ONE of our exchanges, the Orleans Herald, is a little mixed on the proper functions of the State. Some time since we said that “the manufacture, transportation, and sale of intoxicating liquors, so far as the authority of Congress or the police power of the State is concerned, has nothing to do with morals, but is solely a matter of the jurisdiction of the municipal law.”
To this the Herald takes exception, and asserts that the State has something to do with morals. We imagine, however, that the only difference between us is on the use of the word “moral.” The State certainly forbids some things that are immoral just as it forbids some things that are sinful; but it does not, or at least should not, forbid anything simply because it is immoral, or sinful. If the State does forbid things because they are immoral, or sinful, which is the same thing, it must forbid and undertake to punish all sin; this the State cannot do; it follows that it can properly forbid only those things that are uncivil, and that it can forbid them only because they are uncivil. We use the word “moral” only in the sense of pertaining to or being in harmony with the divine law. The Herald evidently gives it a wider signification.
On May 17, in the Senate, Mr. Manderson, from the Committee on Printing, reported back favorably the following resolutions previously introduced by Mr. Blair, of New Hampshire:—
Resolved, That the Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 43, of the Fiftieth Congress, be reprinted for the use of the Senate, and that five hundred copies be printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor.
Resolved, That there be one thousand copies of Notes of Hearing on Joint Resolution (S. R. 86 of the Fiftieth Congress) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting establishments of religion and free schools, printed as a document for the use of the Senate, and five hundred copies for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor.
The resolutions were agreed to, and the documents ordered republished. These republications are the reports of the hearings on the Sunday-rest bill, and the Constitutional amendment providing for the teaching of the Christian religion in the public schools, held before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, in the last Congress, and contain the arguments in opposition to those measures, by A. T. Jones, and J. O. Corliss.
The Real Reason.
COMMENTING editorially upon the case of the Tennessee Adventist, fined for working on Sunday, and whose cause has been espoused by the National Religious Liberty Association, the Sigourney, Iowa, Review, of July 9, gives the following excellent analysis of the motives of those who demand, and enforce, such laws as that under which Mr. King is being persecuted:—
The witnesses who testified against Mr. King did not claim that any religious meeting was disturbed, or that they themselves were disturbed, or that any of their individual rights were invaded by his Sunday plowing, but only that their moral sense was shocked by his violation of the Sunday law, and this shock the court held to be a nuisance. These witnesses imagined that they possessed a moral sense, but we are rather inclined to doubt it. It is a very common human frailty to mistake bigotry and intolerance for moral sense. Men dearly love to make other men do as they do, especially in private individual matters that concern nobody else, and when they find men with minds of their own who will not obey their arbitrary commands, they are mad enough to tear them to pieces. The moral sense of the Chaldeans was terribly shocked when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's golden image. It was not through any sympathy or fear that some terrible judgment would fall on these Hebrew children for their impiety, for they were eager to roast them in the fiery furnace. It was not any Christian love for Mr. King or any anxiety for the future salvation of his soul, that actuated his religious prosecutors in their efforts to stop him from plowing on Sunday. They were ready to rob him of his hard earned cash by heavy fines, and they would not hesitate to torture him to death, rather than allow him to exercise his right of conscience differently from what they had ordered.
After all, religious intolerance is nothing more than human egotism in its secondary or brother's-keeper stage. When a man conceives an idea in regard to diet, dress, rule of life or religious observances, he wants everybody else to see it just as he does. That they refuse to so see it or observe it, is to him a standing challenge to the wisdom of his position, which his conceit cannot brook, and he naturally craves the power to force them to observe something that he can't convince them of by facts, figures, or logic. After preaching his hobby till he gets a little following he organizes, and memorializes some political party to give him a law to enable him to force his theory on the rest of his brethren, in exchange for the votes of his organization, and if his organization amounts to anything as a political factor he usually gets the legislation he wants.
We don't believe that the religious people of Tennessee are any better than those of other States. We doubt if one in ten of them strictly observes the Sunday law they have forced on the statutes, and we have no idea that it was the salvation of men's souls they were thinking of when they clamored for the law under which they have been persecuting King. They observed, or pretended to observe, Sunday as a holy day, and imagined that they were doing a very praiseworthy act in so observing it, and expected the balance of mankind to look up to them with great reverence and respect on account of their piety. But the man who did not so observe the day, appeared to them as a standing challenge to their assumed superiority, and they wanted a law to punish him, not because they thought that God was unable to suitably punish the violators of his holy law, but because it hurt their human vanity to have their pretensions to great moral virtues disputed, and they wanted their revenge.
