. Almost all of them were professing Christians, but they felt that their business was to construct a civil government—a republic, not a theocracy. To have introduced the name of God into the Constitution as the head of the Nation, and then to have left his relations and his honors undefined, nor provisions made for his worship and his support on the part of the Nation, would have introduced a subject of perpetual contention in the body politic, because it would have stood as an anomaly in the great instrument. The logical sequence must have been the establishment of a State religion of some sort as a legacy of perpetual strife.—Rev. Dr. Armitage, Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, New York.

Sunday Laws Discussed.

By Wm. J. Fowler

THE following paragraphs are from an article on Sunday laws by Wm. J. Fowler, published in the Rochester (N. Y.) Post-Express:—

“Every year during the prevalence of hot weather the Sunday question acquires unusual prominence. It is rather curious that the fiercest of the fight is going on while the clergy are off on their summer vacations. . . . It isn’t a good state of things to have a very few men and women impressed with their personal responsibility for the good order of the entire community. Such responsibility needs to be more divided. . . . Whenever zealots in the name of religion attempt to manage the affairs of other people than themselves, they inevitably run against a multitude of snags. I do not deny that it is in this way that an enormous amount of earnest Christian zeal has been worse than wasted. My entire sympathy with the excellent motives of such people does not blind me to their woeful mistake. The unchristian asceticism of the Puritan forefathers of this country is an excellent illustration of my meaning. The American people have outgrown whatever was wholly superstitious in Puritanism, and for the sake of true religion I am heartily glad of it.

Christ subjected himself to great obloquy on account of his teaching. Pretty much all the religious men of his day hated him. The more “religious” they were, or rather the more Pharisaical, the more they opposed him. It was at last in an excess of religious zeal that they crucified him. It may be taken as another parallel to their utterly hypocritical conduct, that they tried to avoid the odium of killing Christ for religion’s sake, and claimed that they did it to uphold the Roman authority, which they pretended that Christ had threatened.

“Jesus protested against this on his trial. It was, I think, the only time on that occasion that he did protest. He was entirely resigned to be crucified, provided it was done without false pretenses. His manly nature could not abide a sham. So he made even Pilate see the point with the terse argument: “If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight.” The Roman magistrate turned to the scribes and Pharisees, saying, substantially, “See ye to this. It is not my doings and I wash my hands of it.” After that, Christ went to death without a murmur.

“It is reasonably certain that if Christ were living now he would rebuke most strongly any attempt to enforce religious observance of the Sabbath, or anything else, under a pretense of preserving civil order.

“The functions of civil government are far better understood in this country than in any other, and they are very limited. They consist almost entirely in preventing people from interfering with the rights of others. This is only another way of saying that every man is entitled to the largest personal rights so long as he does not injure others. It is no discredit to the Puritans that they did not understand this as men generally do to-day. Nor is it any derogation to the honor justly due to the Puritans to say that they had mastered only the alphabet of personal rights. They believed most heartily, and it was a great point gained for that time, in their own freedom to worship God unmolested according to the dictates of their own consciences.

“That other people had just as much right in this matter as themselves, did not occur to them. It was a little later evolution of this fundamental truth, that was revealed more particularly to the Quakers and Baptists whom the Puritans persecuted. I have always been rather glad that the doctrine of religious liberty was not at first fully revealed to the Puritan forefathers of Massachusetts. They were always a proud, high-spirited set of men, and if they had had so much truth given to their charge they would have been prouder and more unbearable than ever.

“But it is discreditable to men living now to try to mould religion and social order on the models set by the Puritans two hundred years ago. They were not the best models even for their day. Roger Williams and the Rhode Island colony set much better. . . . It seems to me that the way in which people pass their Sundays is nobody’s business except their own, so long as their conduct interferes with nobody else. Whenever it does, the police magistrate can and generally does take cognizance of it.

“A considerable part of our Sunday laws are relics of Puritan legislation which the public has long outgrown. They cannot be enforced, and their non-enforcement while on the statute book has a demoralizing tendency, as it familiarizes the public mind with successful defiance of the law.”

The Blair Sunday-Rest Bill.

By DOUBLEYOU

[The writer of this article, which we take from the Butler Eagle, is an old and respectable business man of Coultersville, Penn., and a member of the Presbyterian Church. In a private letter to us he says: “I believe that the religion of Christ is the only true religion. Of all men that dwell on earth the true followers of Jesus is the farthest from being a persecutor.”]

Christians all agree that one day in seven is to be set apart for holy rest and worship; but there is a controversy among them which day of the week is the right one, one part contending that the seventh, and the other that the first day of the week is the proper one to observe.

