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to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the [inalienable rights and] blessings of [life], liberty, [and the pursuit of happiness] to ourselves and our posterity [and all the inhabitants of the land], do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."1

These additions in the preamble, or enacting clause, to be operative, would require a special provision in the Constitution itself, giving Congress the power, by appropriate legislation, to gain the proposed end of establishing "a Christian government," and to forbid, under penalties, the public exercise of non-Christian religions. This, again, would require an alteration or express limitation of the First Amendment to the various forms of Christianity. There is no prospect that such an amendment can ever command a majority in Congress and the Legislatures of the States. The best chance was passed when the amendments suggested by the war and the emancipation of the slaves were enacted. The Constitution of the Confederate States, framed at Montgomery, Alabama, during the civil war (March 11, 1861), actually did insert Almighty God in the preamble, but that constitution died with the Confederacy in 1865. I The name of God did not make it more pious or justifiable." | Gratis!

Our chief objection to such an amendment, besides its impracticability, is that it rests on a false assumption, and casts an unjust reflection upon the original document, as if it were hostile to religion. But it is neither hostile nor

1 See "Proceedings of the National Convention to secure the Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the U. S. held at Cincinnati, Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, 1872." Philadelphia, 1872. Another national convention was held in New York, February 1873. Compare, also, the previous and subsequent publications of that Association, and their semi-monthly journal, "The Christian Statesman," Philadelphia.

The Confederate Constitution follows the Federal Constitution very closely, but provides for the theory of State Rights and for the protection of the institution of slavery, which caused the civil war. The preamble reads as follows (with the characteristic words in italics): "We, the people of the Confederate [instead of United] States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government [instead of a more perfect union], establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity-invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God-ordain and establish this Constitution of the Con

friendly to any religion; it is simply silent on the subject, as lying beyond the jurisdiction of the general government. The absence of the names of God and Christ, in a purely political and legal document, no more proves denial of irreverence than the absence of those names in a mathemati cal treatise, or the statutes of a bank or railroad corporation. The title "Holiness" does not make the Pope of Rome any holier than he is, and it makes the contradiction only more glaring in such characters as Alexander VI. The book of Esther and the Song of Solomon are undoubtedly productions of devout worshippers of Jehovah; and yet the name of God does not occur once in them.

We may go further and say that the Constitution not only contains nothing which is irreligious or unchristian, but is Christian in substance, though not in form. It is pervaded by the spirit of justice and humanity, which are Christian. The First Amendment could not have originated in any pagan or Mohammedan country, but presupposes Christian civilization and culture. Christianity alone has taught men to respect the sacredness of the human personality as made in the image of God and redeemed by Christ, and to protect its rights and privileges, including the freedom of worship, against the encroachments of the temporal power and the absolutism of the state.

The Constitution, moreover, in recognizing and requiring an official oath from the President and all legislative, executive, and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, recognizes the Supreme Being, to whom the oath is a solemn appeal. In exempting Sunday from the working days of the President for signing a bill of Congress, the Constitution honors the claims of the weekly day of rest and the habits of a Sunday-keeping nation; and in federate [for United] States of America.” Jefferson Davis, in discussing the alleged improvements of the Confederate Constitution, does not deem this religious clause worth mentioning. See his "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government " (New York, Appleton & Co., 1881), vol. i. p. 259. In appendix K. (pp. 648 sqq.), he gives the text of both Constitutions in parallel columns. The Confederate Constitution retains the third clause of Art VI. and transfers the First Amendment to section 9 of Article I.

the subscription, by the words "in the year of our Lord," it assents to that chronology which implies that Jesus Christ is the turning-point of history and the beginning of a new order of society.

And, finally, the framers of the Constitution were, without exception, believers in God and in future rewards and punishments, from the presiding officer, General Washington, who was a communicant member of the Episcopal Church, down to the least orthodox, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who was affected by the spirit of English deism and French infidelity, but retained a certain reverence for the religion of his Puritan ancestors. All recognized the hand of Divine Providence in leading them safely through the war of independence. Dr. Franklin, in an eloquent and highly creditable speech, proposed the employment of a chaplain in the Convention, who should invoke the wisdom and blessing of God upon the responsible work of framing laws for a new nation.'

The history of the general government sustains our interpretation. The only example of an apparent hostility to Christianity is the treaty with Tripoli, November 4, 1796, in which it is said—perhaps unguardedly and unnecessarily that the government of the United States is "not founded on the Christian religion,” and has no enmity against the religion of a Mohammedan nation.' But this treaty was signed

1 See Document III. It is noteworthy that President Cleveland incorporated this address of Franklin in his eulogy of the Constitution at the Centennial celebration in Philadelphia, Sept. 17, 1887.

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." Article XI. of Treaty with Tripoli, signed and sealed at Tripoli Nov. 4, 1796, and at Algiers, Jan. 3, 1797, by Hassan Bashan (Dey of Algiers) and Joel Barlow (Consul-Gen. of the U. S.). See “Treaties and Conventions conducted between the U. S. and other Powers," Washington, 1873, p. 838. I learn from Dr. Francis Wharton that the treaty was framed by an ex-Congregational clergyman. With this treaty should be compared the treaties with Turkey which protest the rights of American Missionaries.

by Washington, who could not mean thereby to slight the religion he himself professed. It simply means that the United States is founded, like all civil governments, in the law of nature, and not hostile to any religion. Man, as Aristotle says, is by nature a political animal. Civil government belongs to the kingdom of the Father, not of the Son. Paul recognized the Roman Empire under Nero as founded by God, and that empire persecuted the Christian religion for nearly three hundred years. The modern German Empire and the French Republic arose, like the United States, from purely secular motives, but are not on that account irreligious or anti- Christian. The Constitution (Verfassungsurkunde) of the German Empire proclaimed by the Emperor William, April 16, 1861, has in its seventyeight articles not a single allusion to religion, except in the title of the Emperor von Gottes Gnaden, and might with much more justice be declared an atheistic document than the Constitution of the United States.

It is easy to make a plausible logical argument in favor of the proposition that the state cannot be neutral, that no-religion is irreligion, and that non-Christian is anti-Christian. But facts disprove the logic. The world is full of happy and unhappy inconsistencies. Christ says, indeed, "Who is not for me is against me," but he says also, with the same right, "Who is not against me is for me." It is the latter, and not the former truth which applies to the American state, as is manifest from its history down to the present time. A mere verbal recognition of God and Christ might be construed as an empty patronizing formality. Having the substance, we may dispense with the shadow, which might cast suspicion upon the reality.

See the instruction of Secretary Bayard to Straus, April 20, 1887, in which he says: “It is with peculiar satisfaction that the department learns that, in part through the instrumentality of Mr. Pendleton King as chargé d'affaires, an arrangement has been effected with the Turkish authorities by which the [American] missions are enabled to pursue, as heretofore, their meritorious, unselfish, and beneficent work among Turks in Turkey."-Appendix to vol. iii. of " Digest of International Law," by Francis Wharton, LL.D., Washing. ton, 1887, p. 864.

1

· ἄνθρωπος φύσει πολιτικὸν (staatlich) ζώον.

"Polit." Bk I. ch. 2.

Our Constitution, as all free government, is based upon popular sovereignty. This is a fact which no one can deny. But this fact by no means excludes the higher fact that all government and power on earth are of divine origin, dependent on God's will and responsible to him (Rom. xiii., 1). God can manifest his will through the voice of the people fully as well as through the election of princes or nobles, or through the accident of birth. In the ancient church even bishops (like Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustin) and popes (like Gregory the Great) were chosen by the people, and the vox populi was accepted as the vox Dei. When these come in conflict, we must obey God rather than man (Acts iv., 29). All power, parental, civil, and ecclesiastical, is liable to abuse in the hands of sinful men, and if government commands us to act against conscience and right, disobedience, and, if necessary, revolution, becomes a necessity and a duty.

THE INFIDEL PROGRAM.

A direct opposition to the efforts of the "National Association to Secure a Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" is an attempt of the “Liberal League" to expunge from it every trace of Christianity. The former aims to christianize the Constitution and to nationalize Christianity; the latter aims to heathenize the Constitution and to denationalize Christianity.

The program of the "Liberal League," as published by Francis E. Abbot, in their organ, The Index, January 4, 1873, and separately, is as follows:

"THE DEMANDS OF LIBERALISM.

"1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempted from just taxation.

"2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in State Legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued.

"3. We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian, educational, and charitable institutions shall cease.

"4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book, or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.

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