N. R. JOHNSTON—Respected Sir: In Number 27, current volume of THE AMERICAN SENTINEL, appears an open letter from you to me, calling my attention to what you think an error into which I have fallen relative “to the character of the Hebrew civil government, as well as in reference to what government should be now.”
Your criticism was called out by my article entitled “Nehemiah, the Tirshatha,” which appeared in Number 26 of the SENTINEL.
It appears that I am not alone in my error, but that it is wide spread; that not only a few here and there share it with me, but vast multitudes, even “millions of other Christians” also hold it.
You call our attention to sundry propositions which I suppose you deem sufficient to clear our minds of the fog with which they are beclouded. As I cannot speak for the millions aforesaid, I can say for one that I profess to be open to conviction, and that if wrong I want to know it, and that I am as willing to receive correction from your hands as from any one.
You declare in starting out that you are a National Reformer, but that you do not want your errors charged up to the account of your Reform brethren. I must say that I am generous enough to grant the request. They, without doubt, have enough of their own to answer for, and I do not wish to make their burden heavier. I wonder why you make the request. Is it because you are ashamed, or is it because you stand in suspicion, of sentiments emanating from National Reform sources? You Reformers being the mouthpieces of the Lord, and the especial links connecting Heaven and the United States, which you seem bent on reforming whether or no, you certainly ought to be able to harmonize with your brother National Reformers! If you do not, it’s high time you were beginning to see “eye to eye” and settle yourselves down into the “unity of the faith.” It will never do to have the Lord’s trumpeters give discordant blasts! But to the propositions, I shall give them attention, as you desire.
1. You ask if “the theocracy of the Hebrew commonwealth” was good in the past, “why would not a similar theocracy be good now?” Answer.—You have yourself in part furnished the reply to the question in that portion of your article numbered 5. It is because it “would be impracticable—an utter impossibility;” but the reason you assign why such would be the case is, I think, not the real one. The reason why a theocracy would not “be good now” is because that, as God has discontinued that kind of government, it would be made only by men; at the head of it would be a man in the place of God; and in the Papacy the world has had an illustration of what such a government would be. He who claims that a theocracy would be good now, justifies the Papacy with all that it has ever been. And that is why a theocracy would not be good now.
To the second question, I answer:
2. You contradict yourself when you admit a229theocracy in Israel and deny that there was a union of Church and State. This is like saying that a ten-cent piece is not a dime. A theocracy is a union of Church and State, and a union of Church and State is a theocracy. You can’t separate them. Don’t you see you put asunder that which is joined together?
You say the Church and the State co-operated simply, but there was no union. Webster defines co-operate “to work together.” That’s it exactly. The Church and the State always work together in a union. It cannot be otherwise. There can be no union of any kind without working together. The two blades of a pair of scissors are “independent” of each other, but they “co-operate”—work together because there is a union. In the Hebrew theocracy men were put to death for blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking. Lev. 24: 16. Ex. 31: 14, 15. Also for disobedience to parents, Deut. 21: 18–21; for adultery; for kidnapping; for being a medium, and in fact for violation of any commandment of the decalogue, even to the tenth.
It was an offense punishable with death to make and to use the anointing oil for common purposes. Ex. 30:34–38. Would you be willing to have in this Nation a similar theocracy if the people were “all of one mind or of one religion, as were the Hebrews”? Would you be willing to attach the death penalty to the using of the elements of the bread and wine in the Lord’s supper for common purposes? The matter of the anointing oil was nearly similar. In your “pure republican theocracy,” could you give your “vote” to establish such penalty for such offenses?
