The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-10-07
NOT CHRISTIAN.

AO1 O4lANc-A1N
II the protesting Christians. who are at
present engaged in the pleasant occupation
OF persecution OF the Mormons for the al
legged opinions Of the latter, were to reflect
upon their course in this matter. they must
discover that it is not Christian in form or
shirt. The first preachers Of the gospel
were obliged to obey Con rather than man.
They had TO disobey the laws which com
manded them to worship the image OF the
emperor or to curse CHRIST. in fact they !
subjected the precepts of the state in re |
gard to the liberty of individual conscience |
10 their own private Judgment, and refused
TO obey the safe when it interfered in mat
tiers Of belief. They rendered unto CESAR
the things that were CEsAR's, but they de-
MED to CESAR the right to control their be-
lief or to interfere in matters of pure con-
science. They obeyed the law so far as it
related to their acts concerning their Eel |
low men, but they refused to change their
testimony concerning CHRIST, no matter
what the law enioined in that particular.
In matters pertaining to faith alone they
unswervingly asserted a spiritual law
above the will of man. For their
acts they acknowledged their account
ability TO human law; for their
thoughts they denied any such obligation to
the laws of man, and deemed themselves
accountable to their Maker in regard TO
their faith and conscience. For this they
were regarded as reasonable to the law and
audaciously defiant of the supreme authority
of the state For before their time, the
precepts of the state, il regard to matters
of faith and belief as well as in regard to
actions, were possessed of boundless and I'M
reasonable authority, which was obeyed
with Difference and submission that none
dared question with impunity. SOCRATES,
indeed, had refused to promise to refrain
from teaching doctrine at variance with the
religion Of the state, ana paid the penalty
with his life. But prior to the advent of
Christianity, there were few that had the
ability to conceive and the nobility to main
tain that each individual is the keeper of
his own conscience. The state regulated
the belief, or, at least, the expression of be-
lief, for all its subjects; and woe betide the
hapless thinker who dared to question the
rightfulness of state authority to do this.
With the advent of Christianity, how
ever, began that protest against the abso-
lutte authority of the state in religious mat
tiers, which has finally eliminated after
eighteen centuries in the formal renuncia-
ton by most Christian governments of the
right Of the state to govern the conscience
or shape the religious belief of its subjects.
The early Christians were expressly COM
manded to yield obedience to the powers
that be, and were ''put in mind to be sub
1ect to principalities and powers, to obey
magistrates but PLINY relates as con-
elusive proof that some persons were not
Christians who were brought before him
Oh that charge, that "They repeated after
me an invocation to the gods and offered
religious rites with wine and incense be-
fore your TTRAJAN'sl statue and
even reviled the name of CHRIST; whereas
there is no forcing, it is said, those who
are really Christians into any of these
ordinances. 1 thought it proper, there
fore, to discharge them" There were
some things, then, on which Christians re
fused 10 obey the law: their right to
worship Con and to ''preach CHRIST and
Him cruciied."
1t was for this that they were perse-
cuted, imprisoned, and put to death; and
their final triumph was emphatically the
triumph of human liberty against organized
oppression, of natural and political rights
against the former omnipotent power of
the state
The attitude Of enlightened Christianity
on the subject of individual freedom is
thus stated by GEORGE P. FISHER, profess
sor of ecclesiastical history in Yale college:
"Christianity presents no abstract pattern
of civil society. 1t prescribes no such
doctrine as that of universal suffrage. But
Christianity by the respect which 1t pays
toman as man by its antipathy TO unjust or
artificial distinctions, by its whole genius
and spirit, favors those forms of polity in
which all men of competent intelligence,
who have stake in the well-being of the
community, are allowed to have some voice
in1ts government
Il seems strange that processing converts
of the rule, Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as myself" should not discover that the
proposition to punish people for their belief
only, is savage and anti-Christian one,
no matter how perverse and foolish that
belief may appear to the prosecutors. Men
are amenabe to the law for their actions
only. Belief, especially as interpreted by
an adversary, is not ground for coercive
punishment or political prescription. Ii
will be little wonder, if the Mormons, after
conforming their actions and words to the
spirit and letter of the law, and after max
ing every reasonable concession that coult
be asked concerning it, shall on the cues
ton Of abstract belief and religious faith
place themselves on the extreme boundary
of their right, ard bid defiance to the arm
that would push them from it.