Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 13, 1889
Two Servian Regulations.
By Editor
A FEW weeks ago a Servian newspaper correspondent reported that the sale of the Bible had been prohibited in Belgrade, and it was expected the regulation would apply to all Servia. Since reading the report we have been watching to see what wicked thing this restless government would do next, as a country that prohibits the Bible in these days gives sad evidence of national degeneracy. Whether the law referred to in the following quotation has been passed since the above interdiction, does not appear, but it is in every way worthy to be immediately associated with it. The London Graphic says:—
“Rigid Sabbatarians ought to go to Servia. The metropolitan Michael has succeeded in getting a law passed by which every kind of business is strictly prohibited on Sundays and on all holy days of the orthodox church. Thus trade is stopped on 180 days in the year, and a tradesman recently caught infringing the law by selling a pennyworth of rice on a church holiday was fined £1.”
This means 180 days of enforced idleness for men who have no religious regard for the festivals of the orthodox church, as, of course, if such a regard existed they would not need to be thus compelled to be religious. It is said that the devil always finds some work for idle hands to do, and under these circumstances it is not difficult to understand the state of intrigue and unrest which has brought Servia into such prominence of late. The law is at least consistent in placing all of the church festivals, Sunday included, on the same basis, where they properly belong.—Present Truth, London, England.
The New Paganism.
By A. T. J.
In his Boston Monday lectures last winter upon religion in the public schools, Joseph Cook discussed the question, “Shall the common schools teach common morals?” This is a singular question for a man who demands that a religiously-grounded morality shall be taught in the schools, and that the religion upon which it shall be grounded shall be Christianity. It is also a singular question to come from a man who pretends to know anything about the morality demanded by Christianity. Even though it should be conceded, which it is not, that the common schools should teach common morality, that would be as far removed from the teachings of morality which Christianity demands, as earth is from heaven. Common morality is nothing but immorality. Common morality is simply that sort of morality that is common, the sort of morality that is practiced by most of the people; and to teach that in the common schools would be only to teach the pupils to do those things which are practiced by most of the people. In other words, it would simply be teaching the pupils in the common schools to do as most of the people do. But pupils can learn to do that without any special instruction.
Again: Such teaching as that erects the common practice into a standard of morality which all must be taught and to which all must be made to conform. In other words, that which most of the people do it is right to do, and that is the correct standard of morality. This, in turn, involves the doctrine that what the majority does, or says shall be done, is the standard of right, and is to be conformed to as such. In a popular government the majority is the State. What the majority says is what the State says. Therefore, as, according to this theory, what the majority says is right, it follows that the majority being the State, what the State says is right. And this brings us at once face to face with the pagan Roman idea of ethics, that the idea of the State is the highest idea of right, and that the voice of the people is the voice of God. It is demonstrated, therefore, that the ethics of the Boston Monday lectureship of 1889 are pagan.
But the idea of the State is not the highest idea of right. The voice of the people is not the voice of God, and most especially it is not upon the subject of religion or morals. What the State says or does may be right, but it is not right because the State says it, for it may be wrong. There is a higher idea of right than the idea of the State, or than any which the State can inculcate. That is the idea of right which God expresses and the standard which he has established, and is as much higher than the idea of the State as God’s ideas are higher than those of the Boston Monday paganism, or as God is higher than the inventor of it. And, according to this idea of ethics of morality and right, the voice of God only is the voice of God. This voice of God, and this standard of right, is expressed in the Bible and is exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ. It is implanted in the human soul, and woven into the character of men, by the power of the Spirit of God in answer to a personal and abiding faith in Jesus Christ. But such a character as that is not common any more than Jesus Christ is common.
Further: Any such view of morals as this taught by the Boston Monday lecturer, reduces it wholly to the plane of the natural. Common morals is only natural morals, and natural morals is nothing but immorality. Jesus Christ gave a description of the moral condition of humanity in its natural state. In other words, it showed what is the nature of this common or natural morals. He said: “Out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.” Mark 7: 21, 22. Then Paul described the same thing, only in other words, saying: “It is written, There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace have they not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes.” Rom. 3: 10-18.
