XIt T I S TA I I T Y AT I OI-L L' AW AN ELECTION SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE laattwbe ace mmsla'&p-m }tjnti=n4 OF THE GOVERNMENT 0OF MASSACIIUSETTS, IN HOLLIS STREET CHURCH, BOSTON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1874. By RICHARD GLEASON GREENE. BOSTON: WRIGHT & POTTER, STATE PRINTERS, CORNER MILK AND FEDERAL STREETS. 1874. Contmoniaealtb of fflasacbugett. HOUSE O' REPRESENTATIVES, January 19, 1874. The Colmmittee on Election Sermon, to whom was intrusted the duty of presenting the thanks of this House to the Rev. Richard G. Greene for his able and eloquent discourse, beg leave to report that they have attended to that duty, and have the pleasure of presenting a copy of the discourse for publication. Per order, GEO. J. SANGER. J. F. MOORS. JOSEPH E. FISKE. SPRINGFIELD, MISS., January 14, 1874. GENTLEMEN:-Thanking the House of Representatives for the honor which they confer upon me by their vote and request, as transmitted through your esteemed hands, I herewith place at your disposal the manuscript of the recent Election Sermon. Your obedient servant, RICHARD G. GREENE. To Messrs. GEO. J. SANGER, J. F. MooRs, JOSEPH E. FISKE, Conmmittee of House of Representatives of Massachusetts. (gommmonieattb of ta0s actusett0. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 20, 1874. Ordered, That three thousand copies of the Sermon preached by the Rev. Richard G. Greene be printed, under the direction of the Committee on Printing, for the use of the executive and legislative branches of the government. GEO. A. MARDEN, Clerk. SERMON. "0 GENERATION, SEE YE THE WORD OF THE LORD. HAVE I BEEN A MWILDERNESS UNTO ISRAEL? A LAND OF DARKNESS? WHEREFORE SAY MY PEOPLE, WE ARE LORDS; WE WILL COME NO MORE UNTO TIEE? "-Jeremiah ii., 31. One of the questions prominent in the public thought of to-day, concerns the relation of Christianity and civil government in our land. It is a vast question, having its references to wide fields of history and political economy, and involving profound problems of ethics and statesmanship. It is, moreover, an urgent question, crowded by popular pressure through many sidechannels of debate, and, by the same pressure,the atmospheric pressure of our new social life, -drivei imperiously toward its main and ultimate issue. This main issue is not to be evaded; it cannot be much longer postponed by either the State or the Church. To bring some considerations on this theme so momentous, so difficult, and already so involved with partisanship, 8 Christianity a National Law. may, through your patience, be permitted to a humble minister of Jesus Christ, honored by the Civil Power with a call to stand and utter such message as the Lord gives him, in this dignified presence, and in that noble succession of preachers who have adorned this usage of our fathers. Yet, so undeveloped must be the thoughts advanced in this brief hour, that they can claim to be nothing more than suggestions, whose incompleteness opens them to easy misconstruction; in view of which fact it is encouraging to reflect that the wise need no man to come and do their thinking for them, but can use even feeble hints as materials for the fabric of their opinion. Is Christianity to be recognized as standing in any organic and legal connection, whatever, with our civil government? You must have noticed that the answers to this question from the high places of both the State and the Church, are different to-day from the answers given by our fathers, or even from those of less than a score of years since. The public drift, already strong toward utter separateness in the administration of these two great elements, is setting in with increasing power in each successive year. The question now wakes negative answers on all Christianity a lVational Law. 9 sides, like echoes, - fervent negatives from the Pulpit, learned negatives from the Bench, crisp negatives from the Press, thunderous negatives from the Political Rostrum. It is not for us to assert that the very soul of wisdom, wandering through dry places, seeking rest and finding none, has not at last housed itself fitly within the body of these answers; but we may take liberty of noting that not always do these swift, popular, easy answers of the day fit the great question which we are impelled to ask. There may be a fair body and a proper soul, yet not the man who was summoned. Thus, when it is asked by earnest men, "Is Christianity to have any recognized administration in our civil government?" it will not suffice to cast up coruscating negatives to the questions whether there shall be persecution for opinion's sake; whether there shall be a usurpation of the liberty of conscience; whether there shall be a union of Church (meaning a sect) and State; whether it be fit or safe for the State to teach a theology; whether the nation shall be compelled to enact the dumb show of a formal compliment in recognition of God by crowding his great name edgewise into its Constitution. All these questions 2 10. Christianity a National Law. may be magnificently answered on any Fourth of July, before, applauding crowds; and yet the passing years that bring all nations under heaven to stern, inevitable account at last before the bar of human conscience, and in the presence of the Eternal God, may be sad witnesses to the neglect of this nation to answer aright on a point involving its very existence. Let us reduce to its lowest terms the whole problem of the relation of State and Religion; let us discharge fiom it all side-issues; let us put it into words specific enough to point us to some definite principle, yet generic and flexible enough to allow a wide diversity of methods for the wisdom of statesmanship; let us-let the people-stand and answer like men, WHETHER CHRISTIANITY IS TO HAVE ANY RECOGNIZED ADMINISTRATION IN CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THIS LAND. Let it be noted, that our question is of Christianity, not of. any sect or creed or way of worship or polity or ecclesiasticism, - of the administration of Christianity, not of its establishment, propagation or defence, -of a recognized administration, not of one which is latent or unacknowledged, - of any recognized admin Christianity a ANational Law. 11 istration, not of any certain reach and degree of such administration, but of any, even the least, -of an administration in civil government, not over government as a power above a power, nor by the side of government as a power co-ordinate, nor by government as an instrument, but in it and through it as vitally inseparable from it. I. EVERY CIVIL GOVERNMENT MUST UNAVOIDABLY HAVE A RELIGION OF SOME KIND, and must stand in some recognized administration of it. The question here is not what governments ought to do, but what they cannot avoid doing; and the fact, as' stated, is involved in the very nature and idea of government among men. It is impossible to conceive of a civil State as existing altogether aside from some embodiment of ethical relations; and it is impossible to think of ethical relations, except as rooted in some ground of moral principles; and moral principles which we may well say cannot exist without a spiritual basis, we may surely assert cannot