SOME time ago, Rev. E. H. Ashmun, of Denver, Colorado, preached to the Patriotic Order of the Sons of America, a sermon on what he intended to be, “National Education,” but if his views should be carried out, it would be national mis-education. He declared that the education furnished by the public schools “must be to a degree, Christian” and non-sectarian. He did not tell how the State is to find out what Christianity is, without recognizing and establishing a particular religion, nor did he seem to care how the thing should be brought about, only so that his views of Christianity and non-sectarianism should be taught in the schools. And that is all that the argument means about religion and non-sectarianism in the public schools. It means simply some man’s particular views of what constitutes religion and non-sectarianism, and in the end this is simply sectarianism in religion.AMS October 9, 1890, page 313.1

This is fully demonstrated in Mr. Ashmun’s speech, because the whole thing was a continuous onslaught upon the Roman Catholic Church, and its practices, and its opposition to the Protestant Bible in the public schools, all of which he denounces as sectarian. When any man claims that opposition to the Bible in the public schools is sectarian, his claim is in itself sectarian; because the claim is always in favor of some particular version of the Bible, and in the discussion that is now going on it is in behalf of the King James version, in other words, of the Protestant Bible, but Protestantism is no less sectarian than Catholicism, Judaism, Mohammedanism or anything else. Again, not all of those who are taxed to support the public school believe in the Bible, and would not even if there were but one version of it in the world, and even if it were of all books the only one recognized as the Bible; and to compel men who do not believe in the Bible to submit to the dictation of those who do, is wrong; to compel men who do not believe the Bible to receive it as others believe it, and because others believe it, is persecution and sectarianism too.AMS October 9, 1890, page 313.2

Mr. Ashmun says that “to make good citizens, you must make good men.” That depends upon the sense in which the word “good” is used. If it is used in the sense of civilly good, then it is only to say that in order to make good citizens you must make good citizens, which is altogether likely. But in the sense in which Mr. Ashmun uses it, that is, if you would make good citizens you must make morally good men, then it is not true. A man may be morally bad, and yet he may be a good citizen. It is very doubtful whether either at the time in which he lived, or now, there could be found a man who would say that Benjamin Franklin was not a good citizen. But it would certainly be difficult to find a man, who is acquainted with Franklin’s character as a man, who would say that Franklin was a good man. Franklin himself would not say it. Alexander Hamilton is another instance, and there are many others. The truth is that morally speaking, a person may be a bad man, and yet he may be a good citizen. But even though it were the actual truth, as Mr. Ashmun means it, that to be a good man is essential to being a good citizen, and that the State must make men good, there never could be any such thing as a good citizen, because the State cannot make good men. The State is a natural thing. It springs from men in the natural state, and there is no power in nature, or in any natural process, or thing, to make men good. Nothing but the power of God as revealed in Jesus Christ can ever make men good. But that is a supernatural thing. It was supernaturally manifested in Jesus Christ, and is now supernaturally impressed upon men and cultivated in them. Goodness is a fruit of the Spirit of God; and the promise of the Spirit of God is received only through faith, of which Jesus Christ is “the author and finisher.” The State knows nothing of faith, and has nothing to do with faith. It is impossible, therefore, for the State to make good men, and any professed minister of the gospel of Christ who attributes such power to the State as is here attributed by Mr. Ashmun, virtually denies the purpose and the power of Christianity. If the State can make men good, then assuredly there is no need of any other power. If the State can make men good, there is no need of Christianity to make them good, and there was no need of Christ’s coming down to this earth to make them good.AMS October 9, 1890, page 313.3

But it may be urged that Mr. Ashmun did not mean morally good but only civilly good. This, however, is not true. He means morally good, for he says:—AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.1

The State has a right to see that the education is such as to make safe citizens. The education must be moral. This is the most important part. The State has a right to educate in what it most needs. When men of ability prostitute their power to basest evil; when money will corrupt thoroughly educated men; when political leaders are so often unsafe, and when men of no mean intellectual parts are found supporting and advocating the saloon, vile literature and anarchy, it is time for us to awake to the fact that what we want is not so much power as its proper control. That character is first, and not as a work of supererogation. Not as a patch on the garment but as the very warp, the fiber of its being. It is said it belongs to the family and the Church. Yes, but the child is in school during a greater part of its most impressible years, and its character is formed whether you will or not. And with many children the only good moral training they ever receive is in school.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.2

I go still farther and say that the education must be to a degree Christian. I know this is disputed ground, but I am confident of the correctness of my position. Otherwise you leave no real distinction between right and wrong. The only ground of responsibility is the divine law. Expediency changes with public sentiment which fluctuates with desire. You cannot teach good morals successfully, without touching their root. Responsibility roots in the divine law. The object of education is the prime end of man himself. To make good citizens you must make good men.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.3

That shows plainly enough that what he means is moral good, and indeed such moral good as only Christianity contemplates. Then there comes another consideration upon this, which is, that if the State even through the use of the Christian religion in the public schools, can make men good, then what is the use of the Church, and what was the Church instituted for? When men who belong to the Church, who profess to speak for the Church, and who profess to be ministers of the gospel of Christ, thus put their dependence in the power of the State to make effectual the purposes of Christianity, it is a sorry condition of things.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.4

Mr. Ashmun attempts to have the State make a distinction between right and wrong. This is as wide of the truth as any other of his statements. The State knows no such thing, nor can it know any such thing, as a “real distinction between right and wrong.” The State only knows rights and wrongs, and the distinction between these. Men have rights—in the State they have equal rights. For one to infringe the rights of another is to commit a wrong, and the State deals with it only as this kind of a wrong. The State cannot make of it any question of real right or wrong in a moral point of view.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.5