3. You see no union of Church and State in our Nation, yet people hold offices in the civil department or in the State and in the church at the same time. You argue that persons under the old theocracy held office in the church and were also civil rulers yet this did not make a union of Church and State then, any more than the same thing makes such a union in this country now. I reply, the cases are not parallel, and therefore your illustration goes wide of the mark. If religious profession were a requisite for holding office in this country, as you National Reformers are more than willing should be the case, then the examples cited would be pertinent, but this would be union of Church and State. I think you will agree with me that it would. Well that’s the way it was in the Israelitish theocracy. Every civil officer had to be a professor of religion—no “outsider” was eligible. The officer must be a religious person.
Proof. The rulers chosen by Moses were men who feared God, “men of truth, hating covetousness.” Ex. 18: 21–26. See, also, 2 Sam. 23: 1–3 and 2 Chron. 19: 5–10. The words of David “by the Spirit of the Lord,” and the “reform” work of Jehoshaphat, clearly show there was a national religion.
4. Your greatest error I conceive to be expressed in these words: “In the Hebrew commonwealth or theocracy, the officers were chosen by the people.” Nothing could be farther from the facts. God himself, and not the people, chose the officers. He, and not the people, chose Moses. Ex. 3: 10. He chose Moses’ successor, Joshua. Josh. 1: 1–3. He chose the tribe of Judah after the death of Joshua. Judges 1: 1, 2. He “gave” the people judges. Acts 13: 20. When the people wanted a king, the Lord gave them Saul. Verse 21. He told Samuel whom to anoint. 1 Sam. 9: 15, 16. The people did not elect him. The Lord selected David. 1 Sam. 16: 12, 13. The people did not elect him. Moses, at the direction of the Lord, selected seventy men of the elders of Israel for “officers” over the people. The people did not select. Num. 11: 16. These examples prove that you are mistaken.
Very respectfully,
N. J. BOWERS.
Fresno, Cal., July 22.
Who Is on the Constitution’s Side?
By Alonzo T. Jones
In the words, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the United States Constitution guarantees perfect religious liberty to every soul in this Nation. A great many people appear to dread the encroachments of the Roman Catholic power. But, so long as the United States Constitution shall be kept as it is, and legislation in harmony with it, such fears are groundless. Cardinal Gibbons might be elected president, Archbishop Corrigan, vice-president, every seat in the Senate might be filled with bishops, and every seat in the House of Representatives might be filled with priests, yet so long as they should respect the Constitution they could not pass a single law affecting Protestantism in any way, because the Constitution says that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And under this Constitution, the Roman Catholic, in the exercise of his religion, is just as free from any interference by Protestants as Protestants are from the interference which they profess to fear from Catholics.
Much is said of the hatred of infidels toward Christianity; but with the Constitution as it is, and with legislation and public sentiment in harmony with it, infidels might hate Christianity as heartily as many persons think they do, and yet they could do Christianity no harm. Colonel Ingersoll might be elected president and every seat in Congress filled with infidels as outspoken as he, yet so long as the Constitution should be respected, they could not make a single law affecting Christianity in any way, even if they wanted to, because the Constitution says that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Under this Constitution religious profession and worship are absolutely free. And so long as public sentiment shall see to it that the Constitution remains as it is, and legislation in harmony with it, every man’s religious profession and worship will remain free. Constitutional safeguards are such only so long as there is “an enlightened public opinion based on individual intelligence.”
There is, however, an already large, and constantly increasing element demanding that the Constitution shall be so amended as to empower Congress to legislate in behalf of Christianity. And a great many are even calling for religious legislation without any such amendment. May 21, 1888, Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, introduced a bill to “promote” the observance of the Lord’s day “as a day of religious worship,” and to secure the “religious observance of the Sabbath day.” Four days afterward, May 25, the same Senator introduced a “joint-resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, respecting establishments of religion and free public schools;” providing for instruction in “the principles of the Christian religion” in all public schools of the Nation; and empowering Congress to “enforce this article by legislation when necessary;” which only proposes to empower Congress to legislate in regard to the principles of the Christian religion. During the last session of the Fiftieth Congress, there were repeated visits of large and influential delegations to the Senate committee having these items in charge, pleading strongly for the passage of both. The adoption of either would be but the establishment of a national religion, and the establishment of a national religion is but the establishment of a national despotism, even though it be under the name of Christianity. True Christianity never can be made a national religion. To make it national is to pervert it. Christianity is universal. It embraces all the world, having its head in Heaven and not on earth.
