night, though it be after the sun is set, shall be found sporting in the streets or fields of any town in this jurisdiction, or be drinking in houses of public entertainment, or elsewhere, unless for necessity; every such person so found, . . . shall pay 10 shillings for every such transaction or suffer corporal punishment for default of due payment.

"And it is further ordered that no servile work shall be done on the Sabbath; viz., such as are not works of piety or necessity; and no profane discourse or talk, rude or unreverend behavior, shall be used on the holy day."

"If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished and not suffered to return, upon rain of death."

"No priest shall abide in this dominion; he

shall be banished and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one, without a warrant." (In force before 1656.)

"Adultery shall be punished with death." (Reenacted in 1665.)

"The judge shall determine controversies without a jury."

"No man shall hold any office who is not sound in the faith and faithful to his dominion; and whoever gives a vote to such person shall pay a fine of one pound; for a second offense he shall be disfranchised."

"Each freeman shall swear by the Blessed God to bear true allegiance to this dominion, and that Jesus Christ is the only King."

riage, as they may do it with less scanal to Christ's church."

"If any man shall kiss his wife or wife kiss her husband on the Lord's lay, the party in fault shall be punished at the discretion of the court or magistrate."

"Gathering sticks on Sabbath [Sunday] when unnecessary, is punishable by death, but if gathered privily or in need, a lesser punishment may be administered by whipping the offender."

Blasphemy, which included the denial of the Saviour as the Son of God, denial of the "Holy Trinity, or any of the three Persons," was punishable by boring through the tongue for the first offense,

"No Quaker or dissenter from the established worship of this dominion shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of magistrates or any officer."

"No food or lodging shall be afforded to a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic."

"No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden, or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting."

"No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep the house, cut hair, or shave on the Sabbath day."

"No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath day."

"The Sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday."

"No one shall read any prayer, keep Christmas or saints' days, make mince pie, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music except drum, trumpet, and jew's-harp."

"No gospel minister shall join people in marriage. The magistrates only shall join in mar

and if the blasphemer still persisted in his own views, he was branded on the forehead with the letter "B." For the third offense he suffered "death," so that "he might find out the truth of certain matters to his own satisfaction."

These are but a few of the many rigid laws the early Puritans enacted to make people religious by civil statute.

And yet, says Mrs. Earle, who compiled many of the statutes, there are those who are sighing for a return of the Puritan laws just because they enforced Sunday.

"Every American," says another prominent writer on blue laws, "should sing a daily litany of thanks that he [the singer], the Lord's Day Alliance. some of the present-day grand juries.

The Lord's Day Alliance is seeking to put Americans of today back under the old Puritan Sunday blue law régime of religious intolerance. How much better t would have been for religion and Christianity if the early churches, which gained the ascendancy in American politics, had manifested more of the meekness and gentleness of the lowly Nazarene, whose teachings and example they so grossly misrepresented in their attitude toward the unbeliever. Christ said:

"If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I come not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." John 12: 47, 48.

If the professed followers of Jesus. Christ had always followed his teachings and example, there could never have been such a thing possible as persecution by a Christian church. Christ never delegated any authority to any man or set of men, to judge and condemn men because they refuse to accept his word or to conform to religious obligations. This is a matter that is to be adjusted "in the last day," at the judgment bar of God.

O

NE of the strangest and yet most logical results of the Christian teachings and practice (and one which has been, for sufficient reasons, ignored by the theologians), was to develop the radical and uncompromising spirit of democracy throughout the Christian communities or churches. The early Christians uniformly held that they, as Christians, belonged to a kingdom which was in, but not of, the world a king

dom for which no earthly potentate had right or power to legislate; and this living faith loosened the bond of allegiance and dissolved the sense of obligation as to all human authority, and was the negation of the lawfulness of temporal government over the subjects of the kingdom for which they recognized no king but Christ.

While, for the sake of peace, they were willing to render unto Cæsar the things

which are Cæsar's, by paying taxes to that government under which they lived, and by yielding ready obedience to all laws and customs which did not come in conflict with the higher law of the kingdom, the rights of conscience, they universally regarded these laws as extraneous to their own organization, foreign statutes imposed upon them from without; and, being solicitous to render unto God the things which are God's, they steadily abstained from any participation in the affairs of government, and quietly assumed the right to judge for themselves whether any law, regulation, or custom prescribed by the sovereign power, or other human authority, was or not such as they might conscientiously obey.

was

They obeyed all laws alike, except such as conflicted with conscience, and these they refused to obey in the very face of. persecutions, torture, and death. But this fearless assertion of the rights of conscience necessarily involved the right to sit in judgment upon all human laws and the powers that ordained them, and to determine for themselves whether the law was lawful. That helpless spirit of blind obedience to the decrees of despotic governments which characterized the pagan peoples was, therefore, impossible to the Christians. In the very teeth of universally established law and custom, they steadily refused to bear arms, to own slaves, to seek any legal redress in civil courts, to follow the law of their domicile in regard to the ownership of property or the succession to estates of the deceased, just as they refused to sacrifice to the gods, or to call any man master.