That is natural morals. That is common morals, and such it will ever remain in spite of all the States on earth, until the heart is converted by the power of God, and the evil fountain purified from which the evil flows; and by no power which the State can ever exert, nor any instrumentality which it can ever use, can it be effected. It can be done alone by the power of God through330the agency of his Spirit; and this is not a common or natural process, but is wholly above the common, and is supernatural. Genuine morality, therefore, in this world, is only the fruit of the Spirit of God. Properly speaking, therefore, there is no such thing as common or natural morals, and to claim such a thing in the name of Christianity is to reduce Christianity and its Author to the plane of the natural, and to place it on a level with all the natural religions of the world, and thus reduces it to the level of paganism. But any theory which reduces Christianity to the level of paganism is a pagan theory. Therefore, it is again demonstrated that the ethics of the Boston Monday lectureship are pagan ethics only. This is not only the logic of the theory, it is the fact, for Mr. Cook says:—
“Merely natural morals, if taught thoroughly, must include the morals taught in the highest of all historical realities in morals, namely, the character of Christ as a man, and, therefore, the picture of the character of Christ as contained in the New Testament literature is not to be excluded from the public schools.”
This puts the character of Christ as he lived in this world upon the plane of the “merely natural,” and it makes the picture of the character of Christ, as contained in the New Testament literature, a merely natural thing, and the morality of Christ a merely natural morality. This distinctly places Jesus Christ, and his character, and the record of it, all upon the plane of the merely natural, than which nothing can be more false, nor more abhorrent to the character of Christ, or to the picture of that character as given in the New Testament.
Jesus Christ is not a natural product, and therefore the morals of Christ are not natural morals. The character of Christ, whether as pictured in the New Testament or the Old, is not a natural product. That picture is not a natural picture. It is all supernatural. Jesus Christ is the Lord from heaven. His coming into this world was wholly miraculous, and the miraculous is not the natural. The picture of that character as drawn in the Scriptures is a picture drawn by inspiration of God. The Spirit of Christ itself foretold his coming, the manner of his birth, and of his death. That same Spirit recorded the fact of his coming, of his birth, his manner of life, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension again to heaven. These Scriptures came not “by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” To make that character, or the record of it, a “merely natural” thing, as the Boston Monday lectureship distinctly does, robs Jesus Christ of his divinity, destroys the gospel of salvation, and turns the record of it into a myth. Placing all of this on the level of the merely natural, does distinctly place it on a level with all the natural religions that have ever been, and so makes it essentially pagan.
For the sake of the case, we present another extract in the same line as the above, more fully to show that such is intentionally the ethics of the Boston Monday lectureship, and that such is the deduction that was intentionally reached in the lecture under consideration. The lecture closed with these words:—
“In Christ, the highest ethical reality known to established and incontrovertible history, there is the highest self-revelation of God. That revelation, so far forth as Christ is man, is a part of natural morals. Any system of instruction which shuts its eyes to this fact, shuts its eyes to reality. A book on architecture that should not mention the Parthenon, or one on painting that should say nothing of the Sistine Chapel, would be no more defective than is any book on purely natural morals without a definite account of the highest historical reality in morals—the character of Christ as a man and the ethics of the gospel. Natural morals, if taught thoroughly, teach, of course, the highest attained moral ideas. The character of Christ, as exhibiting the highest ideal of morals actually attained among men, is the supreme illustration, and contains the organizing principles of every scheme of natural morals that can be called thorough or scientific. No adequate picture of that character exists except in the New Testament. Natural morals, therefore, cannot be thoroughly taught when the Bible is excluded from the schools; and hence the State, in the exercise of its right of self-preservation, has authority to require that it shall not be so excluded. (Applause.)”
