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    April 2, 1889

    “About Religious Liberty” The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago) 18, 6 (6,366), p. 8.

    ATJ

    Elder Jones Continues His Lectures Against a Legal Sabbath.
    Rome Did Not Persecute the Christians in Olden times.
    She Simply Enforced the Laws as They Appeared on the Books.

    WHAT LEGISLATION MAY LEAD TO

    Elder Jodes [sic.] illustrated the necessity for enforcing existing laws, and the hardship and suffering engendered by unwise and illegitimate legislations, last night, in his lecture at the new Central Bible School, Nos. 26 and 28 College place. He said: “In Mark 16:15, we have the command to the disciples to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Christ is the author of freedom. The world never knew true freedom, either religious or civil, until He came. The Romans said to Him: “We were never in bondage to any man, how then, say you, we shall be free?” “Ye are in bondage to sin,” Christ said, and it was His message to set men free from the bondage of sin; and in giving them a knowledge of their ... to draw us away from such an intimate relation to Christ that we lose that liberty. Paul says in Romans 8:35, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” This was written to the Romans, who knew all that was implied in it. For His sake He says they were subject to death every hour; they could not tell at what moment they might be cast to wild beasts.DIO April 2, 1889, page 8.1

    These men were bound to Christ by this principle of love, but long before Christ came into the world there was a Roman law forbidding men to have any strange gods. When the Romans conquered a nation the captives were allowed to maintain their own religion, but it was death and banishment to introduce a new religion. As long as Christians remained with the Jews they were safe comparatively, but when they became a new sect, disturbing men from the old religions, they became rebels. He claimed the God of the Christians as his God, a new one to the Romans, and his commission was to go into all the world and preach this new God. So when they went forth to proclaim this gospel they had to break the law, even when they took the names of Christians, and the rulers had to punish them.DIO April 2, 1889, page 8.2

    IT WAS NOT PERSECUTION

    they were law-breakers, and the law had to be enforced. All the Roman empire saw in Christianity was an uprising against lawful authority, these laws being in existence for many years. But it was not an uprising to subdue good institutions as the Romans thought, but as we now can see, to implant truth and true principles on the earth. It was the Christian mission to tell the Romans that their law was wrong, and that they had no right to pass such laws. They claimed that they had the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. Rome denied it, and this antagonism has been in the world ever since, the effort on one side to force man to worship according to the dictates of men, and the refusal of men to be so controlled. In Rome, Neander says, the highest idea of ethics to a Roman was to keep his house in order and be an humble, obedient citizen of the State. Just as soon then as a Christian announced his allegiance to Christ he exalted Christ above the state, and so became a rebel. To ask Rome to take a second place was to ask her to resign her greatness in the eye of a Roman—to destroy the ... despised people, and so they enforced the law. The Christians maintained their right to worship as they pleased, and it must not be forgotten that the same issue is before us to-day—to enforce the religious observance of Sunday. There is to be a religious law, and when persons refuse to obey they will be punished—not persecuted—because they will say now, as they did in Rome, it will be simply enforcing the law, and to enforce a law is right.DIO April 2, 1889, page 8.3

    It has been a problem to students for ages why it was that the very best of emperors should persecute the Christians, and the tyrannical infamous, and horrible ones did not persecute them. The reason is very simple. The honest, honorable emperors revered the laws and enforced them; the tyrants cared nothing for the laws, and so took no notice of the Christians. There was, as has been said, no real persecution in Rome; it was an enforcement of law, simply. The trouble was this: The government had no right to have such laws on the statute books, states having no jurisdiction over anything of a moral nature, the power vested in government being civil in its nature, moral accountability being due to God alone.DIO April 2, 1889, page 8.4

    THE LECTURER THEN READ

    from numerous authorities to show how at every step the Christian at Rome was forced to shower contempt upon Roman gods or deny his faith in Christ. A Christian could not go even to the wedding or funeral of a relative, because all the ceremonies were in honor of the gods, and so of almost every social custom, and his refusal to join in the ceremonies or games drew the wrath of his neighbors upon him, and complaint would be made to the Governors, and so a Christian did not know at what moment he might be dragged to court and cast to the lions. To a Roman a Christian was not only a rebel, but an atheist, and so to-day any one who refuses to yield to a civil mandate to observe a man-made Sabbath, will be, and even now are, denounced and classed with atheists and infidels. When such laws are written upon our statue books it will be, as it was then, the magistrates will strive to turn the rebels, and will plead earnestly for them to obey, urging that they do not want to punish, and when the Christians will firmly refuse, then the magistrates, many of them, will in their wrath go to the other extreme, and punish with the greatest severity.DIO April 2, 1889, page 8.5

    THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

    embodies the very principle for which these early Christians strived—that man had an inalienable right to worship or not, and in a manner according to his own conscience, yet there is a tide rising in our country trying to overthrow this precious provision of safety, and soon the question will soon come home to each one: Are we to be Christians or not? because soon everyone will have to be a hypocrite or suffer the penalties of the law.DIO April 2, 1889, page 8.6

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