All the Roman empire did in killing Christians was to enforce the law. Then the question was with the Christians, at that time, and the question is with us, Is not the law wrong? and did not the Christians have the right to attack the law? That is what they did. When a Christian was brought before the magistrate, a dialogue followed something like this: --
Magistrate. -- "Have you a particular God of your own, -- a god not recognized by the Roman law?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- "Did you not know that the law is against it?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- "Have you not introduced a new religion?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- "Did you not know that the law is against it?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- " Did you not know that the penalty is death, for those of the lower ranks?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- "You are of the lower ranks?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- "You have introduced a new religion?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- "You have a God of your own?"
Christian. -- "Yes."
Magistrate. -- "What is the penalty?"
Christian. -- "Death."
That was all. The Romans enforced the law upon the Christians in the first days of Christianity; and there was no persecution in it, if the principle be recognized that civil government has a right to legislate in religious things. The empire had this apparent advantage, too, that the law existed before Christianity was known in the world. Christianity appeared to Rome as nothing else than an uprising against the imperial power. Laws are made to be enforced; and to enforce the law is all that the Roman empire ever did, whether up to the time of Constantine, or at any other time. In fact, all the papacy did in the Middle Ages was to have the emperors enforce the law. We stand to-day just where the Christians did at that time; we come to the root of the whole matter, and deny the right of the civil government to legislate on anything that pertains to our duties to God under the first four commandments, and assert the Christian and American principle that every man has the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience.
The principle that the Christians asserted was to render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to deny the right of Caesar to demand anything that pertains to God. They gave their lives in support of that principle, against the law of the Roman empire, and against the very existence of the Roman empire. This principle was asserted and maintained until it forced the Roman empire, with all its power, to recognize the right of every man to have a particular god of his own, and to worship that god as he chose. The Roman empire did come in the days of Constantine and Licinius to that point. At the death of Galerius, it was decreed in the Roman law, by the emperors Constantine and Licinius in the Edict of Milan, that every man should be at liberty to have any god he pleased, and worship him as he pleased. But it was the Christian principle that forced the Roman empire to that point in the face of all its laws and institutions of ages.
Our national Constitution embodies the very principle announced by Jesus Christ, that the civil government shall have nothing to do with religion, or with what pertains to God; but shall leave that to every man's conscience and his God. As long as he is a good citizen, the nation will protect him and leave him perfectly free to worship whom he pleases, when he pleases, as he pleases, or not to worship at all, if he pleases.
In Article VI. of the Constitution of the United States, this nation says that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." By an amendment making more certain the adoption of the principle, it declares in the first amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This first amendment was adopted in 1789, by the first Congress that ever met under the Constitution. In 1796 a treaty was made with Tripoli, in which it was declared (Article II.) that "the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." This treaty was framed by an ex-Congregationalist clergyman, and was signed by President Washington. It was not out of disrespect to religion or Christianity that these clauses were placed in the Constitution, and that this one was inserted in that treaty. On the contrary, it was entirely on account of their respect for religion, and the Christian religion in particular, as being beyond the province of civil government, pertaining solely to the conscience, and resting entirely between the individual and God. This fact is so well stated by Mr. Bancroft in his "History of the Constitution of the United States," that I will here insert it: --
"In the earliest States known to history, government and religion were one and indivisible. Each State had its special deity, and often these protectors, one after another, might be overthrown in battle, never to rise again. The Peloponnesian War grew out of a strife about an oracle. Rome, as it sometimes adopted into citizenship those whom it vanquished, introduced in like manner, and with good logic for that day, the worship of their gods. No one thought of vindicating religion for the conscience of the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity, by establishing a pure, spiritual, and universal religion for all mankind, enjoined to render to Caesar only that which is Caesar's. The rule was upheld during the infancy of the gospel for all men. No sooner was this religion adopted by the chief of the Roman empire, than it was shorn of its character of universality, and enthralled by an unholy connection with the unholy State; and so it continued till the new nation, -- the least defiled with the barren scoffings of the eighteenth century, the most general believer in Christianity of any people of that age, the chief heir of the Reformation in its purest forms, -- when it came to establish a government for the United States, refused to treat faith as a matter to be regulated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a State.
"Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion above all, the new nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained of God in Judea. It left the management of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American Constitution, in harmony with the people of the several States, withheld from the Federal Government the power to invade the home of reason, the citadel of conscience, the sanctuary of the soul; and not from indifference, but that the infinite Spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power." -- Last chapter.
At this point I am brought to the assertion of the second of the principles upon which we stand in our opposition to Sunday laws, or any other form of religious legislation: that is, the principle of the Constitution of the United States; and upon this principle I maintain that this proposed Sunday law is unconstitutional.
The object of this Sunday bill is wholly religious. The last section shows the object of the entire bill; and that is, "to secure to the whole people rest, . . . and the religious observance of the Sabbath day." No one, therefore, need attempt to evade the force of objections against this bill by saying that it is not the religious, but the civil, observance of the day that is required; because it is plainly declared in the bill itself, that it is not only to secure rest to all the people, but that it is also to secure the religious observance of the Sabbath day. There is not a single reference in the bill to any such thing as the civil observance of the day. The word civil is not used in the bill. It is a religious bill wholly. The title of the bill declares that its object is to secure to the people the enjoyment of the Lord's day as a day of rest, "and to promote its observance as a day of religious worship." The first section defines the Lord's day; the second section refers to the day as one of worship and rest; the third section refers to it as a day of religious worship; the fourth section refers to its observance as that of religious worship; and the sixth section plainly declares, what is apparent throughout, that the object of the bill is "to secure to the whole people rest, . . . and the religious observance of the Sabbath day," on the first day of the week.
It is the religious observance of the day that its promoters, from one end of the land to the other, have in view. In the convention, now in session in this city, working in behalf of this bill, only yesterday Dr. Crafts said: --
"Taking religion out of the day, takes the rest out."
In the "Boston Monday Lectures," 1887, Joseph Cook, lecturing on the subject of Sunday laws, said: --
"The experience of centuries shows, however, that you will in vain endeavor to preserve Sunday as a day of rest, unless you preserve it as a day of worship. Unless Sabbath observance be founded upon religious reasons, you will not long maintain it at a high standard on the basis of economic and physiological and political considerations only."
And in the Illinois State Sunday convention held in Elgin, Nov. 8. 1887, Dr. W. W. Everts declared Sunday to be "the test of all religion."