That is but to say that the highest ethical reality known to established and incontrovertible history is a purely natural one. It is to say that the character of Christ, as a man, and the ethics of the gospels, are as purely natural as was the Parthenon, or as are the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. It says that the highest attained moral ideas are but purely natural ones. Hence the State as the highest natural organization of men must adopt, inculcate, and enforce, a system of purely natural morals as the highest ideal, and this it must do wholly in the exercise of its right of self-preservation. And this is only another form of expressing the highest ideal of paganism—the idea that the State is the highest ideal of ethics. And such is the highest ideal of ethics attained in the Boston Monday lectureship. Therefore, the ethics of the Boston Monday lectureship is essentially pagan.
And that is the idea, and such the ideal, to which it is proposed to pledge the American system of government by constitutional amendment establishing religion in the public schools. Are the American people ready to declare their government pagan, as the Boston Monday lectureship has declared itself? Are the American people ready to indorse by their votes the Boston Monday paganism, as did that “immense audience” at Tremont Temple, February 11, 1889, by its repeated and “loud applause”?
A. T. J.
Spiritual Husbandry
By C. G. Ames
THE harvest of grains and fruits is not more regular or abundant than the yield of human affections, sympathies, fellowships; but here also there are differences of seasons and of soils. We must improve our spiritual husbandry. We must enrich the ground from which good qualities spring. We must expose our inmost life to the quickening sun.—C. G. Ames.
Congressional Work This Winter
“Senator Dolph, of Oregon,” says the American Standard, “has outlined the work of Congress this winter thus: Justice must be done the Chinese immigration laborers who hold return certificates. The interstate commerce and civil service laws will be amended; Blair’s education bill will come up. The pension office will be investigated, and the tariff will be revised.”
Arizona Press and Religious Liberty
By Editor
The Herald, of Saint John's, Arizona, is another patriotic paper that isn't quite ready for national compulsory religion. We are in receipt of a copy quoting our editorial on the teachings of the American Sabbath Union secretary and his visit to Arizona in the interest of Church and State. Arizona's press has already more real Christian qualities than many self-styled religious sheets.—Moral and Scientific Companion.
Baptists and Religious Liberty.
We can but wish that the following words by Rev. J. Herndon Garnett, editor of the Herald of Truth, the leading Baptist paper of this coast, were true of all Baptists. In the Herald of October 9 Mr. Garnett says:—
“Americans are constantly tempted to forget their birthright, religious liberty. Upon one pretext or other, there are good people ever and anon arising who tell us of some legislation which should be effected to operate in favor of religion. This to them is ample cause for action. The Jesuitical policy, ‘The end justifies the means,’ is wonderfully human.
These misguided, but well-meaning people, appeal to Christian voters and patriots along the religious line, and think thereby to touch the most powerful sentiment, and arouse to action the conscience of Christendom. Just here eternal vigilance and wide-awake discrimination are all-important. The end here must never justify the means. There is to us no end possible to be reached by legislative enactment, which would be worth the surrender of this American, Christ-given principle of religious freedom. This is a boon which was bought with blood, on whose early cradle the ashes of our Christian ancestors fell, and whose birth-throes were the beginning of the freest and grandest government which the world has yet seen.
“Baptists, peculiarly, love to remember that the seed of this principle in the soil of the Old World and the New was watered with the blood, and suffered the cruel imprisonment, of some of their best and bravest sires. They cannot forget this. Neither can they forget the eternal oath which they have taken that the liberty wherein they stand must to the end of time be guaranteed to every member of the human race, as far as in them lies, and so help them God.
“With this freedom come many perils, dangers which would be largely averted in a sterner governmental structure. All liberty has its dangers. The liberty to walk given to the child is the liability to fall. The danger to the captive set free is that he may fall into more galling chains. But because of the perils of freedom, we do not lose our love for liberty.”
The writer might have added, “Nor is liberty the less necessary to development because of the perils which necessarily accompany it.” The proper office of civil government is to protect the rights of all; to this end it forbids those acts which trench upon the rights of others, not because such acts are immoral, but because they are uncivil.