The thinking mind will recognize this as a purely religious controversy. Now, Senator Blair

proposes that the United States Congress shall step in and settle this dispute in the church. The query is, how Congress can do this without taking sides in a religious controversy. If Congress settles it, it will be in favor of one set of claimants and against the other, and in doing so will be deciding a purely religious question, which is union of Church and State. It is not necessary for the statute to declare in so many words that “Church and State are hereby united.” That satanic union is effected when the State attempts to define any religious duty.

Again, all Christians agree that it is proper to use some kind of songs of praise in worship; here again they disagree, one part adhering to the Old Testament psalmody, and the other to the new.

Now if Congress is the proper tribunal to settle the other controversy, it follows that it is the proper one to settle this. If Congress can set the time for worship, it can also fix the mode.

These cases are logically one, and Senator Blair and his followers cannot separate them.

But lay aside all this reasoning. It does not matter whether Sunday laws are wholly religious or wholly secular, or partly one and partly the other, the result is persecution for conscience’ sake.

There is no need of hair splitting to see the perfidy of all laws that forcibly interfere between a man and his God.

Let Congress once begin on this line of work and it will find plenty of it to do. The Catholics will petition for some advantage over Protestants; Protestants will ask for legislation against Catholics, and infidels will call for the closing of all the churches.

The chances will then be for a religious war and reign of terror that would make a French communist shudder.

The phariseeism of the Blair bill would make angels weep. DOUBLEYOU.

Practical Workings of a Sunday Law.

By Wm. Covert

The State of Tennessee enjoys the bliss of a Sunday law; and if there is anything civilizing and elevating in such a law, then Tennessee should be a happy State indeed. A certain neighborhood proposes to have peace and harmony and to hinder their “morals” from being “insulted” by enforcing the Sunday law of the State, and for this purpose a league has been formed. The following is an exact copy of the pledge taken by this league when it was organized in this State last winter:—

“NOTICE— To whom it may concern—That the undersigned citizens of ——, being desirous of the welfare of our community, and that peace and harmony may prevail, and that the morals of ourselves and our children may not be insulted and trampled upon by a willful violation of the Sunday laws of our land; do this day pledge our word and honor, that we will individually and collectively prosecute each and every violation of the Sunday law of our State that may come under our observation.

Dec. 10, 1888.

This league seemed to think that all that was lacking in the way of morals and peace and harmony could be secured by giving life to the Sunday law of the State. This league is composed mostly of the members of the Methodist Church. The Sunday law had long been violated by the people of this neighborhood. Scores of men have made Sunday a day for hunting and fishing. The gambler has used it as a convenience for his purpose. The church members of different denominations, and also the non-professors, have made it a rule, if business was urgent, to do common labor upon this day. This is the history with reference to the manner in which Sunday has been observed in the past, as gleaned from citizens of this neighborhood.

No one has been prosecuted for violating the Sunday law in the past, but of late this church, which has been organized here for many years, has discovered a supreme necessity for the enforcement of the Sunday law. But what has led to this discovery? Answer. The organization in this community of a small church who keep the seventh-day Sabbath.

Members of the Methodist Church which had been organized for many years, told the elder of the seventh-day church that, if they “permitted” him “to continue,” their children would not know which the Sabbath-day was. They insisted that he must move out of the community if he wanted to keep the seventh day. He told them that he had been taught by them that this was a free country, and that he was allowed to worship God as he understood the Scriptures to teach. But they said that he must keep Sunday, and not teach their children that the seventh day is the Sabbath; and if he did not comply with their wishes, he would be prosecuted. He cited them to the past history of the community, wherein Sunday had not been observed, and yet they had not prosecuted anyone for its violation. Their answer indicated that all parties would be compelled to keep it from that time on, whether they kept any other day or not. He argued that if he conscientiously observed the day which he believed God required, they should not then compel him to keep a day in which he did not believe, as that would be tyrannical. He also stated to them that he was a poor man, and could not afford to surrender one-sixth of his time from the support of his family. He told them that he could explain the matter to his children, and that, as far as they were concerned, he had no fears but that they would know which is the Sabbath-day, and that the same course of action would be left open for them in the training of their children. But this was the point that gave them so much anxiety. They could never make it plain to their children; and, therefore, they would not tolerate his course. Nothing short of submission would be accepted by them.

