CHRISTIAN NATION

a church of this country to contract for the services of a Christian minister residing in another nation?

Suppose in the Congress that passed this act some member had offered a bill which in terms declared that, if any Roman Catholic Church in this country should contract with Cardinal Manning to come to this country and enter into its service as pastor and priest; or any Episcopal Church should enter into a like contract with Canon Farrar; or any Baptist Church should make similar arrangements with Rev.

And just before Thanksgiving of that year, the same paper, under date of November 19, 1892, printed the following article:

"CHRISTIAN POLITICS.

"The Supreme Court Decision.

"The Greatest Occasion for Thanksgiving.

Lower

court ruling disproved by hypothetical argument.

its consequences.

This is a Christian nation.' That means Christian government, Christian laws, Christian institutions, Christian practices, Christian citizenship. And this is not an outburst of popular passion or prejudice. Christ did not lay his guiding hand there, but upon the calm, dispassionate, supreme judicial tribunal of our government. It is the Most farweightiest, the noblest, the most tremendously far-reaching in its reaching in consequences of all the utterances of that sovereign tribunal. And that utterance is for Christianity, for Christ. 'A Christian nation!' Then this nation is Christ's nation, for nothing can be Christian that does not belong to him. Then his word is its sovereign law. Then the nation is Christ's servant. Then it ought to, and must, confess, love, and obey Christ. All that the National Reform Association seeks, all that this department of Christian politics works for, is to be found in the development of that royal truth, 'This is a Christian nation.' It is the hand of the second of our three great departments of national government throwing open a door of our national house, one that leads straight to the throne of Christ.

"Was there ever a Thanksgiving day before that called us to bless our God for such marvelous advances of our government and citizenship toward Christ?

"O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvelous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp, and the

..

voice of a psalm.'"

This shows that these National Reformers and "Christian politicians" recognized in this decision a national judicial sanction for all they had ever asked in the way of religious legislation, and

All National Re

form Association seeks development of court declaration.

Rule applies to Jewish rabbi

as well as to Christian minister.

Language

of law too broad.

Within letter, but not within intent of Legislature.

First

Sunday law by Congress soon followed.

Justice

Brewer con

sidered Sunday legislation vitally connected

with Christian nation.

Mr. Spurgeon; or any Jewish synagogue with some eminent rabbi, such contract should be adjudged unlawful and void, and the church making it be subject to prosecution and punishment, can it be believed that it would have received a minute of approving thought or a single vote? Yet it is contended that such was in effect the meaning of this statute. The construction invoked cannot be accepted as correct. It is a case where there was presented a definite evil, in view of which the Legislature used general terms with the purpose of reaching all phases of that evil, and thereafter, unexpectedly, it is developed that the general language thus employed is broad enough to reach cases and acts which the whole history and life of the country affirm could not have been intentionally legislated against. It is the duty of the courts, under those circumstances, to say that, however broad the language of the statute may be, the act, although within the letter, is not within the intention of the Legislature, and, therefore, cannot be Within the statute.

The judgment will be reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.

particularly in the way of Sunday legislation. And the fact that within only a few months after the rendering of this decision Congress passed its first Sunday legislation (see pages 370-377), and that since then over fifty Sunday-law bills and something like half a dozen religious constitutional amendment bills have been introduced in Congress, is some evidence of its far-reaching effects and of how it helped to set the tide in this government in the wrong directionin the way of religious legislation.

And that Justice Brewer, who wrote the opinion, considered Sunday legislation as vitally connected with his conception of a "Christian nation," is evident from the fact that in his little work of ninety-eight pages, entitled "The United States a Christian Nation," published in 1905, after starting out with a citation to this decision of the Supreme Court, he refers to Sunday and Sunday laws no less than thirty-three times, and justifies the enforcement of Sunday ob

servance by law upon the ground that respect for Christianity implies respectful treatment of its institutions and ordinances; "that "the citizen who does not attend [church],- does not even share in the belief of those who do,- ought ever to bear in mind the noble part Christianity has taken in the history of the republic;" and that "the American Christian is entitled to his quiet hour." Pages 54, 55. As well might the Jew, whose ancestors fought in the war of the Revolution, and through whom came to us the Bible and even the Christ, demand, upon the same ground, respect for Jewish institutions and ordinances, laws enforcing the universal observance of Saturday, and thus the American Jew's right to his "quiet hour."

In this same book Justice Brewer traces the origin of American Sunday laws in general to the Sunday law of Charles II, thus:

By the English statute of 29 Charles II no tradesman, artificer, workman, laborer, or other person was permitted to do or exercise any worldly labor, business, or work of ordinary calling upon the Lord's day, or any part thereof, works of necessity or charity only excepted. That statute, with some variations, has been adopted by most if not all the States of the Union." Pages 28, 29.

Every one who has ever read the law of Charles II knows that it is religious. And Justice Brewer was candid enough to admit the religious character of the American Sunday laws, based, as they are, upon this English law of Charles II, in the following words:

"Indeed, the vast volume of official action, legislative and judicial, recognizes Sunday as a day separate and apart from the others, a day devoted not to the ordinary pursuits of life. It is true in many of the decisions this separation of the day is said to be authorized by the police power of the State and exercised for purposes of health. At the same time, through a large majority of them there runs the thought of its being a religious day, consecrated by the commandment, Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.'" Id., pages 29, 30.