Their Object.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
THE following paragraph is from a paper on “The American Sabbath,” read at the Ocean Grove Convention, August 9, by Dr. Robert S. Doherty, formerly assistant editor of the New York Christian Advocate. He said:—
“The Sunday newspaper, as published in our chief cities, is a peculiarly American institution. It could not be supported by its foreign patronage, nor, for that matter, without Christian patronage. It is directly hostile to the Sabbath. Now the most serious aspect of this Sunday paper business is not so much the fact that a few journeymen printers are engaged after midnight on Saturday, or that the fast train carries the edition with great speed, and with more or less disturbance, out into the remote parts of the country. The chief mischief is done in the reading of the paper. For this there is no excuse. For the harm which comes from it, the reader is himself responsible.”
In this short paragraph we have again revealed to us the real object of Sunday laws,—they are not so much for the purpose of prohibiting all labor on the first day of the week, as for the purpose of inducing men to go to church by cutting off all other means of spending the day. From this and similar utterances, we are warranted in the conclusion that if all the people would faithfully attend church every Sunday there would not be so much objection raised to the work which is done outside of church hours.
This is not an isolated utterance. Everyone who fights the Sunday newspaper makes the same statement. When told that more work is done on Sunday in preparing the Monday paper than in preparing the Sunday morning edition, they say that the Sunday work that is done by the newspaper employees is not the evil against which they strike; but that what they are concerned about is the fact that the newspapers keep people away from the church and destroy the effect of the sermon on those who do go. Thus they show that they are working not so much in the interest of Sunday rest as in the interest of the pulpit. We wish to emphasize this point until our readers see that this Sunday movement is nothing more nor less than an effort on the part of the churches to have the State legislate in their behalf.
But this is not all that is shown; the paragraph just quoted shows the seemingly utter inability of the advocates of Sunday laws to comprehend the fact that the State does not possess the same power that the Spirit of God does. They want the State to pass laws to suppress a thing the evil of which, they themselves confess, rests solely with the individual. It is not a public nuisance—not something which, like the saloon331tends only to destroy the well-being of society; for whatever mischief is done, the individual reader is himself alone responsible. Yet they expect that the State is going to remedy this evil; they expect that the State, by taking away the newspaper, will make the individual who now reads it spiritually-minded. They do not seem to understand that the lack of spirituality is what leads professed Christians to read these papers when they should be engaged in worship; and that if the newspapers were taken away, their carnal minds would find some other worldly means of gratification. If they would think of the matter seriously, they could but confess that the suppression of the Sunday newspaper would not in the slightest degree increase the spirituality of the people; and that admission would at the same time be a confession that they are more interested in having people possess a form of godliness than in laboring through the divinely-appointed agencies to really convert them; in other words, that they have lost sight of the gospel. And so it is no doubt true that while National Reformers have so much to say about atheism on the part of those who oppose Sunday laws, they themselves are most zealously working to undermine true Christianity.
E. J. W.
Somewhat Mixed.
By C. P. Bollman
THE Examiner (Baptist) of October 3, has an article entitled, “License They Mean,” from which I quote as follows:—
“Recently a party has been forming to resist the passage of a law by Congress prohibiting the running of interstate Sunday trains. This, too, is stigmatized as an unwarrantable interference with the rights of conscience—a first step toward union of Church and State, and the destruction of religious liberty. It cannot be unprofitable, therefore, to inquire what force there is in these representations. The principle of liberty and the idea of law must intersect each other somewhere; the practically important question is, Where should the line of intersection be, that justice may be secured for all?”
“The principle of religious liberty requires only one thing: That all religious beliefs should be placed on an equality before the law, so that no one should be either favored or punished because of his opinions, whether privately held or publicly expressed, so that in their public expression breaches of the peace are not provoked. The principle of religious liberty does not require that men shall not be held accountable for overt acts, not directly connected with the worship of God, or even for such acts if they tend to provoke a breach of the peace. The offering of human sacrifices, for example, or immoral orgies, could not be claimed as exempt from civil law on the plea that they were a part of religious worship. But, in a general way, it may be safely said that the State will not, and should not, interfere with any form of religious worship.”
