ATJ
LEGISLATION can never serve as a moral guide. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.1
IT is better to be a great man in a small country than a small man in a great country. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.2
GREAT men do not make principles, but principles makes great men. The greatness is inherent only in the principles. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.3
CHRISTIANITY means self-surrender, self-sacrifice. For the State to be Christian it would have to sacrifice itself, and so cease to exist. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.4
SINCE the carnal heart is not subject to the law of God, and cannot be subject to it, how can it possibly be subjected to righteousness by the law of man? AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.5
IF the minority can get along in the observance of the seventh day without support of law, why cannot the majority get along without such support in observing the first day? AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.6
THE idea that uncivilized peoples have not the same natural rights that are possessed by the civilized, is of near kin to the idea that white men are not bound to respect the rights of a person whose skin is black, and to the idea that the aristocracy are not bound to recognize any rights in the Lord classes. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.7
PEOPLE who think to safeguard the moral interests of a community by a Sunday law, should remember that the “righteousness of the law” is only the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, which can save nothing. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.8
THE strong arm of the law in support of a religious institution proclaims the weakness of the religion the institution represents. If the Sunday institution is of God, it is strong enough in itself to survive all opposition. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.9
THE Christian Church is set in the world to show a contrast with the world, as light with darkness, and not to have the world conformed to herself by religious laws. Conformity of the world to the church, by law, is conformity of the church to the world. What the church needs is to present a sharper contrast with the world, not to have what contrast there is obliterated. Hence a Sunday law is a detriment to the church, and cannot be anything else. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.10
AN apostate State—one which has forsaken the true principles of government—is always found united with an apostate church. The United States is the only nation founded on the true principles of government, and the only one in which church and state are not united. This was not an accident, but a necessary consequence of the national recognition of the true principles of government, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Union of church and state is wholly incompatible with government by the consent of the governed. But now that the principle of government by consent of the governed has been repudiated, and the nation has become committed to the policy of government by consent of some of the governed,—which principle it is putting in practise in the conquest of the Philippines—its union with an apostate church will be sure and speedy. That is the product of a law as certain as the law of gravitation. AMS July 6, 1899, page 401.11
ATJ
THE Christian Endeavor leaders are swinging the youthful enthusiasm of that religious movement into the current of conquest and imperialism of the United States. AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.1
The Christian Endeavor department of the Interior of June 22, 1899, in presenting matter for “A Christian Citizenship meeting,” makes the “topic,” “Our Country for Christ”; and as a sub-heads gives such as these: “A blessed nation—Psalm 144:15”; “A victorious nation—2 Chronicles 20:1-30”; “Praise for victories—Psalm 44:1-8”; and “The nation for Christ—Luke 14:15-24.” Any Christian endeavor that can apply to the United States and its victories the Scriptures, as is done in this Christian Endeavor lesson, can easily do anything else that it pleases with the Scriptures. AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.2
The lesson continues in the same strain, as follows:— AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.3
“There is a mighty contest abroad. The Goth has risen from the dead; the modern vandal stalks throughout the land. The call for patriotism was never louder, the demand for Christian courage was never greater than it is to-day. Let every citizen consecrate his right of franchise to the rule of Almighty God, and pledged himself to stand by those principles that have made our country what it is. Let every patriot feel again the tingle of loyalty that burns like a flame in the veins of every ardent lover of home, and native land, and Christ, and good. Let every woman to whose guiding care has been given the training of some Washington or Lincoln, pour into her children’s ears the rich lore of our country’s Christian heroes and sacrificing heroines. Let every soldier enlist again in the war against vice and immortality; every youth join in the drum beat that leads to victory; every infant be taught lisp, ‘Jesus, Lover of my Soul,’ and the ‘Red, White and Blue’; every boy to join Christ and country, and nail the flag just beneath the cross. The cause of America is the cause of humanity. It has a mission among the nations. May it adorn the centuries, shedding its blessings to the last shock of time.” AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.4
If that does not mean a union of church and state, then there never was such a thing in the world. Any boy or anybody else who “joins Christ and country,” will always put country before Christ. Anybody who in his thought joins Christ and something else, will always in his conduct put the something else before Christ. AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.5
There was never conceived a more deceptive thing than that which is almost universally conceived by professed Christians as the very ultimate of Christian loyalty, namely, “Christ and the Church,” or “Christ”—and anything else. In the vocabulary of Christian loyalty, nothing—absolutely nothing—can have any shadow of a share with Christ. Christian loyalty knows simply and only Christ; Christ and Christ alone; Christ, all in all. And in this loyalty there is embodied unswerving allegiance to every cause that is true, and everything that is right. AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.6
Anything else, or anything in addition, is a deception; and is disloyalty, in some of loyalty, to Christ. AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.7
