Reading: Madison's Memorial, from American State Papers:
"We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction not by force or violence." The religion, then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.
It is unalienable because the opinions of men depending only on the evidence contemplated in their own minds can not follow the dictates of other men. It is unalienable, also, because what is here a right towards men is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation to the claims of civil society.
Before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe; AND IF A MEMBER OF CIVIL SOCIETY WHO ENTERS INTO ANY SUBORDINATE association must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the general authority, much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular civil society do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain, therefore, that in matters of religion no man's right is abridged by the institution of civil society, and that religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance."
Text: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's."Matthew 22:21
Let us approach this subject free from all political, or ecclesiastical bias, remembering only that we are citizens of this great Republic, under the stars and stripes, and that we are Christians under God's sun and moon.
Our flag is a symbol we delight to honor for it is the symbol of liberty. Its stars and stripes are sacred to the deeds of a noble ancestry. They are fragrant with tears and blood shed in behalf of liberty. They speak to us of Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill and many later hard fought battles in defense of the glorious doctrine of the equality of human rights and the universal brotherhood of mankind. They are enshrined in every true American heart as an object of patriotic devotion.
One word is dearer to all true Americans than all others, save only the name of Jesus, and that word is "Liberty". One thing for which man lives, and holds himself ready to die on the field of battle at his country's call, and that one thing is liberty, not liberty in the sense of license but liberty in its highest, holiest sense, liberty to think one's highest thought, and to dream one's noblest dream; liberty to act them out unhindered in the presence of one's fellow men, and in the audience chamber of God and an assembled universe.
Why do Americans love liberty? It comes from a long line of liberty loving ancestry “en, who unlike their brothers of sunnier climes, neath fairer skies, instead of having the love of liberty crushed out by centuries of oppression, felt it grow stronger and stronger by each added year or trial, - felt it grow stronger even as the northern pine grows stronger as it wrestles with the mountain blasts, until it drove them from their homes, from all those dear places around which childhood's memory loved to linger, drove them across the then almost unknown sea, to become the early settlers of a new continent, the founders of a new nation, a state without a king, and to become the parents of liberty both civil and religious.
Have we yet learned fully this lesson of liberty? or so instantly are the great progressive steps of humanity taken. Sometimes we think they were narrow and bigoted, but they were on the way to liberty. It is a recognized principle that the one who creates the first germinal idea of an invention is greater than all who afterward develop that idea. So of these, our forefathers, we must give them the credit that is due them, since they were the beginnings of the best that is American.
And little, we, their children, consider what they sacrificed in order to do this. Their wrestlings were not only with a stormy Atlantic and with the wintry blasts of a new country without houses; they wrestled with the demon of loneliness and isolation, with disease and starvation, with the savage lurking behind every tree, waiting to capture their weapons, and turn it against them; never knowing when they left their loved ones in the morning, whether, returning at night they should find them to welcome them, or only the scalped and smoking ruins of all that was so dear. All honor to them, then, the Pilgrims of the early day, who more than any one else have left their imprint upon us.
Americanism, what is it? What are the distinctive doctrines which have made us different from the other nations of the earth? It is evident that there is a difference for on the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States, these words occur in Latin, "Novus Ordo Saeculorum", "A new order of things". Thus, officially, by its great seal, the United States, before the whole world, pledges itself to break away from the precedents of the past, and to the establishment of a new order of things in the practical application of the principles of liberty. The founders of this government considered this new order of things so important that Webster, one hundred years ago said, "It is impossible to overrate or overstate the importance of the part we are now acting in human affairs. All the world is looking to us to learn the lesson of Liberty."
All great systems of truth and right are the outgrowth of a few simple principles, to which it is possible to reduce them. The Law of our God is reducible to ten precepts, and these in turn to two, and these two, to the one word, Love. Love is the fulfilling of the law.
All true Americanism is the outgrowth of two principles; and all the foes of Americanism are so because they consciously or otherwise attack these two principles. The two principles are "Civil equality before the law", and second "Religious independence before the law." We shall consider them in their turn, their origin and results.
Civil equality before the law: The Declaration of Independence declared: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that God hath created all men free and equal; and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
This was a truth which Jesus taught when He said "One is your master even Christ, and all ye are brethren"; a truth which from the agony and oppression of the slow moving centuries had only gradually dawned on the minds and hearts of men, and now for the first time found governmental recognition and expression.
Every government of antiquity had been founded on the principle that God had created two orders of men, a ruling class and a ruled class. To the ruling class he had given all the rights,- the right to do as they pleased, and the right to compel others to do what they pleased. All this was theirs by divine right. To the ruled class, he had given only the right of submission to their rulers.
Under this order of things, laws were arbitrary. The rulers had power to create laws, and of wrong make right by changing and altering law. This was consciously or unconsciously their claim. The will of the ruler was final. His decree or utterance the ultimate law of the land, from which there was no appeal.
The new order broke away from all this precedent and history of the past, asserting that its fundamental principle was false. God had created only one order of beings. All men were brothers. The rulers were the brothers of the ruled, their servants, not their lords. It was not theirs to either give or withhold rights. All rights are God given and inalienable and equal in each one of us. The rulers are our servants, placed there by our votes to protect us all equally in the enjoyment of our own God given rights.
