HHHHB 
 
 DIVINE RIGHT 
 DEMQCRACY 

 
 5 
 
 UBh
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 TEMPERANCE SERMONS. 
 
 THE CYCLOPEDIA OP TEMPERANCE, PROHI- 
 BITION, AND PUBLIC MORALS (Coeditor 
 with Deets Pickett).
 
 The Divine Right 
 of Democracy 
 
 OR 
 
 The People's Right to Rule 
 
 A STUDY IN CITIZENSHIP 
 
 BY 
 
 CLARENCE TRUE WILSON 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI
 
 Copyright, 1922, by 
 CLARENCE TRUE WILSON 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 The Bible text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard 
 lotion of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sona, 
 and is used by permission.
 
 DEDICATION: 
 
 TO MY WIFE, 
 
 INSPIRER OF MY PLANS AND 
 
 COMPANION OF MY TOILS, 
 
 WHO HAS HELPED ME TO LIVE 
 
 WHAT I HEREIN TEACH 
 
 DEMOCRACY
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE OF OUR FED- 
 ERAL CONSTITUTION 9 
 
 II. BUILDING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY INTO 
 
 GOVERNMENT 31 
 
 III. JESUS CHRIST, THE EMBODIMENT OF DEM- 
 
 OCRATIC IDEALS 46 
 
 IV. Is THE UNITED STATES A CHRISTIAN 
 
 NATION? 63 
 
 V. PAGAN INROADS ON AMERICAN DEMOC- 
 RACY 82 
 
 VI. THE FUNCTION OF LAW IN CIVIL GOV- 
 ERNMENT 99 
 
 VII. THE LATEST EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN 
 
 DEMOCRACY 118 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . 141
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE OF OUR 
 FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 
 
 FOE twenty-five years I have been reading 
 law books. They include the works of the 
 greatest lawyers who have ever written on 
 their chosen branches of learning, such as 
 Cooley, on the Principles of the Constitution: 
 Constitutional Limitations; Bishop on "Con- 
 tract Law," "Non-Contract Law," "Criminal 
 Law," "Marriage and Divorce" ; and more re- 
 cently the great works on the Constitution and 
 its origin by Hannis Taylor ; by C. E. Stevens, 
 on the Sources of the Constitution of the 
 United States; and William M. Meigs, on The 
 Growth of the Constitution. It is amazing 
 that in their search for sources, their study of 
 origins, it never seemed to dawn upon one of 
 them that they should look to the one Book 
 that was familiar to all the makers of the Con- 
 stitution. The Bible was the book from which 
 in childhood they were taught to spell, the 
 book from which they took their first reading 
 lesson, which became the law book of the col- 
 onies and the classic in the home, the book that 
 
 9
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 was consulted by lawyers for precedents, by 
 judges for decisions, by orators for eloquence, 
 by literary men for style, by historians for 
 facts, by lawmakers for models. 
 
 In thirty works that I have read on the Con- 
 stitution of the United States not an intima- 
 tion has appeared that our fathers in the 
 formation of our government drew upon their 
 knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, of the 
 Law of Moses, or of the teachings of Christ, 
 It might be expected that the sacred books of 
 one's religion would at least so color his 
 thoughts that, if not consciously, then un- 
 consciously, he would be influenced in his ex- 
 periments of making a new government. 
 
 Some writers have traced the American 
 'Constitution to the instincts of the Anglo- 
 Saxon; some to the experiments of the New 
 England town meeting; some to the experi- 
 ence in the struggles of thirteen colonies with 
 environments, mother governments, and abo- 
 rigines, the internal disturbances in their in- 
 dividual struggles toward unity and attempted 
 harmony with their fellow colonists ; and they 
 account for our Constitution as the sum total 
 of these worked-out results. 
 
 Other writers are emphatic and elaborate 
 in their conclusions and proof that the writ- 
 ten Constitution of the United States is purely 
 
 10
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 the outgrowth of the English unwritten Con- 
 stitution, but Campbell has written a great 
 work of two massive volumes on The Puritan 
 in Holland, England, and America to show 
 that the essential principles of our Constitu- 
 tion were borrowed from Holland during the 
 short stay of our New England ancestors 
 there, and that these principles came over in 
 the Mayflower and were transplanted in Amer- 
 ica from Holland. 
 
 Hannis Taylor goes back through all these 
 influences and a hundred more and finds the 
 germs of our republican form of government in 
 the so-called republics of Greece and Rome, 
 republics that were not, in our sense, republics 
 at all, but experiments in self-government by 
 the aristocracy; for not one sixth of the men 
 of voting age ever had the right to the ballot ; 
 the slaves, the serfs, the women, were excluded 
 and others who might be in disfavor. Our 
 fathers knew one thousand times more about 
 Moses than they did about Plato, or Aristotle, 
 or Solon, or Lycurgus. They were saturated 
 with the teaching, the principles of the laws 
 of Moses, and the writings of the prophets and 
 apostles. Never in one sentence does this most 
 learned author intimate that they might have 
 been influenced by these scriptural authorities 
 rather than by the rare learning of the few 
 
 11
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 who had a familiarity with the classic writers. 
 
 Almost every standard work on the origin 
 of the Constitution and government of the 
 United States learnedly traces the develop- 
 ment of all the germs of democracy in Egypt, 
 Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, 
 through our Anglo-Saxon ancestors into the 
 English common law, and then from the com- 
 mon law to our federal Constitution. But, if 
 they are Roman Catholic in their training, 
 they laboriously belittle the influence of the 
 English common law in favor of the Roman 
 civil law, and attribute all the growth of the 
 equity idea in our courts to Rome, in order to 
 lay the foundation for a claim that the United 
 States Constitution and federal enactments 
 owe more to the Roman civilization than to 
 the British. 
 