This feature of National Reform work was going on in Tennessee while the notable National Reform Convention was being held in Washington City last winter. Now for the fruit. The Sunday gaming and shooting has gone on since the league was organized, precisely as it did before. But those who keep the seventh day have not been engaged in this kind of work. Others beside those who keep the seventh day, have worked upon their farms on Sunday during this time in a more public and noisy manner than has been done by those who observe the seventh day. But not one word of complaint has been made about it. When, however, the elder above referred to went out into his field on Sunday to quietly plow out (cultivate) his corn, which was so tall at the time as to nearly hide him from sight, he was promptly arrested. He will certainly be convicted as a criminal, and as he is a consistent Christian man, he feels that it would be wrong to pay a fine for doing what he verily believes is his religious duty to do. So he will go to jail and lie there for obeying God; and his professed Christian neighbors will send him there to satisfy their hatred toward the seventh-day Sabbath.

But is this all their zeal leads them to do?

No, no; this seventh-day-keeping church desired a minister to visit them during their quarterly meeting, and hold some services with them. But this Sunday-law league heard of it and determined that it was not likely to deepen their neighbors’ faith in the sanctity of Sunday, nor to create any hatred toward the seventh-day people, to permit him to labor in this neighborhood. So they organized a vigilance committee, and armed them with shot-guns, rifles, and revolvers, and on Sunday night, fired into a congregation of men, women, and children. Their aim was to kill the minister, the elder of the church, and another leading member. Some fifteen or twenty shots were fired, but as they had to shoot through the wall of the building and the windows, no one was hit, yet the balls pierced the wall, cutting their way through both the weather-boarding and the ceiling. One rifle-ball passed exactly through the space behind the desk that had been occupied a moment before by the speaker. It seemed a direction of Providence that he had stepped to one end of the desk an instant before the shot was fired.

If the Reverend Doctor Brooks were here, he could not complain that the preachers do not “speak out.” They are speaking out, and proposing that as many as do not worship as they do shall be killed. Rev. W. J. Coleman, who spoke at Lakeside, Ohio, in August, 1887, could find the army that he called for who are “ready to pour out treasure and blood” for the cause he was advocating. They are also ready to pour out the blood of innocent Christians, in order to compel people who observe the seventh day to keep Sunday.

The minister above referred to, whose assassination was attempted, had mildly but in a very plain and convincing manner, set before the people of the community the inconsistent and unkind manner in which they had proceeded. He also showed that their course was un-American and Papistic. They replied with the rifle and shot-gun.

We do not believe that National Reformers will approve of their course, but the speeches they make are, many of them, calculated to incite to just such deeds of violence. National Reformers should counsel moderation for the credit of their cause, if for nothing else.—Wm. Covert, in Signs of the Times.

Unnecessary Work.

THE “unnecessary work” done on Sunday is the great bugbear of some National Reformers; and the Des Moines, Iowa, Register takes up the cry, with, however, the following comforting assurance:—

“There is plainly a reaction in public sentiment in favor of refraining from all unnecessary work on the Sabbath.

There is no doubt that unnecessary work tends to wear out the physical system as well as to squander means that would be better expended in necessary employment. The true philanthropist will oppose unnecessary work at any time. But the National Reformers are in this, as in some other ideas that are in themselves good, entirely too exclusive,—they want them confined to Sunday. Having no other than human authority for the sanctity of the day, they evidently hope, by piling all the good things upon it, and confining them there, to make it holy.

First, they want to have temperance principles specially applied to that day, and are willing to have temperance limited there; thus their theory

of closing saloons on Sunday is virtually an argument that it is the peculiar character of the day that makes intemperance wrong. Then comes their plea that unnecessary work on Sunday is so very injurious to the health and morals of the people. It is a strange physiological theory that any unnecessary strain on the muscles or brain can be more hurtful on one day than on another; but such is the muddle in which they become involved who attempt to turn everything into a bolster for the Sunday-sacredness dogma.

Yet true to National Reform inconsistency, these Sunday law crusaders, while deploring the evil effects of unnecessary labor on Sunday, persist in paving the way for such labor by making it impossible for the masses to engage in legitimate work. There is more unnecessary strain indulged on Sunday by many people than would be if they were not otherwise shut up to idleness.

The Church and the State.

By C. P. Bollman

The subject of the union of Church and State is very imperfectly understood by very many people. It has been thought that in order to form such a union some one sect or denomination must be made the State Church; but a little consideration will show any one that such is not the case. The National Reformers say that they do not want a union of Church and State, but a union of religion and the State. In a speech before the National Reform Convention held in New York City in 1883, Rev. Jonathan Edwards said:—

“We want such a religion, and we are going to have it. It shall be that so far as the affairs of the State require religion, it shall be the religion of Jesus Christ. The Christian oath and the Christian morality shall have, in this land, an undeniable legal basis. We use the word “religion” in its proper sense, as meaning a man’s personal relation of faith and obedience to God.”

