THE AMERICAN PRINCIPLE IS THE DIVINE PRINCIPLE

When this government was formed, it was with the express intent that there should be exemplified here this divine principle, and that therefore in this nation there should be a total separation between the government and religion, that the State should not have anything to do in any way whatever with what any man believed or with any man’s worship or refusal to worship. This was done with the expressed purpose and with the direct intent of its being an illustration of that divine principle; for it was distinctly announced that the government was so established because Christ had proclaimed the principle.CYMFC 10.3

Jefferson, Madison, and their noble fellow-workers for religious as well as civil freedom in this new nation, truthfully said:—CYMFC 11.1

“Almighty God hath created the mind free;” and that “all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion, who, being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do;” and “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such, endeavoring to impose them on others, bath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time.”CYMFC 11.2

Further they said:—CYMFC 11.3

“We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth that religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion then of every man, must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. We maintain, therefore, that in matters of religion no man’s right is abridged by the institution of civil society, and that religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.”CYMFC 11.4

And again:—CYMFC 11.5

“To judge for ourselves, and to engage in the exercise of religion agreeably to the dictates of our own consciences, is an unalienable right, which, upon the principles on which the gospel was first propagated and the Reformation from popery carried on, can never be transferred to another.”CYMFC 11.6

Again:—CYMFC 11.7

“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects?”CYMFC 11.8

And yet again:—CYMFC 12.1

“It is impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith, without erecting a claim to infallibility, which would lead us back to the Church of Rome.”CYMFC 12.2

And therefore says Bancroft:—CYMFC 12.3

“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 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.”CYMFC 12.4

This is why the United States Constitution was made to declare that, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States;” that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” and why the supreme law was made to say that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.”CYMFC 12.5

Consequently upon this theater alone has been displayed the working of that principle which is for the enlightenment of all nations upon the earth. This principle has been illustrated here and nowhere else on earth. By this government alone it has been declared in the principles of the government; in our national documents; in the supreme law of the land; and in that mystic symbol of legal government, the Great Seal of the United States, pledging the government and all that it is, to this “new order of things.”CYMFC 12.6

It is easy to see that there was no other place on the earth where this divine principle could be so well and so advantageously established and announced for the enlightenment of all the earth. Until this nation was established, all the nations of the world were not known. And of the nations that had been known, though known ever since the announcement of this principle by our Lord, no one was recognized by the others as an example that they could look to as of much importance. Not one of them possessed an influence that affected all the others. Each nation considered itself the most enlightened, the best, the farthest advanced. But when this nation came up, and established the divine principle for governments here set forth, by which the mind of man was untrammeled in every way, in the nature of things this nation outstripped all the others. And having thus reached the highest place in the shortest time of any nation that ever existed, all the other nations were compelled to admit that this was the brightest example upon the earth.CYMFC 12.7

And the one thing above all others that compelled the attention of the other nations of the earth, was its position and character in this very matter of the divine principle of the separation of religion and the State. Whatever else from this nation may have affected others, it was always, and rightly traced back for its origin to this divine principle. And as in the wisdom of God this principle was established here for the enlightenment of all the world, so in the order of God, this purpose has been accomplished. Especially has this been so with respect to the nations of Europe, where, both by the papacy, and by false Protestantism, the papal—the satanic—principle had been so thoroughly established and so long practiced. Says Dr. Philip Schaff, than whom no one has had better facilities or opportunity for understanding this point:—CYMFC 13.1

“Within the present generation the principle of religious liberty and equality, with a corresponding relaxation of the bond of union of Church and State, has made steady and irresistible progress among the leading nations of Europe, and has been embodied more or less clearly in written constitutions....CYMFC 13.2

“The successful working of the principle of religious freedom in the United States has stimulated this progress without any official interference. All the advocates of the voluntary principle [in the support of churches and religion] and of a separation of Church and State in Europe, point to the example of this country as their strongest practical argument.”CYMFC 13.3

So irresistible indeed has been this influence that all the nations have been, by it, to a greater or less extent, drawn away from the principles of the papacy and therein from the papacy itself. So certainly is this so that even Spain, the home of the Inquisition, has been led to grant toleration.CYMFC 14.1

And thus stood this great question and this splendid government, in the sublime illustration of that divine principle for governments, until this very anniversary year, this four-hundredth year, when lo! all is reversed.CYMFC 14.2