 I am thoroughly convinced that both of 
 these claims are in error. After many years 
 of reading the great authors in jurisprudence 
 I am impressed that their desire to keep church 
 and state absolutely separate has led them 
 afield, even to the extreme denial or to utterly 
 ignoring the influence of religion in the forma- 
 tion of our Union. It must not be overlooked 
 that our fathers, when they sat down to form 
 the Constitution, had very little knowledge of 
 Greek or Roman law ; none of Assyrian, Baby- 
 
 12
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 Ionian, or Egyptian. There was only one Book 
 that every man in that convention knew from 
 cover to cover, that they had been raised with 
 from earliest childhood, and derived their 
 earliest and latest impressions from, and that 
 volume was the Hebrew Bible or Christian 
 Scriptures. From this book came their first 
 ideals of human equality, of universal brother- 
 hood, of racial relationship, of the inherent 
 capability of mankind for self-government. 
 They learned these principles of nature from 
 the texts, and got their object lessons from a 
 whole race experimenting on these methods of 
 government. 
 
 All the religious convulsions that shook 
 Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries had to have an outlet, and men nat- 
 urally turned to America, Her newly planted 
 colonies invited the oppressed, the agitated, 
 and the determined to come to this land and 
 on this free soil form a nation of religious 
 toleration, where men could think and let 
 think and respect each other's rights to differ. 
 This new soil and new outlook furnished the 
 theater for the action of these agitating forces, 
 where the votaries of independent religious be- 
 liefs coiild worship God according to the dic- 
 tates of their own conscience. Every one of 
 the eighteen languages used in the religious 
 
 13
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 controversies of Europe was spoken in our 
 American settlements, and each agitation was 
 represented here. A distinctly religious basis 
 was furnished for every one of the thirteen 
 colonies that formed our Union, for their citi- 
 zens had come here to worship God according 
 to the freedom of their own convictions. They 
 believed in the individual responsibility of the 
 free will. They had few books, but they each 
 owned a Bible. They taught their children 
 letters, spelling, and reading, from its sacred 
 pages. They learned ethics and etiquette, law 
 and government, as well as theology, by its 
 profound study. It was a treasury from which 
 they drew the very words that they remem- 
 bered as a classic, and to find men in several 
 of the colonies who knew their Bibles from 
 cover to cover was not difficult. 
 
 Is it any wonder that they formed the freest, 
 most moral, and most prosperous Christian 
 nation of the world? They did not write the 
 name of God in the Constitution, nor organize 
 a state church, but a failure to mention the 
 name of Deity is no proof of disbelief in him. 
 The book of Esther is one of the most beautiful 
 studies in Divine Providence, but it nowhere 
 mentions the name of God. Thousands of reso- 
 lutions are passed every year in preachers' 
 meetings, Conferences, and Synods, that do 
 
 14
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 not mention the name of the Deity. Our 
 fathers, coming from the Old World, where 
 they had been oppressed by state churches 
 through enforced religious conformity, wisely 
 determined to follow Christ's statements, "My 
 kingdom is not of this world," "The kingdom 
 of heaven is within you," and Paul's declara- 
 tion, "The kingdom of God is righteousness, 
 peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." Knowing, 
 therefore, that the Kingdom is spiritual and 
 cometh not with observation, they took all 
 trammels off religion, gave it a free field, pro- 
 tected its votaries in worship, and granted re- 
 ligious toleration to all. Believing that 
 Christ's kingdom can stand alone, they gave 
 it free access to all hearts, homes, schools, 
 courts, legislatures, and enthroned it in the 
 sentiments of men. Washington took his oath 
 of office with the Bible in his hand. When a 
 witness steps upon the stand, when a judge 
 promises to mete out justice, when an execu- 
 tive promises to enforce our laws, it is upon 
 that Book, whose teachings have made us, and 
 calling upon that God whose we are and whom 
 we serve, that the affirmation is made. The 
 weekly observance of the Lord's Day, the cele- 
 bration of all the days of Christ as Easter 
 and Christmas the annual observance of 
 Thanksgiving and prayer in times of national 
 
 15
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 distress, the sentiment on every dollar with 
 which we pay our debts, "In God We Trust," 
 proclaim with the supreme court of the land 
 that "this is a Christian nation." 
 
 But above all of these, when our fathers met 
 in Philadelphia to form the federal govern- 
 ment they copied every principle and modeled 
 every plan from that ancient government, 
 when God alone was King and Moses wrote his 
 law in deathless enactments, constitutional 
 and statutory, for ancient Israel. The anal- 
 ogy between that divine model and our Amer- 
 ican Constitution is worthy of a patriotic at- 
 tention which it has never had. 
 
 Clement wrote in distinct terms that Plato 
 got the idea of his republic from Moses and 
 then showed the correspondence between the 
 two. In both, God was King, virtue was the 
 chief requirement, and men were to be broth- 
 ers. Now, we know that the government of 
 Moses was the first of its kind ever founded on 
 earth. In every other known to history, the 
 king's or ruler's mind was the supreme law, 
 and life, death, and property were in his hands 
 alone. In Egypt, where Moses was born, 
 monarchy was supreme, and there was nothing 
 in his surroundings to suggest a pure democ- 
 racy or republican forms. Yet for four hun- 
 dred and seventy years, or longer than the time 
 
 16
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 from our day to the date when Columbus dis- 
 covered America, Israel had no king, and when 
 they rebelled and insisted on the establish- 
 ment of a monarchy they were told it would 
 be their national destruction, and that their 
 acceptance of an earthly king was a rejection 
 of God as their King. 
 