Jesus Christ separated forever civil government from his religion when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and, “Render therefore to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s.” Bancroft, the historian of the United States, says: “No one thought of vindicating religion for the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity, by establishing a pure, spiritual, and universal religion for all mankind, enjoined to render to Cæsar only that which is Cæsar’s. The rule was upheld during the infancy of the gospel for all men.” “The new Nation when it came to establish a government for the United States refused to treat faith as a matter to be regulated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a State. Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion above all, the new Nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained of God in Judea.” The United States Constitution as it is, upon the subject of religion, is in exact harmony with the principles and the word of Jesus Christ. Therefore, any effort to change that Constitution, respecting religion, even though it be professedly done in behalf of Christianity, is directly opposed to the word of Jesus Christ.
Again the Declaration of Independence declares that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is the fundamental principle of American institutions, and it is in harmony with the word of God. Yet, at a convention held in Sedalia, Mo., May 23 and 24, in behalf of the proposed National Sunday law, Mr. W. P. Gray, the secretary of the convention, who was made secretary of the State Sabbath Union, said:—
“I for one, do not believe that as a political maxim, governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And I believe with Mr. Gault on this, I think. And so the object of this movement is an effort to change that feature in our fundamental law.”
This statement is quoted and endorsed by the Christian Statesman, which is the official organ of the National Association for securing such an Amendment to the United States Constitution as Senator Blair proposed. Therefore, it stands proved by their own words that, those who favor the resolution and the bill introduced by Senator Blair on the subject of religion, are, through these, aiming at the subversion of the fundamental principles of American institutions, the destruction of the rights and liberties of men; and that their work is directly opposed to the principles and the word of Jesus Christ.
It is true that both these pieces of proposed230legislation died when the Fiftieth Congress expired, March 4, 1889. But it is also true that all those who favor them are preparing to do their utmost to have them introduced as soon as the next Congress convenes, and also to do their utmost to secure their adoption.
Do you respect the word of Christ? Do you love liberty, civil and religious? Do you respect the rights of men? Do you appreciate the liberty asserted in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States? If you do any one of these, then you should be willing to let your voice be known in the endorsement and your name in the signing of the following petition:—
“To the Honorable, the Senate of the United States,
(duplicate also to the House):
“We, the undersigned, adult residents of the United States, twenty-one 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.”
The lines are being drawn. On which side will you stand?
A. T. J.
National Reform by Constitutional Amendment not Right.
The Evangelical Repository for March has an excellent article from Rev. J. G. Carson, D. D., professor of homiletics and pastoral theology in the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Xenia, Ohio, from which we make the following extract which we commend to the advocates of religious legislation. Mr. Carson’s proposition is “that the proposed Christian amendment to the Constitution of the United States is neither a possible, nor proper, nor necessary, method of National Reform. After giving his reasons for regarding it as impracticable, the writer says:—
But we proceed to show that this method of National Reform, even if it were possible, is not proper or right, because the civil constitution is not designed or adapted to be the expression of the religious faith of a nation.
Granted that the nation should have a religion, or, in other words, that the people composing it should acknowledge their allegiance to God, and even to Jesus Christ, in his mediatorial authority; yet it is pure assumption to argue that this can only be done through the State in its civil constitution. The fact is that the nation, or, to speak more properly, the people of a nation, can act just as well through the church as through the State. Many are misled by the phrase, the “Nation or the State (for these two are unwarrantably used as interchangeable terms), is a moral person,” which is a mere figure of speech, like a “fiction of law.” The true idea is something like this: The State, or civil government, is an organization, or thing, like a piece of machinery, through which the nation, composed of moral persons, acts in its civil capacity; while the church is an organization through which the same composite moral person acts in its religious capacity. In either case, the moral character of the action and the moral responsibility belong to the individual moral persons composing the organism, and not to the organization itself.