A. T. J.
ATJ
A FEW weeks ago the Christian Herald of New York City published the answers that it had received from a large number of public men to certain questions which it had sent to them as to their attitude toward Christianity. Of course favorable answers were given even by Li-Hung-Chang. The truest statement of the whole case, that we have seen is the following by the public of June 24, 1899:— AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.1
“One of the most paganistic performances of our day and generation is to be credited to a New York paper called the Christian Herald. Assertions having gained currency that the prominent men of the country have become so saturated with commercialism as to be indifferent to Christianity, the Christian Herald catechised a select lot, including the President, and has published the answers. Here are its interrogatories:— AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.2
“‘Are you a friend of Christianity? AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.3
“‘Do you believe that Christianity is the friend of mankind? AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.4
“‘Does your belief extend to a recognition of a Supreme Being, and to the divinity of Christ, to the surpassing potency of Christianity as a civilizing influence?’ AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.5
“These interrogatories do not touch the core of the question. Had the public manner of Rome in Cesar’s time been asked if they believed in the gods, every one would have replied in the affirmative, though it was notorious that the Roman upper classes were atheists. But it was not good form to deny the gods openly. So now with Christianity. A certain conventional piety calling itself Christianity, is to our day with the gods were in Cesar’s day. No public man would dare deny believe in it. Ingersoll tried it and fell from a high estate and lofty possibilities in politics to the grade of a peripatetic lecturer. Who does not know the trick of sensational evangelists, who at their meetings ask all Christians to stand up. Of course, everybody stands. But that does not prove all to be Christians. Just so with the answers to the Christian Herald’s questions. Everybody from the President down answers in the affirmative. They all believe in Christianity. But to yield a perfunctory, conventional, pietistic profession of belief in Christianity is a very different thing from being a Christian. So the answers to the Christian Herald’s questions prove nothing. It is quite possible to profess a belief in Christianity while being so saturated with commercialism as to be utterly without either Christian practise or Christian spirit.” AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.6
That is all true. And yet it is not as close to the whole truth as it might be. To cite the times and prominent men of pagan Rome, is not as close a comparison as can be fairly drawn with the stroke of the Christian Herald’s. AMS July 6, 1899, page 402.7
Think a moment: Pagan Rome became at last professedly Christian Rome. And when it had been so for fifty or even longer, how was it in such matters as this which is raised by the Christian Herald and touched by the Public? Here is the answer in the words of the historian Merivale:— AMS July 6, 1899, page 403.1
“If the great Christian scholars had themselves come forth from the schools of the pagans, the loss had not been wholly unrequited; so complacently had even Christian doctors again surrendered themselves to the fascinations of pagan speculations; so fatally, in their behalf, had they extenuated Christian dogma, and a acknowledged the fundamental truth and sufficiency of science falsely so called. AMS July 6, 1899, page 403.2
“The gospel we find was almost eaten out from the heart of the Christian society. I speak not now of the pride of spiritual pretensions, of the corruption of its secular politics, of its ascetic extravagance, its mystical fallacies, of its hollowness in preaching, or its laxity in practice; of it saint worship, which was a revival of hero worship; its addiction to the sensuous in outward service, which was a revival of idolatry. But I point to the fact less observed by our church historians, of THE ABSOLUTE DEFECT OF ALL DISTINCTIVE CHRISTIANITY IN THE UTTERANCES OF MEN OF THE HIGHEST ESTEEM as Christians, men of reputed wisdom, sentiment and devotion. AMS July 6, 1899, page 403.3
“Look, for instance, at the remains we possess of the Christian Boethius, a man whom we know to have been a professed Christian and a churchman, excellent in action, steadfast in suffering; but in whose writings, in which he aspires to set before us the true grounds of spiritual consolation on which he himself rested in the hour of his trial, and on which he would have his fellows rest, THERE IS NO TRACE OF CHRISTIANITY WHATEVER, nothing but pure, and mangled naturalism. AMS July 6, 1899, page 403.4