 "And Jehovah said unto Samuel, Hearken 
 unto the voice of the people in all that they 
 say unto thee ; for they have not rejected thee, 
 but they have rejected me, that I should not 
 be king over them" (1 Sam. 8. 7). "Now 
 therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit 
 thou shalt protest solemnly unto them, and 
 shalt show them the manner of the king that 
 shall reign over them. And Samuel told all 
 the words of Jehovah unto the people that 
 asked of him a king. And he said, This will 
 be the manner of the king that shall reign over 
 you : he will take your sons, and appoint them 
 unto him, for his chariots, and to be his horse- 
 men; and they shall run before his chariots; 
 and he will appoint them unto him for cap- 
 tains of thousands, and captains of fifties ; and 
 he will set some to plow his ground, and to 
 reap his harvest, and to make his instruments 
 of war, and the instruments of his chariots. 
 And he will take your daughters to be per- 
 fumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. 
 
 17
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 And he will take your fields, and your vine- 
 yards, and your oliveyards, even the best of 
 them, and give them to his servants ; . . . and 
 ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out 
 in that day because of your king whom ye shall 
 have chosen you ; and Jehovah will not answer 
 you in that day. But the people refused to 
 hearken unto the voice of Samuel; and they 
 said, Nay; but we will have a king over us, 
 that we also may be like all the nations, and 
 that our king may judge us, and go out before 
 us, and fight our battles." Was there ever a 
 prophecy of a future curse more thoroughly 
 fulfilled in our world's history? 
 
 It was said of a certain king that he made of 
 the nation a. solitude and called that "Peace" ; 
 and our patriarch, Job, always reverent to- 
 ward God, was bitter toward kings when he 
 said, "The kings of the world build solitudes," 
 or, as the American Revised Version translates 
 it, 
 
 "With kings and counselors of the earth, 
 Who built up waste places for themselves." 
 
 (Job3. 14.) 
 
 This is both a historic and a philosophic 
 statement, for the rule of kings is the rule of 
 ruin. God made man for self-government. 
 The lordship of kings has never been by di- 
 
 18
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 vine right, but by human usurpation. When 
 God governed Israel for four hundred and 
 seventy years "Every man did that which was 
 right in his own eyes," enjoyed liberty under 
 law and maintained a primitive democracy. 
 These rulers of ancient Israel were called 
 "judges" ; and it was not because God favored 
 kings that he permitted Samuel to give Israel 
 a king, but because he respected the rights of 
 free-will and human choice and believed it was 
 better that humanity should be self-governed 
 though governed wrongly than to be forced 
 into obedience to the divine law if it left the 
 human mind a mere automaton. So he told 
 Samuel to let them have their way and the 
 kings of Israel, like the kings of all the earth, 
 "built solitudes.'' 
 
 They wasted the substance of the people; 
 they took away their personality and their 
 freedom; they oppressed them with taxes and 
 burdens too heavy to be borne, burdens which 
 no one of them would have touched with his 
 little finger; they reversed the divine order of 
 things and instead of serving the people, the 
 people have been their subjects; they ruled, 
 not for the good of the many, but to build up 
 family lines, immense wealth, classes of flat- 
 terers and intriguing satellites; they flaunted 
 unearned gains before the covetous eyes of man 
 
 19
 
 while the race has eaten dust and bowed 
 before the scepter of tyranny. Glutted with 
 the blood of the oppressed, they sought other 
 worlds to conquer and became ambitious to be 
 known as "world rulers" and not as the serv- 
 ants of the people who supported them. 
 
 If one were asked to name the two most co- 
 lossal blunders in government, the greatest 
 heresies of the human mind, the errors that 
 have caused more misery than any two that 
 ever found lodgment in the human race, what 
 would they be? I should say that the first is 
 that there could be such a thing as a royal 
 family or any fictitious line of dernarkation 
 between a ruler and his people that separates 
 the masses from the classes, the plebeians from 
 the Roman patricians, the barbarians from 
 the Greeks. When God made man capable of 
 self-government, endowing him w r ith the tre- 
 mendous prerogative of freedom, enabling him 
 to select his own rulers, he put in him an in- 
 born discontent with anything like oppression 
 or any assumption of authority over him. Our 
 Master protested against this when he taught : 
 "The lords of the Gentiles exercise dominion, 
 but it shall not be so among you," and the 
 Declaration of Independence declares that 
 "governments derive their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed"; and under any 
 
 20
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 form of government where there is an as- 
 sumption of right to rule without the consent 
 of the governed, "Resistance to tyrants is 
 obedience to God." 
 
 Rulership by hereditary right implies that 
 you can tell the character and capability of a 
 man by the line of his ancestors a fool's con- 
 ception, for, if anyone thinks it true, let him 
 tell me why Adam should beget a Cain ; David 
 an Absalom, or anybody a Judas? We in 
 America would not select a son even of Lincoln 
 for an elective office on the basis of his father's 
 merit. Where are Shakespeare's sons, or Mil- 
 ton's, or Sir Isaac Newton's? Would it not 
 be as sensible to scrape up some descendant of 
 theirs and arbitrarily make him our poet or 
 scientist, as to select a ruler by inheritance? 
 No man was ever made good enough to govern 
 a community without that community's con- 
 sent. 
 