Laws are not arbitrary. All rulers in the world can not in the ultimate make a law. They can only discover and apply those principles of right which grow out of God's laws for the regulation of our human relations, and from the principle of our human brotherhood and equality of right. Should they go beyond this, and assert the power to create law, they have gone beyond their rightful power and such laws are void under this principle. The founders of our government stated this plainly, in American State Papers, Page 244:
"All men shall be secured in their natural right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and no law shall, in any case whatever control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions or interfere with the rights of conscience."
This principle, were there no other, would forever make all religious laws, and governmental interference in matters religious, utterly unamerican. God has given to every man the right to think his own thoughts and to choose his own religion between himself and God, in the secret chamber of his own soul and so to worship or not to worship whatsoever God he chooses or none at all.
And having given this right equally to all men, refusing to invade this right Himself, by seeking to compel people by external force to worship Him, He never gave to any man or set of men the right to dictate in religious matters; which would simply be giving to some men the right to subvert the same right in others, and would be a contradiction of the first principle. It was of this principle that the immortal Lincoln spoke, when he said "the principle of self-government is right, absolutely right, eternally right. Repeal the Declaration of Independence if you must, repeal all history if you can, you still can not repeal human nature."
It is before this eternal principle of truth which Jesus sowed in the soil of the soul that thrones have crumbled, and monarchs bowed down, until the principle of the divine right of men to rule others has almost vanished from the earth. And yet, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, here as elsewhere. For it is precisely against this principle of Americanism that the class of special privilege ever aims its blows. Federated power claims for itself rights before our legislatures and before our courts, claims and gets them, too, rights unacknowledged in the common people. Thus it creates itself an invisible government controlling the government established by the people, and denying the fundamental principle of the equality of human rights.
Second principle: "Religious independence before the law." When under this declaration of the equality of human rights, our forefathers came to lay the corner stone of the new nation in constitutional law, in harmony with the principles already stated, they refused to treat of religion as a matter to be dealt with by courts or having a head in a monarch or a state. They left the soul of a man absolutely free before his Maker. Therefore this second principle is "Absolute religious independence before the law."
Three things in our Constitution show this: First, powers of the government are only those granted to it by the constitution; Second, no religious test should be required as a qualification to any office; Third, Congress shall make no laws respecting religion. Where did this principle of religious independence originate? From God in the beginning. Why? Because you can only reach one half of a man by a religious law, only the outside half, by external force. It makes hypocrites of them but not Christians.
The King's daughters are all glorious within. God could not save by law or force, and did not try to do so; could He have done so He would never have given us the gospel that cost the life of His only begotten Son. Christ knew this principle when he quoted these words, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and Unto God the things that are God's."
Christ said to His Church "The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them, but it shall not be so among you." Matthew 21: 25. Jesus rested His religion absolutely on the power of truth to conquer the mind and on the power of love to control the heart. This rule was upheld in the early days of the gospel and the principle came into our government directly from the teachings of Christ, and from the conflict of Christianity with paganism in the early centuries.
There were three Roman Laws: First, Worship the gods in all respects according to the law of the land and persecute all who refuses to do so; Second, whoever introduces a new religion the tendency whereof may be to disturb, shall, if of the higher ranks, be banished, if of the lower, punished with death; Third, no man shall have for himself particular gods of his own, unrecognized by the State. These were in conflict with Christianity all down through the centuries. The principle of religious liberty was lost in the apostasy, but was renewed again in the Reformation.
There is a movement now to make this a Christian nation by placing God's name in the Constitution as well as seek to make Astronomy theistic by inscribing the name of God on the tube of the telescope. There is a desire by some to establish the Christian religion by national law. The Christian religion was established by laws as much higher than those of any earthly state as heaven is higher than earth. Christianity is not only national; but cosmopolitan and more than that, universal; yea, around the revelation of God as manifest in Jesus Christ, in redemption from sin, the entire universe finds its rallying point, and rest, and universal brotherhood of being.
Government is ordained of God. Romans 13: "Let every soul be subject unto a higher power. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God." Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom was ordained of God. God delivered all things into his hands, and made him ruler over them all, but when he attempted to rule in religion the three worthies resisted and defied him and God protected them.
The principles of Civil equality before the law; and of religious independence before the law are the principles of Christianity, of Protestantism and of Americanism. Anything that attacks them, however, pious it may profess to be; however many Christian organizations may be behind it, it is anti-Christian, Anti-protestant and Anti-American, and we as Christians are obliged to oppose it; as Protestants to protest and teach contrary to it; and as Americans to say "hands off".
These two principles are the New Order of Things for which our glorious flag stands. The white is for the perfect purity and righteousness of these principles; the red is for the sacrificial blood that has been so freely shed in their behalf; the blue is for the heavenly source, and these stars, while standing for the states that stand together in support of these principles, show also that these truths are as eternal and unchangeable as the stars in their courses. While we teach these principles to our children and remain at heart true to them ourselves our flag will remain all glorious, and with all our hearts we can say in the sublime words of Longfellow,
"Thou, too, sail on O ship of State ! Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee !
Our hearts, our nones, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee, - are all with thee !"
George E. Fifield
