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NDER this heading the Continent (Chicago) of July 1, 1915, printed the following editorial:

"National Welfare Outranks

Liberty

Religious

"This is a declaration more likely to provoke protest than approval. It goes against most thinking on the subject. And ordinarily religious liberty and national welfare are in perfect harmony, so there is no occasion to ask which is superior.

"Yet the wise patriot keeps in the back of his head, for application when required, the basic rule which puts the two in proper order.

"The life of a nation, just as the life of an individual, is of necessity dominated by the impulse to do and maintain all that contributes to its own strength and perpetuation. .

"In the United States this national responsibility for the national welfare rests ultimately on the judgment of the majority of the Republic's voting citizenship.

"And against the will of that majority no man can long maintain in contradiction any private or factional preference. There is no refuge of even personal right behind which he can resist what the preponderance of his fellow citizens have decided he ought to do for the well-being of his country. . .

"Free schools are maintained at public charge in every part of the United States because it is the fixed persuasion of Americans that the nation could not live out its life in any safety unless its children are trained in intelligent powers of personal judgment and a lively appreciation for the history and opportunities of the land.

"Some citizens nevertheless insist on a re

- one undivided body,- nobody's inheren right would be violated by enactments closing parochial and private schools entirely.

"Furthermore, if the state should determ that its welfare depends on training its your in the fear of God and the knowledge of commandments, it has every right to introdu such instruction into the public school system regardless of the skepticism of individual parents. . . .

"The point here- now perhaps sufficien made-is simply that nothing can forbid state to do what it believes to be required its own best good-not even the invocation religious liberty."

The Continent is certainly wrong its initial statement, and just as certainly right regarding said declaration as "more likely to provoke protest tha approval." Of course not all that claimed as religious liberty is such in very truth, but it is none the less true that the Continent's initial proposition is most mischievous one, and would, if a mitted, furnish a moral vindication for all the religious persecution the world has ever seen, from the death of Abd and of Christ himself down to the last victim that shall suffer civil penalties rather than deny faith, no matter how mistaken that faith may be.

Some of the best of the Roman en perors were the worst of persect tors, not because they delighted torture and blood shed, but exactly because, as does the Continent, they verily believed that ma tional welfare outranks religious libert and that unity in religion is essential to national welfare.

ligious right to educate their children in schools where religion is definitely taught according to their own faith. And the States, being convinced of the propriety of yielding to the preferences of citizens in so far as it is socially and civically safe, have as yet done nothing to interfere with parochial schools.

"But if any State or all of the States should

be at any time persuaded that the permanent unity of the nation demands the common education of all children in its own free schools.

The argument that prevailed with the Jewish rulers eighteen hundred years ago, determining them to demand the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, was:

If we let him thus alone, all men will beve on him: and the Romans shall come and e away both our place and nation. And e of them, named Caiaphas, being the high est that same year, said unto them, Ye know thing at all, nor consider that it is exlient for us, that one man should die r the people, and that the whole tion perish not." John 11:48-50.

The apostles were accused ad persecuted, all but one of em to the death, as disturbers

the peace, men who had turned the whole world upde down," and all through e ages "national welfare" as been the justification of relious bigotry in all lands.

The trouble with the Continent a failure properly to discrimiate between the sphere of relion and that of civil government. raw the line where Christ drew

and as he drew it, and there eed be no difficulty:

"Render therefore unto Cæsar the ings which are Cæsar's; and unto od the things that are God's."

ominous that a leading Presbyterian pa per should advocate any such theory of the powers of civil government.

The Continent's logic would turn us ack to Greece, when all children were he wards of the state, and were reared y the state and for the state. But the Christian conception is that children beong not to the state but to God, and that t is the duty of parents to rear them prinarily for God rather than for Cæsar. We freely admit not only that the state as the right, but that it is its duty, to require that children shall receive sufficient education to fit them for intelligent citizenship; but to deny to the parent the -ight to give this in connection with a religious education, and to say that for his purpose he shall not send his child o a private or a parochial school, would be a most flagrant abuse of civil power. We are astonished that any American, and especially any Protestant, would take any such position as that, or that in this country those who believe in private and parochial schools should even be called upon to defend their right to maintain them. It is indeed surprising and even

The right to educate their own children in their own way has always been insisted upon by dissenters from the dominant religion. Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and others have from time to time suffered persecution, sometimes even to the death, rather than surrender the right to educate their children in their own faith; nor do we believe that the martyr spirit is wholly dead even now. We trust, however, that such persecution will never arise in this country, though it must be confessed that matters are tending strongly in that direction. The times seem to be strangely out of joint, and principles of liberty formerly supposed to be firmly established are boldly challenged in the interests of despotic power, and sometimes even in the supposed interests of Protestantism.