 Democracy may make its mistakes, and re- 
 publican forms of government may disappoint 
 their advocates in many respects, but misgov- 
 ernment by the people is infinitely better than 
 rnisgovernnient by hereditary rulers, for the 
 people have a right to do what they will with 
 their own. If they make mistakes, they can 
 correct them, and it is their business whether 
 things are right or wrong. Our government 
 
 21
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 is founded on one fundamental principle the 
 innate capability of man for self-government. 
 This is in harmony with the divine intent when 
 the Creator said, "Let us make man in our 
 image, . . . and let them have dominion." 
 When humanity works out this ideal into 
 forms of government, man must select his 
 rulers by virtue of their merit through direct 
 choice of the governed. But monarchy is built 
 on selected families and inherited prerogatives 
 as fundamental an error as was ever devised 
 by human folly. 
 
 The second governmental heresy is the law 
 of primogeniture, which implies that the eld- 
 est son of the royal family is born with the 
 ruler's prerogative. This universal misstep 
 which gives an eldest son a ruler's place by 
 birthright has ignored merit and deprived gov- 
 ernment of genius. Many times in real life we 
 have known the oldest son to be far surpassed 
 intellectually and morally by the seventh, 
 ninth, or thirteenth boy. John Wesley was 
 the sixteenth, and his poet brother, Charles, 
 was born later still. 
 
 The American idea of selecting rulers by 
 merit and not by birthright is from the Scrip- 
 tures. In contradistinction from every other 
 nation known to history, the Hebrew TJible 
 ignores the universal custom and blazes a trail 
 
 22
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 to independence. For from Abel to David, a 
 period of three thousand years, in not a single 
 instance where God chose the ruler, or the 
 progenitor of a race, or the ancestor of a Mes- 
 siah, did he choose the eldest son. Our fathers 
 studied their Bible and established a govern- 
 ment whose rulers were chosen by suffrage. 
 Where did they get the idea that there was 
 nothing in primogeniture? Why, their favor- 
 ite Book showed that Cain was the first born, 
 but Abel was chosen and his older brother re- 
 jected. Shem, the younger, was preferred to 
 Japheth. Isaac was chosen and not his older 
 brother, Ishmael. Esau and Jacob were twins, 
 but before the birth God told their mother, 
 "Two people shall be born of thee, and the one 
 people shall be stronger than the other people 
 and the older shall serve the younger"; and 
 Jacob was chosen instead of Esau. In Jacob's 
 family there were twelve sons, and God passed 
 by the three elder and chose Judah, the fourth 
 son, to be the progenitor of Christ and to es- 
 tablish Judaism; he passed by ten brothers 
 and advanced Joseph to be the ruler, thus mak- 
 ing the eleventh son the preferred of the family. 
 Then Ephraim, the youngest son of Joseph, 
 was preferred before Manasseh. 
 
 When Joseph brought his two sons to his 
 aged and blind father to receive the blessing, 
 
 23
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 he took Manasseh, the elder, to his father's 
 right hand to receive his chief blessing, but the 
 patriarch, crossing his hands wittingly, put his 
 right hand on the head of the younger to con- 
 fer the chief blessing, but Joseph, thinking his 
 father was making a mistake, objected, and 
 tried to remove his father's right hand to the 
 oldest son, when the patriarch said, "I know 
 it, my son, but his younger brother is the 
 greater." Moses, the younger, was made 
 leader, not Aaron. When Saul was deposed 
 and the prophet Samuel was sent to the house 
 of Jesse to anoint the king, in accordance with 
 human custom he arose to anoint Eliab, the 
 oldest, but he was told to stop, and informed 
 that "man looketh on the outward appearance 
 and God looketh on the heart." Six sons were 
 successively brought in and refused, but David, 
 the seventh and youngest, was chosen. From 
 this it is easy to see what influenced the fram- 
 ers of our Constitution to make our form of 
 government, especially when we consider that 
 ours was the first government that was ever 
 formed by Bible-reading men. 
 
 Where did our fathers get the notion that 
 they could found a government on the very re- 
 verse of this universal custom of selecting rul- 
 ers by heredity and birthright? There was 
 one exception in ancient times the Hebrew 
 
 24
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 people and only one book the Bible that 
 taught that rulers should be selected by merit 
 and not by birthright. If perfect resemblance 
 is an evidence of identity, the histories of the 
 Hebrew and the American Constitutions are 
 identical, as the two instruments form a per- 
 fect parallel. 
 
 Both countries were under a foreign ruler 
 and both resulted from a marked deliverance 
 from oppression. 
 
 Both set up monumental testimony to per- 
 petuate that deliverance in the observance of a 
 national holiday, or holy day, one in the insti- 
 tution of the Passover, the other in the observ- 
 ance of the 4th of July as Independence Day. 
 
 Both observed their national holiday sa- 
 credly. 
 
 The Hebrews had twelve tribes or states, 
 for Joseph was divided between Ephraim and 
 Maiiasseh, all merged in one general govern- 
 ment. We had thirteen colonies formed into 
 a more perfect Union. 
 
 From these twelve tribes seventy represen- 
 tatives were chosen, constituting the supreme 
 tribunal (Exod. 18. 17-27), and the right of 
 appeal was recognized from all lesser judges 
 up to this supreme court; and our country has 
 followed them in making the judges of our 
 courts supreme, giving them final authority 
 
 25
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 over even the President and both houses of 
 Congress. 
 