If it be proper to apply the word person to the nation as an organism, then we would say the same person in the one case is acting in a civil capacity, and in the other in a religious capacity. If there be any one form of religion embraced by the majority of the nation, the profession of that religion is made, and can be properly made, only through the church. In every Christian nation, that church or body of professed Christians which includes—in its various branches, it may be—the decisive majority of the people, that church indicates by its profession, the religious character and profession of the nation, and not its civil constitution or form of civil government. We believe that the whole nation, embracing all ranks and classes, kings, nobles, princes, judges, governors, legislators, and all citizens, should “kiss the Son,” acknowledge allegiance to Christ in every relation of life; but this they can do properly only through the church, and not through the State. And this is the true national church and national religion, though it be not established by law; yea, though another church and religion be so established.
This Nation is a Christian nation, and even a Protestant Christian nation, and so recognized, not from its civil Constitution or form of government, but from the character of the religion prevailing among its citizens, as professed by the churches to which they belong. If it be said that this profession should also be made by the nation in its organized capacity as a civil government, then it follows, as a natural and necessary consequence, that this distinctive form of the Christian religion becomes the established religion, and the church representing it becomes the established church. And to this end does the movement for the religious amendment of the Constitution logically tend and arrive at last, notwithstanding all disclaimers on the part of its advocates as to their intentions. In the last analysis it involves a religion established by law, a union of Church and State.
It is not necessary for us to show that, under the present dispensation, the establishment of religion by law, which necessarily requires an established church, is not admissible or proper. This, like the “requiring of religious tests,” may be assumed or taken for granted. Any method of national reform which, like this proposed amendment, leads inevitably to the confounding of the relations of Church and State, is thereby convicted as improper and wrong.
Nowhere is this fundamental distinction between the respective provinces of the Church and the State more closely and tersely defined than in the language of our fathers of the Secession, in the action adopted by the Associate Presbytery, September 29, 1743, which reads thus: “True religion is not only the church’s blessing, but her very substance; so that true religion and a true church cannot be divided. Now, if true religion became a part of the civil constitution, it inevitably follows that the church became a part of the State; which doctrine, as it is absurd in itself, so it lays a plain foundation for Erastianism, overturning the distinction betwixt the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and the kingdoms of this world. Moreover, if the true religion (which is spiritual and supernatural) became a part of the civil constitution, then it could no longer remain a civil, but become a religious, a spiritual, a supernatural constitution.” (See Gib’s Display, vol. 1, p. 274.)
Now, inasmuch as the mediatorial authority of Jesus Christ is a principle of the “true religion,” which is purely “spiritual and supernatural,” and even its fundamental principle, which includes all others, it follows that the “civil constitution is not designed nor adapted” to be the place for its acknowledgment by the nation, else would it cease to be a civil and become a religious document.
The Denver “News” on the Blair Bill.
In discussing the question of Sunday legislation, the Denver News of June 30 says:—
“The Blair Sunday bill, which is expected to come before the next Congress and for which petitions are being circulated, can of course only affect such matters as are embraced within Federal jurisdiction. That bill is inspired by a sentiment of religious intolerance, although its friends may be unconscious of the fact. Mr. Crafts disclaims the measure in its present form, but Senator Blair would make the religious phase stronger if he could. The Rev. W. D. Gray, secretary of the Sunday Observance Convention, lately held in Missouri, does not disguise the real character of the movement as he understands it. In a speech made before that body he says:—
“‘To appeal to divine authority in our legislation would be to fundamentally change the law of our land, or the principle adopted by our fathers when they said that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. I for one do not believe that as a political maxim. 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 of our fundamental law. Jefferson was under the influence of French ideas when the Constitution was framed, and that had something to do with leaving God out of the Constitution. And I think that the provincial history of this country will compel us to come back to that, and recognize God in our Constitution. And I see in this reform a Providence teaching us the necessity of recognizing something else besides the will of the people as the basis of Government.’”