OBSERVANCE of the Lord's day should not be made a matter of legislation. A free-born American citizen has a right to go to a ball game on Sunday if he wants to. It is his privilege to attend a movingpicture show, or enjoy any other diversion on Sunday, if such diversion is legitimate on a week day. For most of us, Sunday is the only day in the week we have for amusement. It may be deplorable that most of us do not go to church on Sunday. We might, for that matter. lead better lives throughout the week. We know of no better way to make fun on Sunday seem desirable than to make it against the law to have fun on Sunday. Being good is, and ought to be, a matter of conscience. If it is possible to make folks good by legislation, then all we need do to send everybody to heaven is to make it against our man-made law to go to the other place.- The Portland News. Portland, Ore., Oct. 23, 1916.

THE first organized effort to bring about a union of church and state in this country was made in Xenia, Ohio, in July, 1863, at a convention where representatives of eleven different Protestant denominations met to consider how certain moral reforms might be effected in this country in and through the state.

In very fact the National Reform Association met to inaugurate a union between the church and the state. At a banquet held by the association in Philadelphia, Nov. 19, 1910, this was plainly stated in so many words, in an address. made by the late Dr. T. P. Stevenson, a prominent National Reformer, who acted as toastmaster on the occasion. He said that at the time of the first meeting, in 1863, there was a deep feeiing on the part of many Christian people that there should be a revival of religion. The first session of the meeting referred to, he continued, had to do with the "revival of religion in the hearts of the people and in the homes of the people." As they discussed the question, the movement developed into one for a "revival of national religion."

Had the delegates of the convention referred to been content with the worthy and noble object for which they met,"a revival of religion in the hearts of the people and in the homes of the people," they would have been in a position which the Lord approves in the Bible, and which is in accord with the attitude of God's true people in every age. But when the enemy of all truth. turned them aside from the exalted purpose for which they had nominally met, to seek for a "revival of national religion," they were launched upon a course that has led every church which has taken that course, to repudiate the principles of the gospel, and therefore the principles of logical and genuine Protestantism.

It was this evil principle that under

lies a national religion, that the Fathe of this country sought to escape whe they incorporated into the Constitutive the immortal words of the First Amen ment, "Congress shall make no law re specting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The principles of the National Refor Association have produced their bane fruits, for other great and influential or ganizations have adopted the principe which seeks for a "revival of national religion," which the National Reformers were deceived into adopting in 18 The Lord's Day Alliance and the great Federal Council of the Churches o Christ in America embrace sixteen m lion people and more than thirty religios denominations. One of the principal things these organizations are seeking t bring about is a national Sunday h Their representatives, who are seeking for a "revival of national religion," are persistently beseeching State legislatures and the United States Congress for legislation of a religious character. It s a thing of great satisfaction, however that, up to date, Congress has never fully yielded to their unchristion and urAmerican demands. But it will require the united efforts of all true Christians and all true Americans to stem the onrushing tide of religious legislation which seeks for a "revival of national religion," and in the last analysis, such legislation. will result in a condition more serious than the European conflict.

THE religion of Jesus was a democratic religion, a religion of the rulership of God alone in the individual human soul. And Protestantism stands for this idea, which is the obvious New Tes tament idea,- a commonwealth of free souls enjoying immediate fellowship with God, untrammelel by human hierarchies.

REEDOM of press and free

dom of speech

are the bulwarks of liberty. These bulwarks have ever been assailed by those who, while demanding freedom for themselves,

are unwilling to grant it to those who do not believe in their dogmas and doctrines. That the question now stirring the United States is not a new one is evidenced by this interesting citation from the London Times, May 9, 1816:

"The liberty of the press-that ark and palladium of all our other liberties - became last night the subject of a most interesting debate. Highly distinguished as this country has been for everything pertaining to freedom, the press is of all its institutions that which foreign nations have most admired, and have least been able to imitate. The press, notwithstanding its admitted susceptibility to misuse, has been in fact the best guardian of our private morals, the best exciter and supporter of our public virtues. It was before the free press of England that the audacious boastings, the haughty menaces, the sophistries and the falsehoods of our once formidable enemy, melted in the air, and that the arts which sufficed to delude a whole continent passed by us as the idle wind which we regard not. If such, then, have been the power and efficacy of the press in its present state, and under the guardianship of the existing laws, why, it may be argued, resort to any new enactment. Why? For this very reason, because the institution is most precious, let us guard against its corruption; let us do what depends on us to improve and perfect it. Human affairs are never at a standstill: and we may say of our country, with reference to this particular branch of her policy, what the poet laureate so happily says of her general destiny,

By William Q. Sloan

"On she must go progressively in good, In wisdom, and in weal or she must wane.'