 For four hundred and seventy years they 
 had no king, and when they rebelled and in- 
 sisted on a king they were warned that it 
 would be their national destruction. All this 
 period they were ruled by judges, men divinely 
 endowed and then selected by the people; and 
 our own land is the only one since that day 
 that has been ruled by judges; we put our su- 
 preme court ahead of the President, Cabinet, 
 Senate, Congress, army, or navy. 
 
 The constitution of Israel and our own are 
 the only two ever submitted to a people for 
 ratification. They voted on and adopted theirs 
 at the fords of the Jordan. We composed and 
 submitted ours at the banks of the Delaware. 
 
 They are the only two constitutions that 
 ever made provision for the naturalization of 
 foreigners. Strangers could become as home- 
 born by swearing away their allegiance to for- 
 eign potentates and strange gods, and yielding 
 obedience to the God of the Hebrews. They 
 were known as reborn or "naturalized"; and 
 it was with reference to this process conducted 
 by the elders that our Lord said to Nicodemus, 
 "Art thou a ruler in Israel, and knowest not 
 these things?" 
 
 While making ample provision for inducting 
 
 26
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 a foreigner into citizenship, these constitu- 
 tions were the only two that forever prohibited 
 a foreigner from holding the chief executive 
 office. "Thou mayest not put a foreigner over 
 thee, who is not thy brother," meaning one of 
 the children of Israel (Deut. 17. 15), and our 
 fathers, beginning with the first, ended with 
 the last of these provisions, which forever bars 
 a foreign-born citizen from being President of 
 the United States. 
 
 In all these essential features we see the sev- 
 eral great principles of the Jewish government 
 transferred to our own as clearly as we can see 
 every lineament of our mother's face trans- 
 ferred by the artist's skill to the photo. 
 
 The Old-Testament Scriptures gave our 
 fathers the political ideals that they formu- 
 lated into our Constitution. The Hebraic 
 commonwealth forbade all caste and class dis- 
 tinctions, and America is founded on equality 
 before the law. 
 
 It required that all people should be equal, 
 and provided against any ecclesiastical aristoc- 
 racy by making the priesthood dependent for 
 their subsistence upon the voluntary contribu- 
 tions of the people, and we follow them in our 
 absolute separation of church from state sup- 
 port. 
 
 They surrounded their monarchy with care- 
 
 27
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 fully framed constitutional safeguards, most 
 of which we copied into our government. 
 
 They organized the government into three 
 departments legislative, executive, and ju- 
 dicial. Our fathers made this idea the corner 
 stone of the republic. 
 
 They provided two representative assemblies 
 corresponding to our House of Representatives 
 and our Senate. 
 
 They made provision simple but not inef- 
 fective both for public charity and for public 
 education. Our charity and school systems, 
 taken from them in germ, have been the won- 
 der of the modern world. 
 
 They surrounded two known evils, slavery 
 and polygamy, with such restrictions that both 
 had disappeared from among the Jewish peo- 
 ple before the time of Christ, and our govern- 
 ment has been the freest forum for reforms 
 known to man. 
 
 Their lawbook has warned against intoxi- 
 cants and taught the principles of total ab- 
 stinence and prohibition, and that old Hebrew 
 planting has just come to fruition in our own 
 land through the Eighteenth Amendment. 
 
 Where shall we find a simpler and more com- 
 pact statement of the spirit which should ani- 
 mate and the principles which should control 
 organized society than will be found in the Ten 
 
 28
 
 THE FORGOTTEN SOURCE 
 
 Commandments: reverence for God, respect 
 for the Sabbath, the seventh portion of our 
 time systematically saved from drudgery for 
 rest and spiritual development, and regard for 
 the four fundamental rights of man the 
 rights of person, of property, of family, and 
 of reputation? 
 
 These facts and parallels remind us afresh 
 that our fathers were the first group of Bible- 
 reading men who ever sat down to devise a 
 new form of government, and it is easy when 
 you consider the history of the Pilgrim Fathers 
 and the religious antecedents of the other set- 
 tlers of the New World to understand the part 
 the Bible must have played in the development 
 of our government and in guiding our fathers 
 in the avoidance of the two colossal blunders 
 of all of the nations, enabling them to steer 
 safely between these rocks into the haven of 
 democracy. 
 
 Shall this Book, read at the making and 
 signing of the Declaration of Independence, 
 and whose underlying principles were copied 
 into the Constitution of the government; the 
 Book that Washington kissed when inaugu- 
 rated President, and on which all our rulers 
 have taken their oath of office and all wit- 
 nesses and juries have sworn to be true and 
 just shall this Book be excluded from our 
 
 29
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 public schools to gratify foreigners or even 
 home-born citizens who owe supreme alle- 
 giance to a foreign potentate? Never! Not in 
 the name of a sect or even in the interest of 
 religion, but in the cause of patriotism, con- 
 sistency, and common honesty we demand that 
 the Book that made us shall not now be placed 
 under the ban. 
 
 30
 
 II 
 
 BUILDING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 INTO GOVERNMENT 
 
 ARISTOTLE said that "Solon bestowed upon 
 the people as much power as was indispensa- 
 ble the power to elect their own magistrates 
 and to hold them to accountability. If the 
 people have less than this they will not re- 
 main tranquil ; they will be in slavery and 
 become hostile to the constitution." Surely, 
 the American people are entitled to and are 
 capable of using as much power as the Atheni- 
 ans of twenty-five hundred years ago. They 
 could elect and remove magistrates at will. 
 This is democracy. 
 