“But with respect to the daily-conduct of life, the case is otherwise. . . .
“The civil law must, therefore, for the safety of society, prohibit all immoral acts, whether religious sanction be pleaded for them or not. It must punish crime, even if the criminal claim to be the high priest of some religion. It may make unlawful acts, deemed inconsistent with the general welfare—such as unnecessary Sunday labor—without infraction of religious liberty, or taking the first step towards a religious establishment. In short, it may preserve in practice a distinction often recognized in the abstract—the distinction between liberty and license. Liberty is freedom under just law, the freedom to do right; license is freedom without law, the freedom to do wrong. Every man has a right to liberty; no man can claim the right to license.”
The proposed law referred to is not so innocent as the Examiner would have us suppose; the designed law would stop not only the running of interstate trains upon Sunday, but it would prohibit all forms of labor and business upon that day, in all places subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States. It is not, however, the law, but the principle of such legislation which I wish to discuss.
It is true, as the Examiner says, that “the principle of liberty and the idea of law must intersect each other somewhere,” but it is also true that if the principle of liberty is to be preserved, the intersection must be at a point which will not infringe the natural rights of a single citizen. The question then naturally arises, Has the Examiner indicated that point?—It has not. Surely the editor of that paper could not have considered his words carefully, or he never would have said:—
“The principles of religious liberty require only one thing: That all religious beliefs should be placed on an equality before the law, so that no one should be either favored or punished because of his opinions, whether privately held or publicly expressed.”
Would the Examiner agree that perfect religious freedom was enjoyed in a country which permitted the teaching of all the doctrines held by Baptists, but forbade the rite of baptism?—Certainly not. It would insist, and properly, too, as it does in Russia to-day, that the principles of religious freedom demand not only liberty to believe and teach, but also liberty to practice.
It is objected, however, that “there is not a vice or crime that has not been made a religious duty. The Thugs of India counted murder a holy act, most acceptable to their goddess Kali; the worshipers of Moloch thought it a virtue to cast their babes into the fire; the followers of Ashtoreth and Aphrodite performed a worthy act of worship in sacrificing their chastity.” And the question is asked, Shall such things be permitted in the name of religion?—By no means. All of these things, and many others which might be enumerated, are not only immoral, but they are uncivil, that is, they cannot be practiced without infringing upon the rights of others, therefore it is not only the right, but it is the duty, of civil government to prohibit them; but this it does, not because they are immoral, but because they are in their very nature uncivil.
But the real animus of the Examiner's article is revealed in the words: “It [the civil law] may make unlawful acts deemed inconsistent with the general welfare—such as unnecessary Sunday labor—without infraction of religious liberty.” This is virtually placing Sunday work on the same level with murder and prostitution; but does it belong in the same category?—Bigotry may say that it does, but common sense says that it does not; for the reason that work is right of itself, while murder and prostitution are always and everywhere wrong and uncivil. If they were right six days in each week, it would be hard to make it appear that they were wrong upon the remaining day; but they are never right; they are never civil.
If Sunday work is in any way evil, it is because of the religious character of the day upon which it is done, and not because there is anything wrong in the work itself. It is this fact which marks the wide difference between it and the offenses against nature with which some seek to class it.
It is very true, as the Examiner says, that “liberty is freedom under just law, the freedom to do right,” but is a law that arbitrarily makes a crime on one day that which is laudable upon another, a just law? Justice answers, No; God alone has the right to command men under penalty of sin, and he alone has a right to judge and punish men for violations of the divine law. Even if it could be shown that the law of God requires Sunday-keeping, it would not alter the case in the least; the observance or non-observance of a day, or any number of days, is not a proper subject of legislation. The keeping of a Sabbath is an act of worship; it belongs alone to God, and, according to the words of our Saviour, every man must be left free to render unto God the things that are God's. C. P. BOLLMAN.