The American Sentinel 13
September 15, 1898
“Notes” American Sentinel 13, 36, p. 565.
THE side of truth is the side of the true majority. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.1
IF you are a follower of God, you will be a leader of men. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.2
A SINGLE word from the throne of God outweighs the earth. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.3
RELIGIOUS truth never requires the support of civil statutes. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.4
LACK of Scriptural support for an institution up by any amount of support from other sources. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.5
PEOPLE make a great mistake when they pass over the question of what is right, to consider what is custom and precedent. Right is always the true precedent. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.6
TO SAY that the Sabbath needs the support of human enactments, is to say that the law of God needs such support; and that is to say that the law of God is very weak. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.7
NO SUNDAY law was ever based upon the argument that the first day of the week is the seventh day, or that one day of the week will do as well for the Sabbath as another. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.8
WHEN men set about enforcing the law of God, they argue that God is either too impotent to enforce his own enactments, or not wise enough to know when or how they should be enforced. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.9
THE platform of religious truth is never overcrowded with church members. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.10
NO REAMSON for Sabbath observance has ever been or can be devised which will be an improvement upon that specified by the Author of the Sabbath in the fourth commandment. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.11
GOD’S law is the law of giving; man’s law the law of requiring. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.12
IN the sphere of moral duties and privileges, ignorance is not bliss. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.13
IT is better to walk alone in the path of right than to follow a multitude to do evil. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.14
ALL religious legislation is an effort to substitute law for conscience in those upon whom it takes effect. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.15
PIOUS motives and sincerity of purpose are not good substitutes for a knowledge of the truth. AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.16
NO INDIVIDUAL can find real Sabbath rest save by accepting the divine invitation given to all them “that labor and are heavy laden.” AMS September 15, 1898, page 565.17
“Note” American Sentinel 13, 36, p. 566.
THE God of Christianity has been in the national Constitution from the first, his name being inscribed there in the principles of justice and liberty which it embodies. But the National Reform party—the party which confounds Christianity with politics—wants to put into the Constitution a god which would crowd these principles out. They want the Constitution to distinguish between religion classes, giving to the larger the authority to coerce the smaller, contrary to the American and Christian principle of equality before the law in matters of conscience. AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.1
The god which could not be put into the Constitution without crowding justice out of it, is not the true God. AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.2
“Futile, But Not New” American Sentinel 13, 36, p. 566.
THE experiment of making an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God in the fundamental law of a commonwealth, which a large party in this country is so anxious to try, is not a new one. Not to mention the attempts of former times, made by the nations of the old world, to administer the laws of God by the machinery of the State, we have an example in the constitution of the Southern Confederacy, set up in our own time. It affords a fair illustration of the practical utility of the scheme proposed. The preamble of that constitution said:— AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.1
“We, the People of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent Federal Government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God—do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.” AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.2
This is not so full a recognition of God’s sovereignty as political religionists want put into the national Constitution to-day, but it was not void of practical effect. It declared that “we, the people,” included the Government set up upon the Constitution, invoked “the favor and guidance of Almighty God;” hence only those were included who were willing to make this religious acknowledgment, which was in itself a confession of faith in the sovereignty and providence of God. The atheist and agnostic were not recognized at all, and could properly have no share in the government, nor claim protection under it. AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.3
The preamble of the United States Constitution makes no allusion to God; and as between the two, upon the theory that such an acknowledgment is binding upon the nation, and that to omit it is a sin calling for divine retribution, providence should certainly have favored the Confederate government in its contest for separation from the Union. AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.4
But what was the result? Every person knows. The constitutional acknowledgment of God availed nothing. The Almighty did not recognize it. And such an acknowledgment is of no more value to-day than it was in the time of the war. AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.5
If God had desired a government to be set up which recognized his sovereignty in its fundamental law, he could have perpetuated the Confederate government. And that he let it go down, is plain evidence that he did not wish it perpetuated. But religious hobby-riders refuse to learn anything from experience. AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.6
“A Hindu’s View of ‘National Christianity’” American Sentinel 13, 36, pp. 566, 567.