All these religious laws and prosecutions which have stained the history of the Church in all ages, come not from an earnest Christian endeavor to elevate mankind, but from the malicious disposition of the professor of religion to punish the man who dares to question the superior excellence of his professions. The religious Sunday observer of Tennessee could afford to be lenient with the squirrel hunters whose rifles could be heard popping in the timber on all hours of that holy day. He could easily ignore their violation of his Sunday law because the transgressors were low white trash whose influence cut no figure, but when a man making equally high religious professions with himself, whose life was just as pure and exemplary, who derived the authority for his position from the same sacred volume from which he derived his, and could defend his position with arguments and citations which could not be refuted, when such a man disputed the sanctity of his Sunday observance, a challenge was thrown out which he could not afford to ignore without serious sacrifice of his professed sanctity. It was not Mr. King's soul he cared to save from the consequences of his Sunday labor. It was Mr. King's influence that challenged the soundness of his theology, and set at naught his assumed religious superiority and authority, and aroused a combative malice, that would have lighted the fagots around the seventh-day observer, had the law of the State permitted it.
THE Secretary of the National Religious Liberty Association is in daily receipt of signatures to the petition against religious legislation, notably from California, Iowa, and Michigan. The signatures are mostly upon petition slips, which the senders seem to have received by letter from some earnest workers for religious liberty.
THE Advocate, a prohibition journal of Watertown, this State, is calling for the more vigorous enforcement of existing Sunday laws. Speaking of the growing disregard of Sunday, the Advocate says: “If allowed to go on unchecked, a Continental Sabbath, or a Sabbath without regard to a law compelling a suspension of business, will be substituted in this country instead of the Sabbath of our fathers. Against such an innovation we strongly protest.”
THOSE who wish to do so and who have not already had the opportunity of so doing, or who have neglected it, are requested to sign BOTH of the following petitions and send them to W. H. McKEE, 225 A Street, N. E., Washington, D. C. If room for more names is desired the petition may be cut out and pasted onto a sheet of legal cap.
To the Honorable, the House of Representatives of the United States:—
We, the undersigned, adult residents of the United States, 21 years of age or more, hereby respectfully, but earnestly, petition your Honorable Body not to pass any bill in regard to the observance of the Sabbath, or Lord's day, or any other religious or ecclesiastical institution or rite; nor to favor in any way the adoption of any resolution for the amendment of the National Constitution that would in any way give preference to the principles of any one religion above another, or that will in any way sanction legislation upon the subject of religion; but that the total separation between religion and the State, assured by our National Constitution as it now is, may forever remain as our fathers established it.
To the Honorable, the Senate of the United States:—
We, the undersigned, adult residents of the United States, 21 years of age or more, hereby respectfully, but earnestly, petition your Honorable Body not to pass any bill in regard to the observance of the Sabbath, or Lord's day, or any other religious or ecclesiastical institution or rite; nor to favor in any way the adoption of any resolution for the amendment of the National Constitution that would in any way give preference to the principles of any one religion above another, or that will in any way sanction legislation upon the subject of religion; but that the total separation between religion and the State, assured by our National Constitution as it now is, may forever remain as our fathers established it.
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CHAP. V unmasks “Religious Legislation,” calling special attention to the Blair Sunday Bill now pending in Congress.
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THE NATIONAL SUNDAY LAW
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And Mr. Jones' comments make it more so. His argument is enlarged to what it would have been without Senator Blair's interruptions, objections, and counter-arguments, and is accompanied with answers to all of his objections and counter-arguments. As the Sunday question is now a living issue, this treatise will be interesting to all classes, especially Legislators, lawyers, judges, and other public men. The argument is based on Scripture and history, constitution and law, showing the limits of the civil power, the unconstitutionality of the Sunday bill, an analysis of the Sunday laws and other religious legislation of the different States, the
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Verbatim report of the speeches of Eld. J. O. Corliss, of Washington, Alonzo T. Jones, of New York, Editor American Sentinel, and Milford H. Hobbs, District Master Workman of District Assembly 66, Knights of Labor, together with a brief submitted by Prof. W. H. McKee, Secretary of the National Religious Liberty Association,
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The Pittsburgh Christian Advocate is not pleased with the present administration. It says:—
We confess to very great disappointment in the religious features of President Harrison's administration. He is a Christian man, an officer, and for years a Sabbath-school teacher in the Presbyterian Church. Much was expected of him in the way of proper example in his high office, and of respect for the Christian principles and sentiment of the country. But in some respects we have not seen them. Intoxicating liquors have been served on his table on State occasions, and lately a “german,” one of the most offensive and disgusting of all the public dances, was given in the White House. It was a full dress (rather undress) affair, such as but few thoughtful mothers would suffer their daughters to attend. Chaplain Milburn says there has not been any such public exhibition in the presidential mansion since the marriage of President Tyler. Pretty soon the people will wonder what the difference is between a Christian president and one who is not a Christian.
This illustrates the evil of calling any man a “Christian president.” People will wonder what difference there is between a “Christian president” and one who is not “Christian;” and the conclusion arrived at is likely to be, that a “Christian president” is one who makes a profession of religion, and is governed by the policy of his party and the customs of Washington society, while a non-Christian president is one who makes no profession and is governed in just the same way.