be enforced without a reference to some facts and forces which stand above man, yet which testify of themselves within man; and the recognition and application of these facts and forces to 12 Christianity a National Law. human conduct is one of the main workings of religion. The ethical conceptions may be rude, the moral principles dimly seen, the spiritual facts greatly obscured or greatly misapprehended; but these, such as they are, give a religion, and they give it, and they must give it, to every national organism among men. Even Aristotle wrote, "The government of laws is the governnent of God.".'The mere existence of any Deity necessitates this state of facts. Whatever is must have some relation or bearing toward everything else that is; and the relation in the case of God toward men must assume some form of government, since He can be thought of not as inferior to men, nor as merely one among men, but only as the Higher Power, and in lands and times educated by Christianity, as the Supreme. Hence the very idea of government, derived fiom God, lives among men only as He lives in the thought of men; wherefore a shutting out of religion or of the system of divine facts from all governmental concern is as impossible to man, as the shutting out of vital air from the natural world. But this only prepares the line of our main evidence, which may be stated thus: If God Christianity a National Law. 13 exist, then He must exist as a Fact too mighty and all-pervasive to be shut out from any sphere of human interests; if He be anywhere, He must be everywhere,-least of all can He be shut out from a sphere so large and momentous, as that which a nation fills, when it organizes itself for the maintenance of social order and the securing of the public weal. So much of Deity as a nation may know, will find or make its way into that nation's laws, and will appear there, not as intruder, but as owner; not as a natural fault, which could not be averted, and must, so far as possible, be concealed or denied, but as a living force, whose absence would vacate the national life itself, and whose working, therefore, whether ostentatiously proclaimed or not, will at least not be repressed, and will have some provision for its efficiency. If a nation, then, by word or by act, announce as its legal policy that it has no governmental concern with God or the divine facts, that nation wastes ink and parchment in an insult to the Deity, which can have no effect, except to degrade and endanger its government. It creates confusion by law. 2. The nature of man adds another phase to the same argument. Of this nature we know 14 Christianity a National Law. but little, but we surely know that man is more than an animal. We see and feel that he not only ought to have, but has, a spiritual element, which is not merely an item of his being, but is the one nucleating and characteristic point in that being; and that the moral in him, allying him to the divine, is not a compartment additional to his lower nature, into which he comes at certain times and out of which he passes for certain purposes, but is in him from God as a pervasive life, which, transfused through his whole constitution, can be neither destroyed as a whole, nor omitted from any smallest region of his activity without, so far, vacating his very humanity. This moral spiritual element may administer itself wrongly in man, for it is of the nature of liberty; but it will have some administration in every operation of his faculties; and this, whatever it may be, will do its part in constituting his religion. If, then, it be impossible for man to divest himself of his moral and spiritual attributes in any realm of his activity, how evident is that impossibility in the department of government, which expressly involves his morality in its relations to society. Law without God loses all its perspective; it is impossible to depict social Christianity a National Law. 15 morality as flattened to the surface of this little world. And for the purpose of this argument, it is not necessary to prove that the Deity exists; for even though there be no God, man is so made, that he never will, never can, fully discover that fact. He may make easy experiments in the direction of that disbelief; he may have a transient seeming success therein; but ever and ever his old, ineradicable moral nature returns upon him like a throbbing tide from the infinite ocean of the spiritual universe, whose surge, murmuring or thundering fiom afar, rolls in and breaks at his feet with the echoes of eternity, the syllables of God. 3. History stands witnessing this fact. The world does not know of governments without religion. Such governments have been repeatedly advertised for as exceptional and precious curiosities for ethical cabinets. Some have even been manufactured, as amazing monstrosities are skilfully wired together for museums; but governments which perpetuate themselves absolutely, without any recognized administration in the direction of. man's spiritual faculties and religious nature, are not caught alive at any period by any explorer of the history of our race. They 16 Christianity a N7ational Law. must be sought among other "missing links," needful as the articulation for brilliant theories. Scarcely can we be certain of them among the anthropoid apes of whom, as the ancestors of man, the charming history, interesting as a romance, has been written from the original documents of the imagination by one of the most indefatigable of modern explorers. In the assertion that governments always have, and administer, some kind of religion, it is not denied that savagery may furnish seeming exceptions in which the governmental form, undeveloped as yet, takes not on all its functions; but the principle, - rather, the fact, - stands in history, not only that a prevailing religion has quietly stamped its imprint on public procedures or given its tinge to law, but also that every civil State has taken its ground on some religious facts as by it received, and on certain relations and bearings of those facts to be by it administered. Because the civil order is a translation out of the divine, written by God's creative hand on the tablets of the human soul, and resounding from some awful Sinai of celestial law, therefore no civil State has been able to stand in a complete denial or neglect of that Christianity a National Law. 17 divine reality. In ghastly days of revolution, like those in France, at which the world *still shudders, there have emerged above the waves of disorder, like bubbles on -a sea of blood, forms that men called governments, expressly ruling out God and all that was spiritual,-forms that danced and glistened in the fiery gleam for their brief and horrid hour; but they were not governments, only phantasms,-the ghosts of governments that had been damned for their crimes, or impish caricatures of the social order foaming up as' suggestions from we know not what nether deeps. Wonderful is it to behold, that even those apish forms did homage, after their kind, to the great principle which I have affirmed; for they, too, had their religion in a fiendish caricature,-their temples, their altars for worship, their enthroned goddesses of