“Such views as the foregoing should kill any attempt to legalize Sunday as a day of rest. The fundamental principle of the Government suits very well, and no interest has enjoyed greater prosperity under its operation than religion. The churches of the United States have a vitality that is not equaled in any other country, and they owe it to the spirit of freedom and to the good sense that cut them entirely loose from the State. The severance cannot be too complete. Religion associated with civil affairs has been too frightful a curse to mankind and too often decimated the race to offer any inducements for such experiments in a land of freedom. A day of rest from toil is a boon that should be preserved, but it will not find legal aid through a measure that implies an encroachment upon liberty of conscience or any alliance between religion and the State that has been happily dispensed with for a hundred years of unexampled national prosperity.”
The sentiment expressed in the last sentence of this quotation will be better understood in the light of the following words which occur previously in the same article:—
“The object of such a law should be to limit the sum of Sunday labor, by stopping ordinary business, and it should be more especially directed against corporations and companies that employ persons to do work.
“Even then the rights of those who from religious motives keep another day should be protected to the utmost, as also the rights of people who attach no religious significance whatever to any day.”
“The law should be chary of any interference with the individual in his choice of a way for enjoying his Sunday rest. No restriction upon the individual that rests solely upon the religious conviction of another should form a legitimate feature in such a law. In a general sense the rule for measuring the degree of individual liberty should be that point beyond which the rights of others would be affected.”
This would indeed be a very mild Sunday law; much too mild to satisfy the so-called American Sabbath Union.
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Sunday Laws and Conscience
It is urged by the advocates of Sunday laws that they do not infringe the rights of conscience, because while they forbid work on Sunday they do not forbid the keeping of another day also. But is this true? God has said, “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.” This at least gives all permission to work six days out of each seven. The divine law also says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.” One man reads that commandment and says, That requires me to keep the definite seventh day of the week. Another says, That means that I shall work six days and rest one; any stated day will do. The first man keeps Saturday, the seventh day of the weekly cycle. The second man keeps Sunday, the first day of the week. The State steps in and says to the first man, “You may keep the seventh day if you wish, but you must also keep the first day.” Does it not, by thus depriving him of one-sixth of his God-given time for labor, to all intents and purposes fine him for acting according to his convictions of duty?
Sunday Law Movement Connections
THE field secretary of the American Sabbath Union tries to dodge any connection with the National Reform Association, so as to evade an additional point which we make in regard to Sunday laws being religious legislation; but he, himself, was a part of the last National Reform Convention, held in Pittsburg last spring, and made a speech there. Rev. J. P. Mills, a district secretary of several years' standing, of the National Reform Association, is secretary and chief manager of the Ohio State Sabbath Association, which is auxiliary to the National Sabbath Union, and was organized under the direction of the field secretary, Dr. Crafts.
Again, Rev. M. A. Gault is a born and bred National Reformer, and for years has been, and is now a district secretary of the National Reform Association and one of its most active workers. Mr. Gault, with Miss Shaw of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, organized the Missouri State Sunday Law Convention held at Sedalia in May, at which Dr. Crafts was present and made a speech, and where, again, under his direction, a State Sabbath Association for Missouri was organized auxiliary to the National, of which Mr. Crafts is field secretary. And now, we have it on the authority of the Shenandoah Post, of Iowa, that “Mr. Gault has been appointed secretary of the Des Moines, Omaha, and Denver districts,” and that as such he is now “giving his time to the Sunday-rest movement,” and is holding Sunday-law conventions in his districts. Now if Dr. Crafts or anybody else can tell where the American Sabbath Union stops and the National Reform Association begins, we wish he would do it.