But, even in the face of such a statement as this made by one of their prominent leaders, the National Reformers insist that they are opposed to a union of Church and State, but their denial amounts to nothing. Religion and the State is only another name for that unholy alliance between the civil and the ecclesiastical power which has always been an unmitigated curse to both the Church and the State. Everybody admits that Constantine united Church and State. But his first step was only to declare Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire; when he had taken that step, however, it was necessary that he should in some way define Christianity. Then, as now, those who professed to be Christians were divided, not into organized denominations as at the present time, but into numerous parties and factions under the leadership of their respective bishops. Between the extremes there was probably as great a diversity of opinion as exists now between Catholics and Protestants. Besides this there was a multitude of minor differences; and as the Emperor had declared the Christian religion to be the religion of Rome, it was necessary that this religion should be defined, and for this purpose a council was convened at Nice to decide the question as to what constituted the Christian religion. The National Reformers of our own day propose to take similar measures.

When the Blair Educational Amendment bill was under discussion a few months since, the question was asked, how it would be possible to carry it out owing to the diversity of views among Christian people. The answer given by the author of the bill was as follows:—

“I believe that a text-book of instructions in the principles of virtue, morality and the Christian religion can be prepared for use in the public schools by the joint effort of those who represent every branch of the Christian Church, both Protestant and Catholic.”

Again, Dr. Schaff, in defining what parts of the Bible should be taught in the public schools, says:

“A competent committee of clergymen and laymen of all denominations could make a judicious selection which would satisfy every reasonable demand.”

But to carry out these suggestions would be to do just as Constantine did, convene a council of the representative men of the various denominations to define the principles of the Christian religion, and with these principles authoritatively defined, and with the law on the statute books, and embodied in the Constitution requiring the principles of the Christian religion to be taught in the public schools, how much would we lack of having a union of Church and State? True, we might not have a denominational organization known as the State Church, and supported out of the treasury, but we would have practically the same thing, for we would have a creed officially recognized by the Government.

There is one phase of this question which is generally lost sight of, and that is the rights of non-church people, or if you please, non-Christian people. The National Reform idea is that every government is a government of God, and that the powers that be derive their power from God, and this not in the sense in which the apostle declares that “the powers that be are ordained of God,” but in the sense that his law should be the basis of their law, or in other words that men should be governed by the divine law administered by their fellow-men.

“But on the other hand, the Declaration of Independence declares that “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;” this, however, National Reformers deny. In the Missouri Sunday Convention recently held in Sedalia, Rev. W. D. Gray, the present secretary of the Missouri Sabbath Association, used these words:—

“I do not believe that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and so the object of this movement is an effort to change that feature in our fundamental law.”

Several men, prominent in National Reform councils, were present on this occasion, but not one of them lifted his voice to disavow this sentiment, and the Association subsequently elected Mr. Gray as its permanent secretary; hence we are warranted in believing that he voiced the sentiment of the Association. But if the National Reformers be correct, and Governments do derive their just powers directly from God, and not from the consent of the governed, and if it is their duty to administer the law of God, it follows that they must decide what that law is, and what it requires; and if they have that right, then all good citizens should yield obedience to whatever decisions they may make. But to assent to such a thing would be to deny God, or at least to place men in the place of God, which amounts to the same thing.

The trouble with the whole scheme of National Reform is, that instead of making a man responsible to God it makes him responsible to earthly and fallible governments, for if the Government has the right to establish a religion and to define and say what that religion is, as it must do if it gives it any official recognition whatever, it has the right to change that religion, so that with every change in the Government there may be a change also in the religion. And if it is a duty the citizen owes to God to yield obedience to the religion of the State, it is equally his duty to change his religion with each change of the Government. In short, National Reformers would destroy personal responsibility to God, and make the citizen responsible alone to the State. Instead of looking to the law of God to know what is right and what is wrong, a citizen would have to look to the law of the land, or at least to human interpretation of the law of God, to know his duty to God. For instance, under a Catholic government, it would be the duty of the citizen to adore pictures and images; while under a Protestant government, it would be sin and crime for him to do the same thing.

The only safe and tenable ground is to declare, as did the Saviour, that those things which are Cæsar’s should be rendered to Cæsar, and those things which are God’s should be rendered to God; or, in other words, that those duties which we owe to the State should be discharged to the State, and those duties which we owe to God should be discharged to God. In short, that the State can of right have nothing whatever to do with defining or enforcing the individual’s duty toward God. Anything more than this puts men in the place of God, because it makes them judges of the divine law and allows them to usurp the place of conscience, and authorizes persecution for conscience’ sake. C. P. BOLLMAN.

Continue reading: The Uses of a Sunday Law