The prime defect in this whole system is that those who talk thus, and expect the State to accomplish those things, hold the view that the State is a person, and in fact, a moral person; that it is an individual, distinct from the citizens who compose it, as one individual is distinct from another. But the State is no such thing. The State is no more of a personality than the Patriotic Order of the Sons of America is a personality. The State as an individual cannot do anything. The action of the State is only the action of the majority of the individuals that compose it, or of their representatives. It becomes their action, theirs is the responsibility; and the morality or the immorality, the real right or wrong of what is done attaches to the individual men who are concerned in it. The State is not an end; it is only a means by which to accomplish an end. It is an organization formed by men by which to protect themselves and the rights which they possess, and that is all that it is.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.6

Again he says:—AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.7

It is not safe to give men liberty unless you make them responsible. You dare not let untamed beasts roam at will.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.8

Here again appears the same blemish that exists throughout the whole sermon. That is, that the State is all and in all, and it gives the people all things, even liberty. The State does not give the people liberty. The people have liberty. It is an inalienable right. “Men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Despotism may invade this right, but justice still maintains it. The State is not first; the people are first. The State does not make the people what they are; God or the people make people what they are, and the people make the State what it is.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.9

Mr. Ashmun’s idea that men are a set of untamed beasts is strictly compatible with his view of what the State is. If men are untamed beasts, of course, it is necessary to have some power to hold them fast, and if they are ever to be anything more than that, to train them and instruct them so that they may be so. But so long as men are men, and not untamed beasts, there is no need of any such theoretical paternalism as was set forth to the Patriotic Order of the Sons of America, by the Rev. E. H. Ashmun.AMS October 9, 1890, page 314.10

A. T. J.

“American Principles” The American Sentinel 5, 40, p. 316.

ATJ

THE AMERICAN SENTINEL is a thorough-going Protestant journal, and is therefore opposed to every form of the Roman Catholic doctrine, and to the Roman Catholic system as a whole; but we do not indorse in any degree this anti-Catholic cry that is becoming so prevalent. Our opposition to Roman Catholic doctrine, and to Roman Catholicism as a system, is confined wholly to the field of reason and discussion. We maintain that the Roman Catholic has just as much right to be a citizen of the United States as any other man, that he has all the rights of any other man, and that these rights are just as sacred as those of any other man. We know that any man or any class of men who would deny the Roman Catholics any civil rights whatever, would deny the same thing to anybody else. It is certain, therefore, that if this anti-Catholic crusade that is being so urgently pressed by many who appropriate to themselves the name, American, would be as thoroughly despotic if it had its way as Roman Catholicism ever was, or as any system could be. And although all these papers and associations boast of their Americanism, the spirit of the whole movement is everything else than American.AMS October 9, 1890, page 316.1

Americanism, that is, the genius of American principles and American political doctrine, is the recognition of the equal rights of all,—of the rights of the Roman Catholic as well as of the Protestant, and of those who are neither, as well as of those who are either. The constant ambition of THE AMERICAN SENTINEL is to be thoroughly loyal to genuine American principles, asserting and defending the equal rights of all the people whatever their religious profession may be—the right of any man to be a Roman Catholic and a citizen at the same time; the right of any man to be a Protestant and a citizen at the same time; the right of any man to be neither and also a citizen,—the right of the Roman Catholic Church to exist as a church, and to have its own church schools free from any interference by the State, as the State has the right to its schools free from any interference by any church; and the same to any Protestant church. We believe in the right of the State to exist, and in the right of the Church to exist, and in the total and absolute separation between them.AMS October 9, 1890, page 316.2

A. T. J.

“Who Shall Teach That Christian Theology?” The American Sentinel 5, 40, p. 317.

ATJ

THE bill introduced by Senator Edmunds form to establish a national university, provides for the study and consideration of Christain theology. If that bill should pass and the university be established, the instructors would be holders of an “office or public trust,” under the Government. Now the Constitution declares that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this Government.” But if Christian theology be studied or considered in that university there will certainly have to be a teacher, and if a teacher be employed to conduct the study and consideration of Christian theology, that teacher should be a Christian; but to require that a man shall be a Christian in order to occupy that place is to require a religious test as a qualification to the office, and therefore is a violation of the Constitution. Consequently from this point of view, Senator Edmunds’s bill is as clearly unconstitutional as it would be possible for any bill to be.AMS October 9, 1890, page 317.1

On the other hand, if no such requirement is made as that the instructor in Christian theology shall be a Christian, and thus this clause of the Constitution be evaded, then it would follow that instruction in Christian theology would be given in that university by a teacher who is not a Christian, But just as soon as that is done, then the teaching of Christian theology is put, upon the basis of sheer rationalism. Therefore if this provision of the bill should be carried out from this point of view, it follows that that which would be taught in this university as Christian theology would be but an ungodly mixture, with no Christianity in it.AMS October 9, 1890, page 317.2

From whatever point, therefore, this bill may be viewed it is certain that the people of the United States want no such thing as it proposes to establish. The people of the United States do not want to establish a thing which is clearly unconstitutional, nor do they want to establish a system of Christian instruction which shall have no Christianity in it; nor is it right to establish at public expense a system of public instruction which has Christianity in it.AMS October 9, 1890, page 317.3

As we view the bills, resolutions, etc., introduced by certain United States senators, we are led to wonder whether these are not the very individuals the poet had in mind when he said:—AMS October 9, 1890, page 317.4

But man, proud man
Dressed in a little brief authority
Plays such fantastic tricks before
High heaven as make the angels weep.
A. T. J.AMS October 9, 1890, page 317.5

October 2, 1890

October 16, 1890