reason, —in all which things they, having discarded God, were struggling to project above the level of their humanity one of its elements which they deemed its chief, that they still might authenticate themselves as in company with some sort of a god, and might find some presence in which to worship. For, philosophically; that government which either by act or omission proclaims either that 3 18 Christianity a National Law. there is no God and no life after the body's death, or that God and the spiritual are facts which are properly to have no recognized administration in the civil State, stands as really in the maintenance of a creed concerning religion as any government can. We may infer, that the great governmental problem with man never has been and never will be -religion or not? - but always- what religion? This, then, is the form of the question now before the American people. II. THIS NATION HAS HAD FROM ITS BEGINNING, AND HAS TO-DAY, CHRISTIANITY AS ITS RELIGION, in some sense actually recognized and administered in government. The proof of this, whether as concerns the nation or as concerns the separate States, is so various, abundant, and perfectly undeniable, that I need make no attempt to order or arrange it before you, but may only indicate it at a few points here and there. Whether our fathers made a practical error, which we have perpetuated, maintaining the wrong religion; whether we have administered, or are now administering, our Christianity in its best form, through wisest methods, in due adjust Christianity a National Law. 19 ment with all public rights and interests,-these are points for argument. We may well confess errors in practice, and hold our minds open for new light as it shall arise; but, to the main fact above stated, the testimony is overwhelming. Blackstone says, "Christianity is part of the common law of England"; and in a note to ah American edition of his Commentaries it is stated that "we have received the Christian religion as a part of the common law." Judge Story declares, "Christianity is a part of the common law." Chancellor Kent asserts the same, 1821. Judge Duer says (Outlines, No. 39)-" the existence of the common law is pre-supposed by the Constitution of the United States, and referred to for the construction of its powers." Mr. Webster, in his great argument on the Girard will case, says, "Christianity is the law of the land"; though, of course, it is not claimed that this great advocate is here uttering a judicial decision. Nearly all our State Constitutions open with an express recognition of Almighty God. The supreme court of Pennsylvania (Updegraph vs. Commonwealth, 1824) ruled thus: "Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Penn 20 Christianity a National Law. sylvania." The supreme court of New York, Chief Justice Kent (People vs. Ruggles, 1811), ruled that Christianity has a place in our laws; and the same court (Lindenmuller vs. the People, 1861, February), re-affirmed this decision, declaring that Christianity was not established by our laws, because it existed before our.laws, but that it was fully recognized in them. The New York legislature (1838) declared, by a vote nearly unanimous, "This is a Christian nation": "Christianity is the common creed of this nation." The supreme court of Massachusetts, Judge Parsons (case of a church in Falmouth), decided that Christianity "was by the people established as a fundamental and essential part of the Constitution." President John Adams, in the year of the adoption of our Constitution, in his elaborate "Defence" of that instrument (preface, p. xv), asserts that the American system had passed from experiment to complete success in a government "grounded on reason, morality, and the Christian religion." Six years before, in all the storm and stress of the Revolution, Congress, moved by state policy and for the sake of the budding nationality, had authorized (1782, September 12), the publication of an edi Christianity a National Law. 21 tion of the Bible under its sanction, in view of the cutting off of the usual supply from England; and five years earlier than this, Congress had voted to import from Europe 20,000 copies of the Scriptures (1777, September 11). Congress took action (1778, October 12) as follows: " Whereas, True religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness: Resolved, That it be, and it hereby is, earnestly recommended to the several States, to take the most urgent measures for the encouragement thereof." In 1779, May 26,'Congress unanimously voted an address to the American people, calling on them to "diligently promote piety." The first Act of the first session of Congress was to provide for the opening of its sessions with prayer. If an opposing argument be drawn from the constitutional prohibition of any establishment of religion by Act of Congress, it is to be replied first, that that may have been aimed to secure the whole right to the State in reserve from federate invasion; and secondly, that, interpreted by the whole spirit of the age, and in the light of contemporaneous facts, it was aimed, undoubtedly, as was explained by Judge Story, Chief Justice Marshall, and Chancellor 22 Christianity a National Law. Kent, against any sectarian establishment, or union of Church and State, which in any form then known on earth, would not be tolerated for an hour by the American people. A government may administer a religion without establishing a church, which is now taken to mean an ecclesiasticism. When we look at the historical foundations of our several States, and at the formation of our general government, we find them to be the very products of a Christianity, working vitally in the social atmosphere, or received as a heritage; also we find them standing in a recognized administration of Christianity as fundamental law. That was all that the founders knew in this department of statesmanship. But this testimony, it may be averred, is from the past, which groped, and whose hand, stretching out of its darkness, is no guide to us who walk in modern light. That yields the very point that I am now asserting, which is, not that Christianity ought to have had a place in law, but that it had it, and has it still. In fact, the sinewy hand of that earlier manhood has not yet lost its grasp of leadership; its forefinger, pointing keenly with spiritual beckoning, is not yet palsied. The wind of public opinion, whirling Christianity a National Law. 23 about continually on its circuits, drifts contrariwise to-day; much chaff is flying with it; some eyes may be blinded; not only do straws show the gale's drift, but heavier fabrics begin to rock. All this is fresh testimony to what our laws have been and are. What are we to understand by laws against blaspheming the name of God and his Son Jesus Christ, while no laws exist against profaning the name of Jupiter, Vishnu, Buddha? What is the purport of statutes enforcing some distinctive observance of the Lord's Day, so that it is made a dies non for business in banks and governmental institutions, while the Mohammedan Friday and the Jewish Sabbath remain on the ordinary level of other days of the week? Why does this day find its recognition in the Constitution