 The supremacy of the people is the founda- 
 tion of this government. This principle is 
 engraved on all our hearts by the pen of Jef- 
 ferson, the speech of Henry, and the sword of 
 Washington. It is inscribed on the soul of 
 man by a greater artist, by God Almighty, who 
 said: "Let us make man in our image; . . . 
 and let them have dominion." 
 
 The Creator, therefore, endowed man with 
 the tremendous prerogative of freedom and 
 
 31
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 meant that he should govern himself, and the 
 greatest battle waged since then has been be- 
 tween the utterly antagonistic forces of those 
 who would rule men and those who con- 
 tend for the right of man to rule himself. 
 First, the cause was defeated by a petty tyrant 
 assuming to himself the role of dictator and 
 lording it over God's sons and daughters with 
 the motto, "Might makes right." Then the 
 God-like spirit reasserted itself and threw off 
 the yoke, and human freedom got another 
 chance. 
 
 Another stage was reached when the race 
 adopted hereditary monarchs. Passing by 
 merit in selecting rulers and hinging all on 
 birthright, it ignored the real sovereign, the 
 people, and inaugurated some degenerate who 
 represented the rotten remnant of a long line 
 of petted and pampered aristocracy. With 
 the fiction of the divine right of kings it held 
 down the people from their inalienable rights 
 and quoted, "The king's mind is the only law." 
 
 But our fathers, studying their Bibles and 
 feeling the common instincts of human nature, 
 turned away from all this subterfuge and de- 
 termined to found a nation on the fitness of 
 mankind for self-government. They inter- 
 preted this principle in these words : "All men 
 are created equal. They are endowed by their
 
 BUILDING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 Creator with certain inalienable rights. To 
 secure these, governments are instituted 
 among men, deriving their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed. Whenever any 
 form of government becomes destructive of 
 these ends it is the right of the people to abol- 
 ish it," and "Resistance to tyrants is obedi- 
 ence to God." 
 
 They instituted this new government in such 
 form as to them seemed likely to effect their 
 safety and happiness. Listen to them again: 
 "Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world 
 for the rectitude of our intentions, we do in 
 the name and by the authority of the good peo- 
 ple of these colonies solemnly publish and de- 
 clare that these United States are, and of right 
 ought to be, free and independent States." 
 When a Constitution was to be formed for 
 them, who did it? "We, the people of the 
 United States, in order to secure the blessings 
 of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do 
 ordain and establish." 
 
 God is a democrat. As Supreme Ruler, 
 King of kings, and Lord of lords, he said, "Let 
 us make man in our image, after our likeness : 
 and let them have dominion over . . . all the 
 earth." Thus he endowed humanity with the 
 tremendous prerogative of freedom, the power 
 of choice, the right to rule and the inherent 
 
 33
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 ability for self-government. When he planned 
 our guidance, it was not as automatons but 
 as freemen, not by arbitrary rules but by ap- 
 peal to the sovereign will, through intellect 
 and emotions. It was a spiritual mission to 
 which he called Abraham. Civilization started 
 in a garden but it culminates in the cities. 
 It is an evolution. After this call to the spirit 
 had developed through the patriarchal period, 
 there followed the five hundred years of primi- 
 tive democracy under the judges. But Israel 
 wanted something more tangible than an in- 
 visible king. This desire for a visible embodi- 
 ment of authority has been the limitation of 
 democracy and the curse of religion. "Make 
 us a king, that we may be like the nations," 
 they said to Samuel. "Let us have priests 
 to pray for us, and altars and images to em- 
 body religious thoughts for us, and a hierarchy 
 to do our thinking for us," say the dupes of 
 religious superstition and dependency to ec- 
 clesiastics who lord it over mankind. During 
 the periods of Ezra and Nehemiah legalism 
 came into the State. Priests gained ascend- 
 ency over the prophets and mastered the mind 
 of Judaism until it could not understand 
 John the Baptist or appreciate the spiritual 
 teaching of Jesus. 
 The study of that five hundred years of his- 
 
 34
 
 BUILDING AMERICAN -DEMOCRACY 
 
 tory in a primitive democracy with a repub- 
 lican form of government, will show that God 
 alone was King, that he never shared the pre- 
 rogative with a human being, that the He- 
 brews were called to demonstrate two things 
 before the whole world : monotheism, and that 
 to set up a king was to reject Jehovah from 
 reigning over them. For he had just as truly 
 called them to teach the nations democracy 
 as he had called them to reveal an ethical 
 theocracy to the world. Their national mis- 
 sion, therefore, was to demonstrate that there 
 was nothing in that hollow pretense from the 
 realm of evil, "the divine right of kings," but 
 that the divine right of government inheres in 
 the people. 
 
 During a period of four hundred and 
 seventy years, or longer than the time since 
 Columbus discovered America, there was no 
 king in Israel. How remarkable it was for 
 Israel to be democratic amid universal, orien- 
 tal, despotic monarchy! They were as dis- 
 tinctly called by the voice of God and by 
 Divine Providence to carry democracy to the 
 world as they were to teach an ethical mono- 
 theism to the nations. And what fools they 
 were after a successful experiment of many 
 generations to wish to have a king and be "like 
 all the nations" of the earth (1 Sam. 8. 4, 5). 
 
