THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE. BY W. V. THOMPKINS, PRESCOTT. The relationship between Church and State is not now a vital question in our legislative and judicial polity, but the struggle for religious liberty has had a marked effect upon our institutions as well as upon the civilization of the present day. Each nation, in fact each community, is subjected to the action of general influences by which its progress is affected, and often the sources of these influences are unknown to the parties whose action they control. The destiny of every nation is influenced, if not controlled, by the actions, achievements and failures of peoples long since passed away and whose history has almost been forgotten. There is no national history of which universal history does not form a part. So all-embracing is the constructive series of events through the lapse of ages, that even the most powerful State appears but as a member of the universal commonwealth, involved in and ruled by its destinies. Nor is a nation able to divorce itself from the past. No revolution is radical enough to so change the character of the people that they are not to a very large degree controlled in laws, customs and habits by all that has preceded them. William the Conqueror could not eliminate the Saxon laws nor the Saxon the Celtic; but all of these, with an admixture of the habits, laws and customs of the Jewish, Roman and Teutonic nations, have poured their flood upon us and out of the wrecks and salvage of all the ages past we have constructed a system of laws and government which we now, like Blackstone more than a century since said of the English Government, believe to be the perfection of human reason. The French by the revolution and by the Code Napoleon sought to obliterate the feudal system from their laws, but the influence of feudal times is yet almost as strong in their judicature as it is under the English system. So the shadow of the contest for religious liberty is yet seen in our legislation and judicial decisions. The reason is not far to seek. Church establishment by law at the time of the formation of our Government prevailed in all civilized countries. It was the natural result of ages of previous legislation and practice. Mankind, whose minds had long been darkened by superstition and fear, could not at a bound escape from the effects of the teachings and beliefs of centuries. The assumed insight into the unseen world, the dreadful power to consign one to eternal happiness or torment or to propitiate good or evil divinities arrogated by the votaries of various religions, heathen and Christian, when supported by the secular arm and directed by an unscrupulous monarch has filled the world with terror. Ignorance and superstition have always been the weapons of tyranny, and religious rites, whether celebrated by Greeks at the oracle of Delphi, or Druids in British forests, or by priests offering human sacrifices in Mexican temples, or by bishops in great cathedrals, has always to a very large degree dominated the minds of mankind. To fail to draw the sword for the Church or for the divinely-appointed monarch was treason to the State and blighted all hope of eternal happiness. To withhold either property or life was to invoke the divine wrath and to lose all hope of walking the golden streets. It has not always been the ignorant and vicious who have held this doctrine. The doctrine that the king was divinely appointed and should not be resisted under any circumstances was at the time of the adoption of our Constitution almost universally held by men whose patriotism and learning could not be doubted. Even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century absolute religious freedom was not thought of even in England. It was believed that the people could not be trusted to select their own religions. The Government which recognized no inalienable rights in the citizens manifested a much greater interest in their spiritual condition than it did in their temporal welfare and was careful to see that no heresy was permitted, and the conscience and interest of the king was the sole criterion by which heresy or truth was measured. How could the world be expected to escape from the result of all this error and teaching in a day? There are yet people who believe that the world is flat, although men circumnavigated the globe nearly four hundred years ago. No one can tell when the union between Church and State began. Gibbon, in speaking of the deification of the Roman Emperors, says: "The Asiatic Greeks were the first inventors—the successors of Alexander the first objects of this servile and impious mode of adulation." It has been suggested that the idea originated from the biblical account of the selection and anointing of Saul and David as kings of the Jews by Samuel about 1100 B. C.; but Homer, who probably lived one or two hundred years later than Solomon, sang of the exploits of the Greeks in the conquest of Troy, which occurred perhaps 1200 B. C., and he ascribed to his heroes direct descent from the gods. "The religions of antiquity were usually unsystematized beliefs or a ceremonial which was either identified with the State or was a mere function thereof, dependent in a large measure upon civil rulers." The struggle of the Church for supremacy and independence. as it affects us began with Christianity. For the first four hundred years of our era, or until Constantine, the Church was persecuted by the State. From Constantine to Charlemagne the civil power recognized the Church but sought to control its actions. From Charlemagne until about the beginning of the Reformation the Church largely dominated the civil power. And from the Reformation until now it has been gradually dawning upon the minds of mankind that the Church and State may exist together and each be independent of the other. With the doctrine that the State should control the Church, or rather that religion should be fostered and propagated by the State, is associated the correlated doctrine of the divine right of kings, and from this doctrine, the direct opposite of the equal rights of man, has sprung most of the tyranny and oppression which has cursed humanity for ages past. The idea that the people might depose a king seems first to have originated with the Jesuits in combatting the claims of Elizabeth as head of the Church of England. It is true that they maintained this doctrine to apply only when the king himself had departed from the faith. The Protestants at this time with |