of the United States? Why do our governors and our presidents call' us, by official proclamation, to Days of Thanksgiving, or of Fasting before the Lord? Why do our laws require oaths in our courts in the great name of God,-so generally, and with only some recent exceptions, refusing testimony from the atheist? Why is it ordained that our president and thousands of other officials, civil and military, shall 24 Christianity a National Law. be inducted into office by oath. or affirmation under the sanctions of the Christian religion? What is the meaning of Christian prayers at the opening of some of our courts, and in probably all our legislatures from the beginning, for the securing of which appropriations of public money are commonly made by law? What is the meaning of chaplains, Christian teachers, provided and supported by law in our fleets and armies, our hospitals, our prisons? Why, at this hour, for the two hundred and forty-third time, are the officials of this ancient Commonwealth solemnly assembled in ordinances of worship in the House of God, in a service whose value is not so much in the words that may be spoken, as in the reverent act that is publicly done? What are we to gather from the fact, that the Bible and the voice of prayer have had their recognized place in our state schools from the beginning till now, when at last the work of casting them out commences as a struggle under great difficulties? What are we to understand by all these and many similar facts of law, stretching in unbroken line through more than two centuries and a half of colonial and national existence, if we are not to understand that this Christianity a National Law. 25 nation and these States, by statute no less than by incident and usage, have recognized, proclaimed, and maintained Christianity as the religion of our civil government. III. THE QUESTION TRULY BEFORE US COMES, THEN, TO THIS, SHALL WE OR SHALL WE NOT KEEP CHRISTIANITY AS OUR RELIGION? not as sometimes presented, whether this nation, having till now had no gods and no administration of religion in government, shall now add a god and a religion, as modern luxuries or new social machinery: nor whether, having had some religion other than the Christian, it shall expunge its laws, reverse its traditions, and consent now to be converted to Christianity; but, Shall we substantially and as regards the main principle, though not in every minor detail and method, keep as our religion, where and as it now stands in our laws, that Christianity which was built into the foundations of our civil State, -which we find inwrought through all its fabric, - which buttresses our civil liberty,-which consolidates our social order, -which has compacted itself into our legal ethics, and in whose binding power our nationality itself coheres? We easily see that 4 26 Christianity a National Law. this is a question, not as to change of methods or of limits, but as to the subversion and abrogation of fundamental principles in government, —a question of organic change, involving the very spirit and genius of our American nationality; it is, in one word, a question of revolution, of one of those profound moral revolutions, which once established at the hidden vital centre of a people's life, radiate thence as resistless forces that play through ever-widening circles of upheaval in society and laws, till they eventuate afar in history in those tremendous convulsions which are the visible types of Christ's great final judgment-day. Let us be well aware with what we are dealing. Christianity has the advantage in the argument, of holding now as it has held from the first, a position in our government; no change should be wrought without cause. But they mistake the Christianity of our day, who think it will run trembling from the open field of conflict, to hide in some refuge of ancient precedent or of common usage. Its wisest leaders welcome all genuine and candid tests by which men may wish to try it, and especially the one vital and ever applicable test of experience. If it be true, Christianity a Nationat Law. 27 it can show itself true, they say; if it cannot, then it ought to fall. Christianity is not passing through this world under convoy for safe delivery at its palace-gate in the heavenly kingdom; its adherents need not ask, "How shall we ever bring it in alive to its royalty? what if some lance-like question should hit it, or some ponderous unsolvable problem be found in its road?" If it be the truth, then it wields a sword, and carries fire, and walks in bright, invulnerable armor, and can unfold wings vast as the heavens. Therefore it is every way a fair question, and one on which Christianity asks no indulgence from this American people, whether it has wrought good or ill in that governmental administration of it which is part of our national history. In this day of eager criticism and fierce challenging of all that has been established, Christianity will serenely abide the severest practical tests that can be applied; if men can prove aught against it, it will submit to be thrust out from its governmental seat, and cast away among all abominable things; more than this, it will submit to be thus cast out if it cannot be shown to have been the one vital formative force through which our civil State had its birth, has 28 Christianity a National Law. had its splendid growth, and has now its hope and its hold upon the future. But without such evidence against it, it must not, and it shall not, be dispossessed. Indeed, the attempt to dislodge it is an attempt to upturn our whole national fabric from its deepest foundations. And as to what it has actually done in and for this nation, nothing whatever need now be said; its work, whether good or bad, speaks for itself; the question is one of fact and history,'and may be left to the common observation and the universal judgment of civilized man. It may well, however, be asked, in this connection, If you thrust forth Christianity from its recognized administration in your government, then what religion will you put in its place? for we have seen that government cannot exist in organic perpetuity without some civil administration of some religion. Shall it be Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Spiritism, Pantheism, Materialism, Atheism,-all equally religions or phenomena of certain transition from one religion to another? The question is its own reply. IV. At this point, we are ready to answer the question with which we started, and to declare Christianity a National Law. 29 that CHRISTIANITY IS TO HAVE SOME RECOGNIZED ADMINISTRATION IN OUR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. We might rest the case on the statement already made; but it may be profitable to enhance the argument by considering some objections now commonly heard, since this will involve defining on some points the principle as above announced. OBJECTION 1. "Individuals may have Christianity, and the nation may zave it, without giving it any recognized legal administration." Let it be replied that this is impossible. Christianity will show itself in acts, if it be anywhere in the character, and the acts of government are legal administrations. The religion of Jesus Christ is one of those things that cannot be hid; it will strike forth everywhere; certainly, if it be alive, it will show itself on the broad field of law. The world has seen enough of that modest Christianity, which is either afraid or ashamed to declare itself by its own proper name at all points where it might reasonably be inquired of. It is not seemly for man or nation to make a show of godliness; but it does not follow that a government whose style and mien convict it of having long been in some compan 30 Christianity a National Law. ionship with Jesus Christ, should now solemnly deny with oaths that it knows The Man, while still purposing to follow Him afar off. Does modesty compel a government to steal the livery of Satan to serve God in? Moreover, as the world knows of no ethics solid and secure, aside from the Christian system, the civil State, which is the embodiment and organized enforcement of social ethics, must in some sense administer that system, unless it be ready to remit itself to the cold glooms of the ancient heathenism or of the modern antichristian systems, whose various rules of conduct for men combine in varying proportions the pathetic incertitude of souls tossed on tiresome seas of doubt, -the bewitchment of sensualism, - the froth of sentimentalism, - the grossness of materialism, - the Philistine challenge of a strenuous and savage intellectualism, and a certain infernal practicality of selfishness. OBJECTION 2. "It is not in the province of government to deal officially with religion." It is alleged that government is organized for other and temporal purposes, and is no more under obligation or necessity to administer Christianity than is a bank or a railway company. A general answer is, that the argument as above, is Christianity a Ncational Law. 31 aimed to show, not that government should deal with religion in any method outside the province of government. If the objection mean that a nation has no personal, spiritual existence, nor immortality in a world to come, and is not required to exercise, and has no power to enforce, a personal spiritual' experience toward God, that may readily be granted. But inasmuch as man is such a being that certain grand spiritual facts, such as God, the Christ, the divine revelation, do most mightily affect his temporal relations with which government must deal, therefore government as a merely temporal power must take note of these spiritual facts,-recognizing and administering Christianity, even though not for Christianity's sake, yet for the sake of good government itself, and for the sake of the very existence of anything like a commonwealth among men. This answer takes the objector on his own ground,-that government is a merely temporal power for temporal uses, like any human corporation. So it remains to be added that government is itself an ordinance of Almighty God, and administers in His name and authority. If we seek its parallels among institutions, then the Family and the Church, both divine, are its par 32 Christianity a National Law. allels, not the bank and the railway. Human society can be conceived without banks and railways; but without the three great divine institutions in some form, -the Family, the Church, the State,-there is no social organism. What pertinency is there, then, in the frequent comparison of the civil State to any of the common human compacts or corporations? Yet we cannot avoid thinking that even in our great railway companies a little infusion of genuine Christianity would work no damage. Rather than not have it, we would welcome it even on their time-tables. It is thought that some of our great public corporations need something which they have not; what if it should appear that the missing something was godliness? If this objection take the form that it is not in the province of the State to teach a theology, that may be instantly conceded. For theology is a human science about God; it is a noble science, the crown of sciences, but has always been an unruly science, an occasion of divisions among even candid men. Christianity is not a system of theology, not a scheme of ecclesiastical polity, not a formulary of worship. It is found in the Bible as a simple record of facts and inculcation Christianity a National Law. 33 of duties, which he who runs may read, and then go on to form his own theology or science of those facts to suit himself as he runs. Whether the time will ever come when the State should teach a theology, is doubtful; it is certain that the time is not yet. The government, in administering religion, should take its position on the Bible, on which its citizens take their oaths, and without even establishing any precise or scientific theory of the inspiration of the book, should accept it as the divinely authoritative record of what Christianity is,-of what that Christianity is, which was the religion of our fathers and is ours as well; and then leave each individual and each sect to frame his or its own theories in perfect liberty. Under our theory of government, which we all heartily accept, civil law will refrain from any such enforcements on individuals as would be proper to only the monarchical or paternal theories. But this refusal of a government to work by direct pressure to compel human hearts into godliness, is a quite different thing from its announcing, by either its act or its omission, that there is no God or divine or spiritual fact with which it has concern. OBJECTION 3. "But Christ and his apostles 5 34 Christianity a Xational Law. made no attempt to bring Christianity into civil administration." Neither, I reply, did they make any attempt to bring into civil administration the care of the unfortunate, to establish orphan asylums or insane retreats. Yet they did such a work, and launched such an influence, as have led to the governmental founding of refuges for the unfortunate, unknown except under Christian governments; and have led, also, in every land where the gospel has been preached, to some recognized civil administration of Christianity. They lived under the despotism of a foreign emperor; no public duties devolved on them as on us, who are sovereigns, charged with the conduct of affairs and the destinies of coming generations in this land of liberty, whose liberty is directly traceable to the mighty working through centuries past of the gospel which Christ brought. OBJECTION 4. "Any civil legal administration of Christianity is unsafe for Christianity itself; it is even injurious to Christianity." It is pleasant to see men so careful of Christianity, and it may be granted that in the majority of cases the fears for it are sincere. But do not these fears arise from the old historical confusing of Chris Ghristianity a National Law. 35 tianity with ecclesiasticism? Shall we be anxious in behalf of a divine force lest it be unable to bear the strain which might come upon it if set at work? If the law of gravitation is to be cautiously held in reserve from working, and omitted from our scientific recognition lest it come under misapprehension and fall into entangling alliances with the laws of electrical force, then we may omit from our ethical and governmental science the principle and precept of the Son