THE difference between the so-called Christianity of the national type—that which gives rise to the term “Christian nation”—and real Christianity, is illustrated in the experience of a convert from Hinduism, as related by Professor Max Muller in the August Cosmopolist. “I was sitting in my room at Oxford copying Sanscrit,” says the professor, when “a gentleman was shown in, dressed in a long, black coat, looking different from my usual visitors, and addressing me in language of which I did not understand a single word.” It was a learned Hindu who had come to see Mr. Muller and was addressing him in Sanscrit. Upon being given some manuscript of the Veda to peruse, he said he did not believe in the Veda any longer, but had become a Christian. An earnest conversation ensued, of which the professor says:— AMS September 15, 1898, page 566.7
“It was not long before I discovered a sad and perplexed tone in his conversation, and, though he assured me that nothing but a deep conviction of the truth of Christ’s teaching had induced him to change his religion, he told me he was in great anxiety and did not know what to do for the future. What he had seen of England, more particularly of London, was not what he had imagined a Christian country to be. His patron, Dhulip Singh, had placed him at some kind of missionary seminary in London, where he found himself, together with a number of what he considered half-educated and narrow-minded young men, candidates for ordination, and missionary work. They showed him no sympathy and love, but found fault with everything he did and said. AMS September 15, 1898, page 567.1
“He had been, as I soon found out, a careful student of Hindu philosophy, and his mind had passed through a strict philosophical discipline. Hindu philosophy in by many respect as good a discipline as Plato or Aristotle, and, Christian though he was, he was familiar with the boldest conceptions of the world as found in the six systems of Hindu philosophy, and he could argue with great subtlety and accuracy on any of the old problems of the human mind. The fact was, he stood too high for his companions, and they were evidently unable to understand and appreciate his thoughts. He did not use words at random, and was always ready to give a definition of them, whenever they seemed ambiguous. And yet this man was treated as a kind of nigger by those who ought to have been not only kind, but respectful to him. He was told that smoking was a sin, and that he never could be a true Christian if he abstained from eating meat, especially beef. He told me that with a great effort he had brought himself once to swallow sandwich containing a slice of meat, but it was to him what eating human flesh would be to us. He could not do it again. AMS September 15, 1898, page 567.2
“When he thus found himself in this thoroughly uncongenial society, and saw nothing in London of what he had supposed a Christian city to be, he ran away, and came to Oxford to find me, having heard of my interest in India, in its religion and its ancient literature. He had evidently dreamt of a Christian country where everybody loved his neighbor as himself; where everybody, if struck on the right cheek, would turn the other also; where everybody, when robbed of his coat, would give up his cloak also. All this, as we know, is no longer the fashion in the streets of London, and what he actually saw in those streets was so different from his ideals that he said to me: ‘If what I have seen in London is Christianity, I want to go back to India; if that is Christianity, I am not a Christian.’” AMS September 15, 1898, page 567.3
The Hindu convert had made the mistake of supposing that since Christianity was the professed religion in London, the city was a Christian city, just as it is taken for granted by many not of Hindu blood and education, that a nation where Christianity is the professed religion of the people, must be a Christian nation. His mind had not grasped the fact that profession, as regards Christianity, might be no evidence at all of possession; and that the many possessed but a counterfeit of Christianity, no more like the genuine than is a corpse like a living person. It was perhaps not strange that he should have entertained this false conception, having been educated in the formal systems of heathenism, where profession has always its face value; but such a mistake is without excuse in those who have grown up amidst Christian privileges. AMS September 15, 1898, page 567.4
The result was fatal to the new life that had been awakened in his soul, and the professor records that after holding his profession for a time in much perplexity and almost in despair, he sought refuge at last in the old religion which he had renounced. It is a sad illustration of a false conception of Christianity and its effect upon the mind by which it is entertained. AMS September 15, 1898, page 567.5
THE most poisonous thing in the world, is sin; the most poisonous serpent is that by which Adam and Eve were bitten, in Eden. AMS September 15, 1898, page 567.6
“Back Page” American Sentinel 13, 36, p. 580.
IN the Christian warfare there is never any trouble from bad rations, or from neglect of the One in command. AMS September 15, 1898, page 580.1
THERE are never any “dull times” in the vineyard of the Lord. The world was never overstocked with Christians. AMS September 15, 1898, page 580.2
IN David’s time the faith of a stripling was more powerful than the sword of a giant. And God has not changed. AMS September 15, 1898, page 580.3
THAT church and state ought to be kept separate, is a Christian truth as well as a principle of American government. Jesus Christ himself stated it, and we as Christians have a right to state it now. We are not doing anything inconsistent with a profession of Christianity when we state it. Yet the SENTINEL has been sharply criticised on the ground that, since it professed to be Christian and maintained that Christianity could not mix in the affairs of civil government, it had no business to be telling the people how the Government ought to be run. Such critics should remember that Christ himself is the author and first exponent of this governmental principle, and that to criticise its enunciation is to criticise him. In setting forth this principle the SENTINEL is taking no part in the affairs of civil government. Let the civil government be kept separate from religion; then let it be run as the fortune of politics may decide. AMS September 15, 1898, page 580.4