Men who are in error, whether the error be political or religious, are ever ready to clap their hand on the mouth of the man who is making known the truth. Truth is never afraid of opposition. It is like pure gold: the more it is rubbed by investigation, the brighter it shines. No man who has the truth, and who has confidence in the ultimate triumph of truth, will seek to overthrow freedom of speech and of the press. A people free to express themselves will ever remain the bulwark of civilization.

"Servile Labor"

OUR readers will remember that as related in LIBERTY for the first quarter of 1917, the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals construed the term "servile labor" as meaning secular or common This labor, including merchandising. view is unquestionably correct, nor is it new. Speaking of the Tartars under Zingis Khan in the thirteenth century, Gibbon says:

66

The victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labors, which were abandoned to slaves and strangers; and every labor was servile except the profession of arms." - Milman's Gibbon's Rome, Vol. VI, chap. 64, par. 3.

Who does not know that wealthy but illiterate Romans had slaves who were their readers and scribes; and Zingis Khan, the Mongol, mighty ruler and great military leader though he was, could neither read nor write. With him, as Gibbon says, learning was servile labor, unworthy of a great man with more important things to look after.

C. P. B.

W

ILLIAM GLADSTONE, the great British Commoner, said of our Constitution, "The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, writing of "The Constitution and Its Makers," in the North American Review for July, 1912, said, "With a deep reverence for the great men who fought the Revolution and made the Constitution, when they dealt with elemental questions and fundamental principles, the same yesterday, today, and forever in human history, one follows them because they have proved their wisdom by their success.'

The great burden of the forefathers who wrought so successfully in lawmaking was to provide a government for the nation which would be satisfactory to all the colonial States concerned, without interfering with individual rights and responsibility. Guaranties of civil and religious freedom must be placed in clear and definite terms in the fundamental law of the nation of which they were laying the foundation. That they regarded religious freedom as primary, may be deduced from a brief reference to the attitude of the leaders of the constitutional convention of 1787 and the conventions called to ratify the Constitution. For instance, in the Massachusetts convention we find this record:

"JAN. 31, 1788: In the conversation on the sixth article, which provides that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office,' etc., several gentlemen urged that it was a departure from the principles of our forefathers, who came here for the preservation of their religion; and that it would admit deists, atheists, etc., into the general government.

"REV. MR. SHUTE: Mr. President, to object to the latter part of the paragraph under consideration, which excludes a religious test, is.

I am very sensible, very popular; for th most of men, somehow, are rigidly tenacious of their own sentiments in religion, and disposed to impose them upon others as the standard of truth."- Elliott's Debates, Voi II, p. 118.

In the South Carolina convention, July 30, 1788, Mr. Iredell, in replying to some opposition to this no-religious-test clause, said:

"I consider the clause under consideration as one of the strongest proofs that could b adduced, that it was the intention of thos who founded this system to establish a gen eral religious liberty in America. . . . Hap pily, no sect here is superior to another. A long as this is the case, we shall be free from those persecutions and distractions with which other countries have been torn.”— Id., Vol. IV pp. 192-196.

So much for Article VI of the Constitution, which, in the opinion of Washington, the president of the convention. sufficiently guaranteed religious freedom. But the Virginia Baptists were not fully satisfied with the Constitution on this point. As a result of their conferring with Madison, the father of the Constitution, and Washington, the presiding officer of the constitutional convention, the First Amendment was proposed in Congress Aug. 8, 1789, passed Sept. 23. 1789, and finally ratified by eleven of the thirteen States between 1789 and 1791.

By the terms and spirit of the First Amendment not only is Congress prohibited from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion," but it cannot pass any law which might intervene by "prohibiting the free exercise thereof." From the standpoint of the Constitution, then, the right to the free exercise of religious doctrines, teachings, etc., is recognized to be as inherent as is the right to be protected from subversion to any establishment of religion.