of God. We may be very sure that the world will ultimately omit with contempt anything that cannot or will not or must not work. Those fiiends of Christianity who are for hiding it in sanctuaries, secluded from the strain and noise of public and social affairs, or for shutting it out from its full development on.any field of man's interest and activity, know not what they do. They in effect confess its weakness, and invite for it oblivion. For myself, I beg to put myself on record as standing amazed at the modern argument,-often so skilful and eloquent and evidently sincere,with which brilliant Christian preachers and noble Christian journals seek to protect that Christianity which, instead of needing defence, is itself the gigantic Protector, carrying through age after age 36 Christianity a National Law. human society, government, institution, law, and the whole soul of our race in its mighty arms as a father carries his child. Will you protect the stars in their courses and the sun in its shining? If, then, it be asked, "'Why do you demand any legal administration of Christianity if it be so well able to care for itself?" that is the very question which it is good to answer. The answer is, That such action is asked, not so much for the sake of Christianity as for the sake of the government, and for the nation. Salt is administered with food, not for the sake of the salt, but for the sake of the food. Christianity can exist without this government, but this government cannot nobly perpetuate itself without Christianity. Human law needs salt of divine grace. Returning to the objection, we find it in two divisions. One is, that if a government have power to establish Christianity, then it will have an equal power to establish paganism or atheism, or any antichristian system; and hereby, it is asserted, we open the door to danger. But the door of this danger is always open in this world. Certainly, if the people grow pagan or atheistical, they will have, or they will take, power to establish those systems; and they will have Christianity a National Law. 37 and will use the same power whether or not Christianity have previously been maintained. Moreover, we establish atheism when we exclude God. We do not object to laws against perjury as involving a concession to government of the right to meddle with the sacredness of the oath, and therefore of the right to legalize perjury; we trust to men's common-sense and common conscience, and fearlessly go forward to use the law for such good ends as we may. The objection in its other division refers to the damage which ensues to Christianity when any particular church, more properly called a sect, is favored above other sects with a legal establishment. But, we answer, such a sectarian establishment is forbidden in express terms in our Constitution, is contrary to the genius of our people, and is not now demanded by any of our most earnest Protestant sects. Its evil workings are too evident in other lands and other governments, where already it begins to wax old, and is ready to vanish away. Moreover, our whole experience in State churches-Episcopacy in Virginia, Congregationalism in parts of New England-has so thoroughly enlightened us on that point, that now, for more than a generation, such 38 Christianity a National Law. civil maintenance of any sect has been our abhorrence in the interest of both statesmanship and religion. I am far from advocating any, even the least, administration of any, even the best, ecclesiasticism in our civil government. But it seems to be continually forgotten that there is a Christianity back of sects, deep below all ecclesiastical organisms. Will you make Christ a sectarian? was he an ecclesiastic? did he wear clerical robes? had he a cathedral, or even a solemn Puritan meeting-house? What documentary organization had he for a church even up to the day when the great gates of the heavens lifted themselves on high at the glory of his ascension? The subsequent ecclesiastical organizations are good enough in their place and for their work. We do well to work in fidelity with them as instruments; but they are not Christianity itself. Christ exists, -a grand underlying Fact in all history, a present living Force in all society; and the substratum of Christian fact, belief, and precept, resting on the Bible for historical charter, but having its divine and essential charter in human nature itself, having produced the Bible, rather than having been produced by it, recognized in all Christian organizations, common to Christianity a National Law. 39 all sects,-this is Christianity proper; this is that which is divine in origin and divine in power, and should as such be recognized and administered, under due checks and safeguards, by this and every other government on the face of the earth. If individuals choose to add to this the various rules of wise and good men, — some decrees of popes or councils, edifying forms of worship, a scientific development and adjustment of doctrine and creed,-they have liberty so to do; yet so far as they do this, they are reducing their Christianity from the ecumenical to the provincial, from the eternal to the temporary, thus perhaps gaining some facilities of access to men in certain periods of history; or perhaps shutting themselves within their little sectarian sheds which do not stand fully within but only lean against the grand age-defying structure of the common Christianity. But whether they be wise or foolish in this, the government has no concern in them except to keep itself free from them, to protect them in any decent use of their liberty, and to prevent their interfering with each other to any breakage of the public peace. This indifference to sects, and recognition of the common Christianity in law, is our present, as it has been in 40 Christianity a lNational Law. the main our past, governmental principle. What reason for any change, except to give the principle such wiser development in methods as growing light and experience may suggest? OBJECTION 5. " This," it is answered, "is the reason for a change: any civil recognition and administration of Christianity invades private conscience and the liberty of the individual." Why, it is urged, should the Jew or the atheist be compelled to live under a government which plants itself in antagonism to his belief? I answer, He is not so compelled; the world is wide; all the continents and seas lie open; there go the ships; if any man prefer a godless government, and can find one under heaven, he is not restrained from going there, and from finding there a larger liberty, a surer protection for life and property, and nobler education for his children than he can find here under Christian laws. He may be quite a traveller before he finds his home; he may now and then find his chosen government vanishing from around him in the fiery storm of revolution or dissolving in a sea of human gore; but he has liberty. But, indeed, this reply, like the question, touches the surface only. We may set forth the objection Christianity a National Law. 41 by parodying it thus in the political sphere: Why should a monarchist, an imperialist, a communist, be compelled to live under a government which plants