July 6, 1899
LEGISLATION can never serve as a moral guide.
IT is better to be a great man in a small country than a small man in a great country.
GREAT men do not make principles, but principles makes great men. The greatness is inherent only in the principles.
CHRISTIANITY means self-surrender, self-sacrifice. For the State to be Christian it would have to sacrifice itself, and so cease to exist.
SINCE the carnal heart is not subject to the law of God, and cannot be subject to it, how can it possibly be subjected to righteousness by the law of man?
IF the minority can get along in the observance of the seventh day without support of law, why cannot the majority get along without such support in observing the first day?
THE idea that uncivilized peoples have not the same natural rights that are possessed by the civilized, is of near kin to the idea that white men are not bound to respect the rights of a person whose skin is black, and to the idea that the aristocracy are not bound to recognize any rights in the Lord classes.
PEOPLE who think to safeguard the moral interests of a community by a Sunday law, should remember that the “righteousness of the law” is only the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, which can save nothing.
THE strong arm of the law in support of a religious institution proclaims the weakness of the religion the institution represents. If the Sunday institution is of God, it is strong enough in itself to survive all opposition.
THE Christian Church is set in the world to show a contrast with the world, as light with darkness, and not to have the world conformed to herself by religious laws. Conformity of the world to the church, by law, is conformity of the church to the world. What the church needs is to present a sharper contrast with the world, not to have what contrast there is obliterated. Hence a Sunday law is a detriment to the church, and cannot be anything else.
AN apostate State—one which has forsaken the true principles of government—is always found united with an apostate church. The United States is the only nation founded on the true principles of government, and the only one in which church and state are not united. This was not an accident, but a necessary consequence of the national recognition of the true principles of government, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Union of church and state is wholly incompatible with government by the consent of the governed. But now that the principle of government by consent of the governed has been repudiated, and the nation has become committed to the policy of government by consent of some of the governed,—which principle it is putting in practise in the conquest of the Philippines—its union with an apostate church will be sure and speedy. That [402] is the product of a law as certain as the law of gravitation.