October 13, 1898
THE State can proclaim no gospel but the “gospel of force.”
THE mere opinions of some people, in their own view, outweigh other people’s rights.
A RELIGION which seeks to erect a despotism among men, is not the religion of Jesus Christ.
THERE can no more be such a thing as Christian civil government, than there can be an American Frenchman.
THE “Christian statesman” of the present day is a person who is too intolerant to be a Christian, and too ignorant to be a statesman.
THE “God” which religious zealots will put into the Constitution, if their plans succeed, will be a god of their own make.
THE people who want God put in the Constitution of the United States, have lost sight of God in the constitution of all creation.
THE zealots who are striving to enact religious legislation in this land, want to blot out the Declaration of Independence, and declare the dependence of the rest of the people upon themselves.
THERE will be no harm in the schemes of the moral reform-by-law party if they will wait for the Lord to make known his will in the matter through some other channel than themselves.
MANY people who claim to be the spiritual descendants of Abraham, seem to have quite forgotten that the father of the faithful was only a stranger and pilgrim on this earth.
THERE can be reform by denying justice.
[Inset.] MAKING ROOM IN THE CONSTITUTION TO “PUT GOD INTO IT.” THE scheme to “put God in the Constitution” which is being urged upon Congress and the American people at every opportunity, means that the Constitution shall declare the will of God to be the fundamental law of the land. This would throw the question of what the will of God is, into the courts, and human interpretations of the law of God would become binding upon all citizens. And this would disfranchise and outlaw all disbelievers in the religious doctrines which might thus become established, and the persecution of religious dissenters would be revived. Congress would be no longer bound to “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” but would be bound to do quite the contrary. Equality of citizens before the law would no longer exist, and justice would no longer be secured by the Constitution to the people.