“This marks decline of distinctive Christian belief was accompanied with a marked decline of Christian morality. Heathenism reasserted its empire over the carnal affections of the natural man. The pictures of abounding wickedness in high places and the low places of the earth, which are presented to us by the witness of the worst pagan degradation, are repeated, in colors not less strong, in lines not less hideous, by the observers of the gross and reckless iniquity of the so-called Christian period now before us. It becomes evident that as the great mass of the careless and indifferent have assumed with the establishment of the Christian church in authority and honor, the outward garb and profession of Christian believers, so with the decline of belief, the corruption of the visible church, the same masses, indifferent and irreligious as of old, have rejected the moral restraints which their profession should have imposed upon them.” AMS July 6, 1899, page 403.5
If the men of high standing at that time—the emperor, generals, naval captains, politicians, etc.,—had been asked these identical questions, they would invariably have given precisely similar answers. Thus it was in professed Christian Rome of the fourth and fifth centuries, and not in the Pagan Rome of Cesar’s time, that is found the closest comparison and the fittest likeness to the performance of the Christian Herald. And, be it remembered, all that was in the very time when the judgments of God, in the floods of barbarians, were being poured out to the utter ruin of the whole framework of society there. AMS July 6, 1899, page 403.6
And history is still repeating itself. Who will read the history in its true meaning? Alas! how many read it in vain! AMS July 6, 1899, page 403.7
A. T. J.
ATJ
A READER of the SENTINEL asks us to explain what imperialism has to do with religious liberty. The SENTINEL has been explaining this for some time, but will be glad to keep on explaining as long as there are honest people who desire to be enlightened. AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.1
Imperialism is a name designating government by the consent of some of the government. AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.2
True republican government is government by the consent of all of the governed. It rests upon the doctrine that “all men are created equal,” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.3
If it is true that all men have “certain unalienable rights,” and that “to preserve these rights governments are instituted among men,” it is necessarily true that governments derive their just powers from the consent of all of the governed. AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.4
And if it is not true that governments derive their just powers from the consent of all of the governed, it cannot be true that all men have certain unalienable rights. It necessarily follows that some men have no rights. AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.5
Imperialism, therefore, plainly asserts that some men have no rights. It asserts this in theory, and it has always asserted this in practise, wherever it has been put into operation. History is voluminous upon this point. AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.6
Now, what has the doctrine that a man has no rights, got to do with religious liberty? Is it a denial of religious liberty to an individual to declare that he has no rights? AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.7
How much religious liberty would an individual possess who had no rights? AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.8
If an individual had no rights, would he have any right to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience? AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.9
This is what imperialism has to do with religious liberty. Do you see it? AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.10
NOT many years ago the people of this country were engaged in a great and fierce dispute about the government—so fierce that they took up arms and fought each other till hundreds of thousands of them were killed, and the country was sunk under the ruin and paralysis of a great war. Did that state of things call for outside interference to stop Americans from cutting each others’ throats, because they did not know how to govern themselves? AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.11
Now, the same Americans are interfering in the Philippines, assuming the right to control the affairs of the islands, and slaughtering the natives who resist, to save them from the internal war and ruin which it is alleged would follow because they do not know how to govern themselves. AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.12
Would these Americans have been willing that any outside power should have saved them from ruin and bloodshed which resulted from their disagreement about government, by stepping in and “benevolently assimilating” this country? Would they have been willing any power should have done to them what they are now doing to the Filipinos? What imperialists would answer this question? AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.13
“THE kingdom of God is within you,” said Jesus Christ; and hence his kingdom is “not of this world.” Christ’s kingdom is advanced only by means which operate in the heart, the kingdoms of the world only by means which cannot reach the heart. The one is by faith; the other is force. This is a distinction always overlooked by those who think to establish the kingdom of God on earth by legislation and politics, but it is a vital distinction, and cannot be overlooked by him who sees the truth. AMS July 6, 1899, page 416.14