The logical tendency of Christianity was, therefore, to originate the idea of personal liberty for all men, unknown to the world before; to repudiate the heathen doctrine of the divine character and right of kings; to sit in judgment upon their laws, and to intelligently obey, or refuse to obey them; in a word, to cultivate and exercise, as a matter of religious faith, that spirit of personal in

dependence, both of action and of thought, which we in later times dominate democracy, the concrete form of which [in the apostolic church] was the election of deacons, presbyters, and bishops by the people unto whom they ministered."Arius the Libyan," by Nathan Chapman Couns, A. M., pp. 96

98.

Ordination Balls and Banquets

A

READER has written us concerning a short article which we printed some months ago under the heading, "Some Interesting History Recalled." The article consisted chiefly of a quotation from a book written some years ago by Mrs. Morse Earle, the title of which is, The Sabbath in Puritan New England." In this quotation Mrs. Earle tells of "ordination balls" and "ordination banquets."

Our correspondent, who describes herself as "a thoroughbred" of the "old j Puritan stock," says that the Puritans did not dance, and that the balls described by Mrs. Earle were held by the Church of England people, who were: wont to have "all social phases of life carried on with church life." We are not prepared to say that our correspondent is mistaken so far as the balls were concerned. But as for the banquets. when intoxicating liquors were sometimes consumed rather too freely, we think there was in them nothing out of keeping with Puritan faith and practice. The Puritans, while strict Sunday keepers, were not total abstainers.

It is not hard, to believe that in the 17th century intoxicating liquors were. strongly in evidence at New England the ordination banquets, and that even staid! clergymen sometimes became actually in-! toxicated on these occasions. It may be, however, that the Puritans did not themselves dance, nor even countenance daneing. We are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as to the dancing.

C. P. B.

EVERYBODY is now too busy with the creat political campaign to say or do much concerning Sunday laws, but be it known that the particularly mischievous Sunday bill introduced last spring is not dead, but only sleeping, quietly awaiting the reassembling of Congress. Whichever party wins, we may expect at that time a renewed assault upon the liberties of the people in the shape of an insistent demand that Sunday rest be made compulsory in the District of Columbia.

be their duty to punish theft, murder, or any of the graver crimes against civil society.

The Puritans were not the first to entertain the theocratic theory of government, nor did that theory become extinct with the death of the Puritan theocracy. The National Reformers of our own day hold very similar views; and judging from their own statements, we must believe that they would go quite as far in enforcing the laws they crave as did the men of colonial Massachusetts.

HUMAN governments are ordained of God for the good of mankind, but not in the sense that they partake in any degree of divinity. They have no power to command men under sin. No moral obligation attaches to any human law unless it exists in the very nature of things; and with all just law, this is the case. Civil society is a great blessing, and every man should bear his share of the burdens incident thereto. This makes the payment of just and equitable taxes a moral obligation. The "moral obligation comes, however, not from the civil but from the moral law as expressed in the golden rule: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."

WE VE VE

INDIVIDUAL responsibility directly to God makes at once and forever impossible any right on the part of any man or of any government to any legitimate authority over any other man's conscience.

If God has given human governments any authority over the consciences of their subjects, then not the divine law, but human statutes must necessarily be the ultimate standard of righteousness.

All men are alike in the sight of God, and all are alike amenable to the divine law. The king upon his throne must finally stand and be judged at the same tribunal to which the humblest of his subjects shall answer. Nor can the subject plead before that tribunal that a law or decree of his earthly sovereign freed him from obligation to obey the law of God. The Creator has not committed to men the interpretation or administration of his law.

OUR estimate of the Puritans should be made, not from the standpoint of our own day, but with reference to their environment. We are all largely creatures of circumstance. Training very largely makes us what we are.

Puritanism had its origin in an age when church and state were united, and when it was supposed to be just as much the duty of civil rulers to punish heresy as we now believe it to

THAT "politics is a thing that can be carried to church and that it should be mixed with religion," was the statement made by Mrs. Mary Settle Sharpe, of North Carolina, Republican candidate for State superintendent of public instruction, some weeks ago.

As Mrs. Sharpe probably meant it, this is true. We would, however, turn the statement around, and say that religion should be mixed not only with politics, but with everything a Christian does. The Bible rule for Christians is, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatso ever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

This does not mean, however, that political power is to be used to coerce our fellow men into religion. The Christian should be honest wherever he is and in everything that he does. When he votes, he should have the best interests of the public in view. In this sense religion certainly ought to be mixed with polities, bu never in the sense of using political power for the furtherance of religion. "Not by might. nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." Zech. 4: 6.

斑

A DISPATCH from Rome, under date of ALgust 17, told of seven persons killed, one of them a monk, in a riot at Siena, Italy, when Socialists attacked a religious procession. This is a phase of Socialism that is hard for an American to understand. Does Socialism mear the nationalization not only of public utilities and national resources, but of religious belief as well, so that every man shall become not only a cog in the national industrial wheel, but simply a parrot to recite and a hypocrite to profess the creed dictated to him by the state! This may be the goal of the Reds, but we cannot believe that many Americans will be found who are willing to subscribe to it.

Individualism may be carried to an extreme in worldly matters, but not in religion. The Lord deals with men only as individuals. There is no collective bargaining with God. "Whosoever will" may come and buy "without money and without price," but each individual must come for himself. It is for this reason that einl governments can never of right have anything to do with religion.