 35
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OP DEMOCRACY 
 
 If Israel had been loyal to her high mission 
 of developing democracy and working out the 
 experiment of government under republican 
 forms, it would have revolutionized the his- 
 tory of the world ; and the ages would not have 
 had to wait three thousand years for this di- 
 vinely inspired ideal to be worked out by forty- 
 eight sovereign States under the federal Con- 
 stitution of the United States. 
 
 The mental gymnastics, the acrobatic per- 
 formances of the authors who try to find the 
 model of American democracy in Greece and 
 Rome would be pitiful if it were not for the 
 element of humor. Greece and Rome were not 
 democracies in our sense. In their struggles 
 toward self-government they never conceived 
 the idea of more than one sixth of the people 
 having any vote or any voice. There is only one 
 model of a pure democracy where human lib- 
 erty was for all, where there were no serfs, no 
 aristocracies, no ruling classes and no dis- 
 franchised citizens, where a republican form 
 of government was adopted with constitu- 
 tional provisions and statutory enactments 
 and submitted to the people for ratification. 
 The laws of God are the foundation of our com- 
 mon law, acknowledged so by Blackstone and 
 other eminent lawyers. 
 
 With the exception of the first two com- 
 36
 
 IIITLDIXG AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 mandmeuts, which are excluded because of our 
 Constitutional clause favoring religious free- 
 dom, we find the following parallels between 
 the divinely given Ten Commandments and the 
 laws of the modern democracies : 
 
 "Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah 
 thy God in vain'' Profanity in public is a 
 misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprison- 
 ment or both. 
 
 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it 
 holy" At the present time there is a strong 
 movement throughout the length and breadth 
 of the land for a "Sabbath Rest" law. A law 
 that will preserve the true Sabbath intent. 
 
 "Honor thy father and thy mother" Public 
 institutions are maintained wherein incorrigi- 
 ble children may be placed by their parents for 
 reformation. 
 
 "Thou shalt not kill" Murder is a crime 
 punishable by death or life imprisonment. 
 
 "Thou shalt not commit adultery'' Adul- 
 tery is a crime punishable by fine or imprison- 
 ment or both, and is one of the few universally 
 recognized pleas for divorce. 
 
 "Thou shalt not steal'' Theft is a crime 
 punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. 
 
 "Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
 thy neighbor" An attempt to blacken and 
 ruin the reputation or good name of another 
 
 37
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 by false representation is an acknowledged 
 cause of action. Also, perjury is a crime pun- 
 ishable by fine or imprisonment or both. 
 
 "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, 
 thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor 
 his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his 
 ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neigh- 
 bor's" All of these are crimes punishable by 
 fine or imprisonment or both, and are acknowl- 
 edged causes of civil action for damages. 
 
 It may surprise the average Christian 
 reader to know that Thomas Paine, who was 
 one of the most dashing characters and virile 
 writers in our pre-Revolution period, in a vol- 
 ume entitled Common Sense, gathers up these 
 lessons from a study of the Hebrew Bible and 
 most effectively tells the story that Gideon, 
 one of the judges, after his marvelous success 
 in a battle with the Midianites, was offered the 
 kingship of the Hebrew race. They besought 
 him that he and his son and his son's son might 
 reign over them. But Gideon, imbued with 
 the divine principle of the inherent right of 
 man to be his own sovereign under the sole 
 sovereignty of God, declined the offer for him- 
 self and his sons, saying, "I will not reign over 
 you, and my sons shall not reign over you, but 
 God shall reign over you." 
 
 Some of our fathers loved to tell how this 
 
 38
 
 BUILDING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 Bible story, so effectively told by Paine in his 
 Common Sense, was a favorite narrative of 
 George Washington, Father of his Country. 
 After the Revolution and the utter failure of 
 the Articles of Confederation to hold the 
 States together so that they could function as 
 a nation, when many of the leading spirits of 
 the country determined that this land should 
 have a head, and offered George Washington 
 the position of king, Washington quoted this 
 same precedent from the ancient Hebrew story 
 as a reason why he could not think of such a 
 thing as being a party to the breakdown of 
 this democracy under a republican form, or 
 to the establishment of the royal prerogative 
 on this sacred soil of freedom. 
 
 Those who are fond of tracing these historic 
 relationships will be greatly interested in an- 
 other precedent that Washington had before 
 him, from the same book. There was One 
 whose matchless teaching and miracles of 
 power and mercy so won the hearts of the 
 people that they came in multitudes to him 
 beseeching him to reign over them, and upon 
 his refusal came and met him as he entered 
 into the gates of the city, spreading palm 
 branches at the feet of the beast he rode, cry- 
 ing, "Hail, Master, Bang of the Jews," and 
 sought by force to make him a king. But he 
 
 39
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 turned from the trappings and ideals of roy- 
 alty and assured them that "his kingdom was 
 not of this world," that the kingdom of God 
 was a kingdom above all other princi- 
 palities, that it was spiritual in its nature, 
 and that he would not merge it with any secu- 
 lar government. If his vicegerents had always 
 followed this precedent, some of the darkest 
 and bloodiest deeds of human history would 
 never have been perpetrated. 
 
 An interesting side light upon the origin of 
 our government is seen in the attitude of cer- 
 tain churches toward republican forms of 
 democracy. The ideal of Jesus is still inade- 
 quately realized in certain types of Chris- 
 tianity. Democracy and republican forms have 
 had rough sledding wherever the dominating 
 religion has been Koman Catholic, and have 
 had their only free and successful opportuni- 
 ties of growth where the soil has been pre- 
 pared by a democratic church, teaching the 
 simple Bible ideals of government for church 
 and state. 
 