itself in antagonism to his political beliefs? Why! Because it is good for him, and for all of us, and can be proved good by reflection, observation and experience. No government could stand a day which undertook to stand on all the metaphysical and historical theories which are spun out of human brains. Communistic speculations in politics, atheistic speculations in religion, may be very bright and ingenious, but a civil State must stand, not on cobwebs, but on some solid facts commending themselves to the test of experience. It is a pregnant sentence of John Adams (Defence of the Constitution, II., page 14), "The United States of America calculated their governments for more than ten years:" Moreover, in this new tenderness for every man's conscience, is the Christian's conscience to have no care? I have as much conscience as an atheist,-or, if that be boasting, I have as good a legal right to my little conscience as he to his grand one, -and I protest that my conscience will be grievously wounded if this government, having been Christian from the start, 6 42 Christianity a National Law. now plunges into some foaming, tumbling sea of godlessness. Therefore we are ready for the real answer to the common objection regarding the invasion of liberty and of individual conscience; which answer consists in granting fully the fact stated by the objection, and then asserting that this, instead of being a fault in the government, is itself the indispensable thing in any conceivable government. President Washington, in his letter to Congress on the adoption of the Constitution, writes, T Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest." The patriot's answer fits the modern cry. It is the essence of government to limit individual liberty for the general good. Unless through some process of such limitation, no government is possible. If men are to come together in organized communities, some general adjustments and compromises of powers and rights must be made; and a forcible writer has remarked, "It is not difficult to adjust the question of individual rights, if we but remember that no man can exercise what he may be pleased to term a right of conscience, whenever such exercise shall endanger the prosperity of the State." Our courts Christianity a National Law. 43 of law have held this principle to be correct, and in accordance with the rights of conscience as they are affirmed in the Constitution. Even Mr. Jefferson, great champion as he was of civil liberty, and no great champion of Christianity, acknowledged it. Society which, governmentally, is paramount to the individual, has the right of self-preservation; therefore it refuses to grant individuals a liberty subversive of the public liberty; and on the same principle refuses to let religious liberty be pressed in any separate case to its own general subversion. On this point hear Mr. Webster: "Individual choice in religion may be as subversive of public freedom as individual choice in anything else. The very end of civil government is to restrain individual choice. The State must take its ground upon its religion, on its own responsibility, and then carry out its government in subordinating individual choices, religious or otherwise." This whole objection to a governmental Christianity, as invading individual rights, must yet be dealt with respectfully, so far as it arises in the minds of our friends from old countries beyond the seas, where republicanism has been known but as a wild theory or as a beautiful dream, and where Christianity 44 Christianity a National Lqw. has been known only as developed in that enginery of misrule, a State church. These newcomers will make good Americans yet; our fathers were foreigners, inexperienced as they. But for the demagogues indigenous to our.soil, who devote themselves to the stirring up into faction this honest but hasty zeal for liberty, let there be confusion. They are dancing with blazing torches in a powder-magazine. Yet this objection may well suggest to us a caution. In the application of these clear, strong principles, there should be provided the most careful and systematic checks against persecution and intolerance, which indeed are utterly unchristian. Christians should avoid giving offence; they can afford to be patient, for they know that Christ shall inherit all lands. They should hold all men of whatever belief or unbelief, in reverence for the sake of Christ, who is the Head of our common humanity. They should use tact and gentleness, and be ready to yield, for the sake of peace, everything of personal taste, theory, preference; then, in any trying hour, they can plant themselves with all the firmer stand on the deep rock of the principle that God and his Son, the Christ, have right in this government, and must Christianity a National Law. 45 not be cast out. The demands of the Church of Rome, holding itself aloof from other Christians, may seem to complicate our problem; yet why may not clear principles, applied in gentle methods, solve this difficulty also? Protestants may have their own theological opinions of the evils of Romanism; but to the government, the Church of Rome is neither more nor less than one among many other Christian sects or churches, and must be regarded with neither less nor more favor than they receive. To rule out the Bible by law from any department of our governmental action,-to rule out the common charter of Christendom, as a sectarian book, —would be to declare Christianity sectarian; that point therefore cannot be yielded in general or state law; while municipal law may, perhaps, be left, not to prohibit the Bible, but to some partial, temporary, exceptional dispensing with its use, as expediency may suggest. Expediency may suggest the reading of selections from the Bible in public schools, or perhaps the admission of the Douay version for some localities, — a version having many points of striking excellence. These suggestions may be received with a sneer, as not meeting the strong demands of the Romish priesthood. But that is no fault of 46 Christianity a National Law. the State, and will suffice only to put that denomination of Christians in the wrong openly before the public eyes. The State must proceed on its ancient, long tested, beneficent principle, swerved by no outcries or theories of faction or sect. But it is time that this discussion closed. I cannot, however, take leave of the subject, without summing up in a general statement of practical duty the principles which it has now been attempted to maintain. It is the duty of governments, no less than of individuals, to recognize, obey, and honor Almighty God. Men passing from the sphere of their personal action to that of their social, political, civil action, do not thereby pass from under their obligation to their Creator and universal Sovereign. To leave God behind is to leave humanity behind. There is a corporate life of nations equally under a divine charter with the individual life of the soul, and which depends for its sustenance, security, and beauty on the continual inflow of divine and spiritual forces. It may be said that the problem before us is a difficult and delicate one, having its peculiar perils; that to solve it on this