051. SIGNIFICANCE OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY

SIGNIFICANCE OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY

Little by little the principle of religious liberty has made its way, until now the last vestige of a church establishment has been erased from our statute-books. The lingering relics of proscriptive legislation were not swept away in Connecticut till 1818, and in Massachusetts until 1833. But now these United States stand before the world as the embodiment of the voluntary principle in religion. This is the significance thus far of American Christianity. God brought our fathers out from the iron furnace and from the house of bondage, in order that he might bring us in, to a freedom both political and spiritual, such as the world has never seen before. It is seen nowhere else to-day but in America, and in the newer English colonies which have copied America’s example. Everywhere else there still remain establishments or restrictions or partialities, which interfere with the free exercise and propagation of religious faith. In Great Britain, Spurgeon may give to his Tabernacle, if he will, but if he own agricultural land he must pay tithes for the support of the Episcopal rector of his parish, whether he will or no. France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, give nominal freedom to all faiths. But France gives special aid to certain faiths; while other faiths receive no aid, but must seek the special permission of the police. Germany has an established church in every kingdom belonging to the empire; Switzerland in every canton belonging to the republic; while both Germany and Switzerland shut out the Jesuits. Italy acknowledges Roman Catholicism as the religion of the State, and it makes its annual dotation to the pope. Spain professes to tolerate all religions, but only Roman Catholicism is the religion of the State; and all meetings held by other religionists must be held in private houses, without placard or advertisement or bell, to indicate their existence to the outside world. Five years ago I visited Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire. I sought the little Baptist church. No directory could give me information as to its whereabouts. The pastor of a Presbyterian chapel volunteered to conduct me. We passed through the court of what seemed a gentleman’s dwelling. We knocked upon a door which had no sign upon it to distinguish it from any other door. We waited till a bolt was withdrawn. We entered a passageway, and at length emerged in a room of moderate size, where thirty or forty German believers were gathered. They could not look upon us graciously, until they found that we were not detectives or officers of the police. But what is the anxiety of the feeble band of Baptists in Austria, compared with the harrowing uncertainty that attends the life of the Stundists, or of the Jews, in Russia!

Toleration is not liberty. Establishments are not liberty. Nothing is liberty but absolute equality of all faiths before the law. Toward this ideal Europe has been advancing. The abolition of the temporal power of the pope, the accomplished unity of the two great States, Italy and Germany, the sober and prosperous experience of twenty years in France under the republic, the disestablishment of the Irish Church—these are great achievements indeed, but they mark stages of progress which in the United States we have left far behind us. The democratic spirit is moving everywhere among the nations. But here it is triumphant. And the separation of Church and State has harmed neither of the two; but, where State aid has wholly ceased, religion has prospered as never before. Our one hundred thousand ministers of various denominations, our one hundred and forty thousand churches, our twenty million communicants in a population but little greater than thrice their number,¹—these are results of the voluntary system which challenge the attention and the emulation of the world, and demonstrate the truth of Wordsworth’s verse, that Mightier far than strength of nerve and sinew, Or the sway of magic potent over sun and star Is Love.

¹ These statistics, though put in round numbers and correct when the address was delivered, are allowed to stand, as they sufficiently illustrate the point.

Let us be grateful, but let us also be humble. We are only at the beginning of our experiment. Here, in this last land of the temperate zone that can be occupied by man, the trial of the free Church in the free State is being conducted on a scale never before possible in human history. All the nations of the earth are sifted among us for material to work on. All the nations of the earth are accessible to our commerce. Standing midway between Europe and Asia as we do, the world is looking on, to watch our success or failure. Let us remember that faith and freedom will not preserve themselves; that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; that we must hold fast what God has given us, if we are not to see it snatched from our grasp forever. Let us remember that no people ever yet kept their liberty by confining its blessings to themselves; that the free Church in a free State is ours only to make the whole race of man partakers of it; that America can never fulfill the divine idea in her existence unless she stands at the gateway of the nations holding forth the word of life, not only to our own but to other lands, like another and grander statue of "Liberty enlightening the world."