Therefore unconstitu

But if Sunday laws are religious, as here admitted, they are unconstitutional, and a correct, unbiased, and impartial application of American principles would so adjudge them in every State in the tional. nation as well as under the national Constitution itself.

The whole trend, therefore, of the latter part of this decision, justifying and upholding religious laws and Sunday legislation, was away from American principles and from both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States, by which the Supreme Court is created, and the principles of which that Court is supposed to correctly interpret, uphold, and defend. No power is conferred by the Constitution upon any branch of the national government to

A departure from American principles.

make any pronouncement as to the religious character of the nation. As Madison said: “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation." Declaring, as it did, the national "creed," it did more than merely to "intermeddle" with religion. So far as could be done by a court decision, it united church and state in the United States, and created a religious establishment.

The reference in next to the last paragraph of the decision to a Jewish synagogue in this country contracting with some eminent foreign rabbi, and the repudiation of the idea that such contract would be void under the law in question, shows that it was not because this is a Christian nation any more than because it is a Jewish nation that no such ruling should hold; but because of the fact that labor of this kind was not the kind of labor the law referred to. It is evident, therefore, that all this extended argument and array of proofs to show that this is a Christian nation was not only unnecessary, but irrelevant, a gratuitous sandwiching in of a lot of National Reform, church and state argument because of the character of the case seemed to afford a convenient opportunity to do so,— a revoicing in a national judicial decision, of the Un-American position taken by Justice Field in his dissenting opinion in the ex parte Newman case in California, in 1858. See page 434.

It may be a matter of interest just here to state that Justice Field was not only an uncle of Justice Brewer, but that both were members of the Supreme Court of the United States when this case came before that body.

While this decision was hailed with delight by National Reformers and the advocates of a union of church and state in this country, it is not all they wish. Thus, Dr. David McAllister, in the preface to his "Manual of Christian Civil Government," p. 9, third ed., says: "While our Supreme Court in the above-quoted decision has said incidentally that this is a Christian nation,' and while multitudes of our people also say so, the nation itself has not said so. It speaks directly in its fundamental law, the written Constitution of the United States, in which it proclaims its own character. And in that authoritative instrument there is no acknowledgment of Christ. In that confession of its political and moral character it does not say that it is Christian."

Only a complete overturning of the great principle of religious liberty upon which the national government was founded will satisfy these American advocates of a national established religion. And when they succeed in accomplishing this, they may learn, when it is too late, that they have sold their birthright, and that there are others claiming priority of rights here, both as regards country and religion. But this decision meant a long step in the backward, downward

course.

66

In an address on The Church and the Government," delivered in the Foundry Methodist Episcopal Church, Washington, D. C., March 13, 1910, Bishop Earl Cranston, D. D., said:

Suppose this were to be declared a Christian nation by a constitutional interpretation to that effect. What would that mean? Which of the two contending definitions of Christianity would the word Christian indicate? - The Protestant idea, of course, for under our system majorities rule, and the majority of Americans are Protestants. Very well. But suppose that by the addition of certain contiguous territory with twelve or more millions of Roman Catholics, the annexation of a few more islands with half as many more, and the same rate of immigration as now, the majority some years hence should be Roman Catholics, who doubts for a moment that the reigning Pope would assume control of legislation and government? He would say with all confidence and consistency, This is a Christian nation. It was so claimed from the beginning and so declared many years ago. A majority defined then what Christianity was, the majority will define now what Christianity now is and is to be.' That majority' would be the Pope." 'The Church and the Government," by Bishop Earl Cranston, pages 6, 7.

But this is just what the Supreme Court did in this decision. In so many words it declared this "a Christian nation," and, after citing first, Catholic, and then English church and state authority, cited the Constitution itself in support of the declaration.

And that the Papacy has its eye on this country, and is bending its energies to swing this nation back into the fold of the Catholic Church, is well known to all intelligent and observing men. And that the Papacy still holds to the doctrine of a union of church and state is also well known. In his letter to the bishops of France, dated February 11, 1906, Pope Pius X, opposing the position of the French government upon this question, said:

"That it is necessary to separate church and state is a thesis absolutely false,― a most pernicious error. Based in fact upon the principle that the state ought not to recognize any religious faith, it is, to begin with, deeply insulting to God; for the Creator of man is also the founder of human societies, and he maintains them as he does us. We owe him, therefore, not only private worship, but also a public and social worship in his praise." Readings in Modern European History," by Professors James Harvey Robinson and Charles A. Beard, of Columbia University, N. Y., page 229.

What reasoning! that public and social worship must be done through the state, or requires a union of church and state!

Regrettable as is the fact, and unintentional as it may have been, into the hands of an ecclesiastical power holding such views regarding church and state and religious liberty, was the Supreme Court playing when it declared this a Christian nation."

Bishop Cranston on Christian

nation.

Pope Pius endorses church and

union of

state.