September 25, 1889
IN the Missouri Sunday-law convention Rev. Mr. Tallow said:—
“Neither the civil power as God’s ordinance, nor the civil ruler as God’s minister, within its special province, has any authority as such, to make void any of the ten commandments, whether by neglect in enforcing them or by indifference to their authority and claims. At this point, the party of civil policy protests and cries out that this is uniting Church and State. The Christian replies, it is indeed a union, but only so far as two separate jurisdictions—the one spiritual and primary, and the other secular and secondary—exercise each one its own appropriate authority, within its own individual province, to secure a two-fold good to the twofold life of man. This union, therefore, is like the union of the spiritual in man acting conjointly with the body of man, the body being brought under and kept in subjection to the spiritual.”
That is precisely such a union of Church and State as the Papacy advocates. The statement is almost word for word, as is the statement of the papal claims on the same point. The papal claim is, that the two powers in the world are the spiritual and the secular. That the spiritual is the church, and the temporal is the State. That the spiritual is superior to the temporal, and, as in the body man’s temporal concern must be subject to the spiritual, so in the world the temporal power must be subject to the spiritual. The State must be subject to the church; and the temporal power, the State, must be brought under and kept in subjection to the spiritual, the church. And therefore, the Pope as head of the spiritual power is superior to kings who are the heads of the temporal. Consequently, all civil rulers must be subject to the Pope.
There is not a shadow of difference between the papal theory and this so distinctly set forth by Mr. Tatlow. It is indeed a union. A union of the most vital sort, a union as close as is the union of the spiritual and the physical in man. And this is the deliberate view set forth in a written essay by a representative speaker in the Missouri State convention which was called to organize, and which did organize, a State Sabbath Union auxiliary to the American Sabbath Union, and at which the field secretary of the American Sabbath Union was present. Mr. Tatlow’s view of this relationship, however, is not at all distinct in principle from that stated by the American Sabbath Union himself. He puts it up under the illustration of the two arms of the body, the religious being the right arm and the civil being the left arm. Mr. Tallow only more clearly expresses how closely and intimately the two arms are expected to act together. And how the left arm is to be guided by the right arm, and kept in subordination to it. And then in the face of these plain statements of their own they will still put on an air of innocence injured almost to holy martyrdom, when we say to the people that the Sunday-law movement bears in itself a union of Church and State, with all that history shows that that term implies.
We have known all the time that it is indeed a union in which the spiritual is intended to be primary and the secular secondary. We have known all the time that it is indeed a union in which the secular authority is to be brought under and kept in subjection to the spiritual. This is what the SENTINEL has been telling the people for these four years. And now it comes forth plainly in their own words. And yet we doubt not that when we thus print it, and send it forth, that they will again deny that they intend to bring about a union of Church and State, or that their movement has any tendency whatever in that direction.
A. T. J.