principle would practically tend to embroil our public life, and to Christianity a National Law. 47 either work or seem to work an oppression; and that therefore it is expedient, disregarding all theories, to cut the State loose from religion. But it is expedient to do right. That a duty is difficult and dangerous, is the reason that cowards assign for its neglect. Meanwhile the duty waits. It is not for preachers, but for our wisest jurists, to decide upon the methods of applying this principle which will be safest and will hold in highest adjustment the many public and private rights involved. If no way now seem open to us in which to move as a Christian nationality, then it will be wise for our great thinkers and our largest practical men to find or make a way speedily; for we may be sure that though a nation may announce that it has no official relation with Almighty God, it will discover as God's swift centuries fly that He has very especial official relations with it. Divine Providence has a fashion of throwing away governments that refuse to join in God's beneficent work for man. You can find their fragments, as of potter's vessels, scattered along the whole track of man from the gates of Eden down. In maintaining our government in proper relation to Goc4, it may or may not be desirable to 48 Christianity a National Law. introduce into our Constitution, an express and formal recognition of our dependence on Him and of our acceptance of the Christian religion. For myself, I see nothing now to be gained by this. As we have already seen, Christianity is recognized in our frame of government as it stands; we may well protest against any change on the one hand which shall seem to shift the State from its ancient foundations; but it is not evident that on the other hand we shall be wise as matters now stand, in appealing to the public in behalf of a mere form of pious words, a national compliment to the Lord. When the Church of Jesus Christ goes before the American people, demanding certain changes in the name of God, let the things demanded be great, solid and real. Let us save our force on forms and externals that we may mass it on fundamental principles. It is for the followers of Christ to dwell peaceably in the land which God gave their fathers, arrogating nothing, magnifying no human form of words, no human order or organization of the church, no ecclesiasticism; seeking no show of a visible empire for their Lord; yielding at many points for the sake of public peace, and making their great and their final stand only at the point where Christianity a National Law. 49 it may be undertaken to drive the nation from its old historic Christianity, into godlessness. And on that one point, it may as well be understood now and for all the future, that to the enthroning of godlessness in law, Christians can never consent. And it may even be that if the attempt in this direction should gain much force, the emergency might arise when things trivial before would take on new weight, and when the formal recognition of God and Christ which is not now at all demanded by the great mass of Christian people, would grow to be indispensable for the replacing of the ancient national foundations, endangered by the attacks of ungodly fury, the underminings of an insidious unbelief, and that feeble magnanimity to opposers, which is already visible in some sections of the Christian army. Since it is now the fashion to make demands for the setting aside Christianity in behalf of conscience, it will be profitable for us as a nation to remember that the great common Christian conscience exists in this land as a mighty power, not to be disregarded, not permanently to be contravened. It is too late in the broad day of the world's history for any government which expects to stand, to array itself in opposition to 7 50 Christianity a National Law. the Christian conscience for the sake of an alliance with an atheistic or godless conscience. Since the days of old, imperial Rome, the Christian conscience has proved its indestructibility. Crushed by tyranny, ground between the upper and nether millstones of pagan hatred, it has stood calm among the wild beasts of the amphitheatre, gigantic on the battle-field, serene in martyr-flames. In this free land,-land which welcomed the "Mayflower,"-land which rustles with open Bibles, —land which blossoms to the skies with its churches and its schools, —land which a Christian faith now for these two centuries and a half has beautified and blessed, -the Christian conscience, trained amid such historic scenery, stands in an invincible divine strength, against the official departure of the State from its ancient foundations in the depths of man's spiritual nature, against the chaining of the Word whose entrance giveth light, and for the right of God and of his Son the Christ, in all our national life and all our civil government. And now to your Excellency the Governor of the Commonwealth, I present the salutations appropriate to the opening year and to the new Christianity a National Law. 51 term in that high office to which again the people have called you. Your whole character and public course give the assurance that you are not disregardful of the rights of Almighty God as the Lawgiver supreme over all the civil State.'Be assured that in your official station and duties you have the respectful cooperation of the general Christian public. Your Honor the Lieutenant-Governor, and you, members of the Executive Council, will permit me the expression of a kindly hope that your councils may be wise, your actions prompt, and the approval of a good conscience your reward. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: Suffer me to remind you of the high traditions of integrity and patriotism which for centuries have been associated with this Great and General Court. Suffer me to say, in plain words, as becomes a minister of Christ, that the people look to you to show, in your public stewardship in these days of fierce temptation and perilous exposure, amid our intense and complex social life, which is a hot crucible for the testing of character in official station, that the bright honor of our General Court is no mere tradition, but a solid fact of our political present. 52 Christianity a National Law. The old Commonwealth is watchful of her servants; you would not wish it otherwise; yet, fresh from the people, as two-thirds of your number are, and embracing on your list, whether of old or new members, many names highly distinguished for former public service, you have to-day the' people's confidence. They think they know whom they have sent up hither, and they are expecting from such men as you nothing else than a fearless independence and conscientiousness in your high trust. I charge you, let your duties be done as in the sight of God. Let all' our thoughts concerning our honored State, and our several duties therein, bloom within our hearts into the ever-fragrant prayer, fadeless through the fading ages, fit to be worn on the bosom of the nation that stands queenliest of the nations:- 0 GOD! OUR FATHERS TRUSTED IN THEE; THEY TRUSTED IN THEE AND WERE NOT CONFOUNDED. THE LORD OUR GOD BE WITH US AS HE WAS WITH OUR FATHERS! "