the Bible] do not like our Government and its Christian features,
let them go to some wild, desolate land; and in the name of the
devil, and for the sake of the devil, subdue it, and set up a
Government of their own, on infidel and atheistic ideas, and then, if
they can stand it, stay there till they die."
That is pretty heavy, but there is one more step that could be
taken, and it is taken. Rev. Jonathan Edwards says:–
"Tolerate atheism, sir? There is nothing out of hell that I would
not tolerate as soon."
The "true inwardness" of this last can be the more readily
appreciated when it is understood that this reverend gentleman
defines atheism to be whatever opposes National Reform.
The liberty, then, which the National Reformers propose to
guarantee to every man is the liberty to do as they say, and the liberty
to conform to what they shall establish as Christianity and morality.
And that is a kind of liberty that is strictly compatible with absolute
tyranny. Such liberty as that the papacy at the height of its power was
willing and anxious to grant. Indeed, of that kind of liberty the
Inquisition was the best conservator that the world has ever seen.
And when we read these things, and many others of' like import, in
the National Reform literature, and, in view of them, express our fears
that religious intolerance and persecution will be the inevitable
consequence of the success of the National Reform movement, they
seem to think it passing strange. To them it seems only "folly and
fanaticism" that anybody should harbor any such fears. Then they
come cooing like, a dove: "Why you need have no fears at all; we
would not hurt a hair of your heads." But the sentiments expressed in
the above quotations are spoken with too much earnestness, and are
received with too much favor in the National Reform Conventions, for
us to allow any weight whatever to such honeyed phrases as that, we
need have no fears, and, they would not hurt a hair of our heads. But
even if we had all pleasant words and fair speeches on their part, and
had none of these plain and forcible expressions of their real
sentiments and feelings, we should be none the less assured that
intolerance and persecution would be the result of the success of the
National Reform Party. First, because all history proves that such a
thing is to be dreaded; and, secondly, because such a result is
inseparable from the success of such a movement.
We repeat: Intolerance and persecution are inseparable from the
success of such a movement as is represented in the National
Reform Association. Their purpose is to place what they decide to be
Christian laws, institutions, and usages, upon an undeniable legal
basis in the fundamental law of the land. Such Christianity thereby
becomes the law of the land; and the only point upon which turns the
question of persecution or no persecution is, Will the law be
enforced? If the law shall not be enforced, then their movement will
be a failure; for, so far as any real, practical results are concerned,
the whole matter would stand just as it does at present, and the
present order of things is the cause of their sorest lamentations. But if
the law shall be enforced, then there persecution, for compulsory
conformity to religious opinions is persecution. So the sum of the
matter is this: If the laws which they shall establish shall not be
enforced, their movement will be a failure. If those laws shall be
enforced, then there will be persecution. And that the principles which
they advocate will be enforced, if they obtain the power, is just as
certain as that human nature is what it is, or that two and two make
four.
A. T. J.
June 1886
"Personality of the State" The American Sentinel 1, 6 , pp. 44, 45.
THE fundamental proposition upon which the whole National
Reform structure is built, is that "the nation is a moral person." If this
proposition will not hold good in the sense in which they use it, their
whole scheme is a fallacy. That it will not hold good is certain.
Their idea of the State as a moral person will not allow that it is the
whole people, but that it is a mysterious, imaginary something which
stands separate and distinct from the people which compose it. Their
concept of a State is that it is formed of all the people, yet that it is not
all the people, but a distinct entity, having a personality all its own;
and this personality that springs in some way from the whole people,
is a person in the eyes of men just as distinct as is General Sherman
or Mr. Blaine. As therefore General Sherman, or Mr. Blaine, or any
and every other person, is a moral person, is responsible to God, and
must acknowledge that responsibility, so this other individual, which
springs in part from each individual, being a person as real, as
distinct, in the eyes of men as is any one of the people, is a moral
person, is responsible to God, and must acknowledge that
responsibility, so this other individual, which springs in part from each
individual, being a person as real, as distinct, in the eyes of men as is
any one of the people, is a moral person, is responsible to God, and
must acknowledge that responsibility. As it is the duty of General
Sherman, or Mr. Blaine, or any other person, to have a religion, and
to exercise himself about religious affairs, so this person called the
State or the nation must have a religion, and must exercise itself
about religious affairs. With this very important difference, however,
that, whereas General Sherman, Mr. Blaine, John Smith, James
Robinson, Thomas Brown, John Doe, and Richard Roe, having each
his own religion, must exercise himself in that religion without
interfering with the exercise of anybody else's religion; this other
individual must not only have a religion of its own, and exercise itself
with that religion, but it must exercise itself about everybody else's
religion, and must see to it especially that the religion of everybody
else is the same as its own.
A State, as pictured by Prof. J. R. W. Sloane, D. D., in the
Cincinnati Convention, is as follows:–
"What is the State? . . . Its true figure is that of a colossal man,
his consciousness the resultant of the consciousness of the millions
that compose this gigantic entity, this body corporate, his power
their power, his will their will, his purpose their purpose, his goal the
end to which they are moving; a being created in the sphere of
moral law, and therefore both moral and accountable."
But that is not all; they even go so far as to give it a soul! In this
same speech Professor Sloane said:–
"'The State has no soul' is the dictum of an atheistic political
theory. On the contrary we say, with the famous French priest, Pere
Hyacinth, 'What I admire most in the State is its soul.'"
Well, if the State be, as he also said, "a personality as distinct in
the eyes of men as General Grant or Mr. Colfax," then we cannot
wonder that it should have a soul. But what is the soul of the State?
He tells us:– "Moral principles are the soul of a nation; these are the
informing spirit that mould its various elements into a compact unity,
and that bind them together with bands stronger than steel."
Does Professor Sloane mean to say that "moral principles"
composed the soul, and were the kind of a soul that "General Grant
or Mr. Colfax" had? Are moral principles the soul of each of the
millions of people that compose this "gigantic entity"? If; as he says,
the consciousness of this colossal man is "the resultant of the
consciousness of the millions that compose him, his power their