 Why did the French Revolution, that started 
 out with the words "Liberty, equality, fra- 
 ternity," wind up with infantry, cavalry, and 
 artillery? How starting with democracy did 
 it find issue in a practical despotism? How 
 account for a land, thoroughly united in a 
 
 40
 
 BUILDING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 patriotic desire to establish a republic in the 
 heart of Europe, going back to absolute mon- 
 archy and making a sorry spectacle of democ- 
 racy before the whole world, while the Amer- 
 ican colonies, oppressed from without and di- 
 vided within, formed the greatest self-govern- 
 ing nation in the annals of time? The most 
 satisfactory explanation is that America made 
 her experiment under the influence of a free 
 church, free schools, open Bibles, colonial in- 
 dependence, the Puritan Sabbath, and Chris- 
 tian home life. But, on the other hand, France, 
 with as many patriots, had to work out her 
 experiment with her common people untaught 
 by Bible reading at the fireside, her masses of 
 men untrained in the free schools, which are 
 the prerequisite to successful republican forms, 
 and her leaders thwarted by the intrigues of 
 a priesthood, dominated and saturated with 
 oligarchical systems and monarchical ideals. 
 If France makes a success of a republic, she 
 must do it with the opposition of the dominant 
 religion. America has made a success of her 
 experiment because she has had the stimulus 
 of a democratic church, governed by republi- 
 can forms and surrounded by a Bible-reading 
 people. 
 
 A more interesting side light still is to re- 
 call that of the eighteen languages that were 
 
 41
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 used in the religious controversies that shook 
 Europe three or four centuries ago all were 
 represented in the American colonies. Every 
 religious agitation sent representatives of its 
 best blood here to find a free field for the exer- 
 cise of its faith. Of our thirteen colonies that 
 formed the Union every one had a religious 
 basis. But one finds in a careful and compara- 
 tive study of the varied influence and attitude 
 of the several state churches this interesting 
 thing that the more democratic the church, 
 the more thoroughly it was identified with our 
 Revolution and with our new government ; and 
 the more nearly it veered off into monarchical 
 forms of government, the more it opposed the 
 new movement for breaking loose from King 
 George and the British crown. The descend- 
 ants of the Puritans of New England were the 
 leaders. The Congregationalists of Connecti- 
 cut, the Baptists of Rhode Island, the Quakers 
 of Pennsylvania, the Swedes of Delaware, the 
 Methodists of Georgia and Maryland were for 
 the Revolution, for the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, for the Constitution. The Catholics 
 of Maryland were indifferent, divided by two 
 feelings opposition to the British crown be- 
 cause it was Protestant, and fear of republican 
 forms of government because they were in- 
 consistent with their church teaching. So 
 
 42
 
 BUILDING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 what was done for the government by the Epis- 
 copal patriots of Virginia and the patriotic 
 Catholics of Maryland was done in spite of 
 the church and its leaders. But what was done 
 in New England and the Central States and 
 everywhere that Presbyterians, Congregation- 
 alists, Methodists, and Quakers were numeri- 
 cally strong, was done with the enthusiastic 
 help, approbation, and leadership of the repre- 
 sentatives of the democratic churches. 
 
 Still another interesting side light was the 
 attitude our patriotic fathers showed in re- 
 sponse to things ecclesiastical. Where the 
 church's attitude was friendly toward the 
 Revolution, the Declaration, and the Consti- 
 tution they were friendly at the close of the 
 war toward the church ; but where the attitude 
 of the church showed a strong preference for 
 monarchical forms, as against our republic, we 
 find that patriotic leaders by the score lost in- 
 terest in organized religion and became anti- 
 church. Tom Paine, before the Revolution, 
 wrote the most devout documents and the most 
 scriptural, and founded his whole ideal of 
 government upon the teachings of the Bible; 
 but after becoming sour because of the High- 
 Church and Tory attitude of the Virginia 
 clergy and their loyalty to the State Church of 
 England, and after crossing to France and ex- 
 
 43
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OP DEMOCRACY 
 
 periencing the opposition of the Romish 
 Church to the new republic there forming, he 
 came back and wrote his Age of Reason. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, who wrote his Declara- 
 tion calling upon God and acknowledging his 
 superintendence over us, became so indifferent 
 to the church that by many he is considered 
 almost an agnostic, although this belief has 
 never been sustained by the facts. Numerous 
 other men, trained in Virginia and brought 
 into constant conflict with the Tory clergy, 
 by the time they came to form the Constitution 
 had grown so indifferent to ecclesiastical 
 forms as representative of religion that there 
 is a secular tone in the literary composition 
 of the Constitution which is entirely missing 
 in the Declaration of Independence earlier 
 signed by these same men. 
 
 The church is the world's Bible. Every man 
 who is outside the church has standards which 
 he thinks the church should be measured by. 
 No responsibility is greater than that of study- 
 ing out just what civic duties the church of 
 Christ must have. If it fails to meet these ob- 
 ligations in time of crisis, it will make skeptics 
 of the most thoughtful and conscientious men. 
 
 One of the most pathetic lines in the biog- 
 raphy of Lincoln was the utter failure of the 
 clergy of Springfield to give him any support 
 
 44
 
 BUILDING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 when he knew he was representing in his own 
 campaigns the only moral issue there was, and 
 he said: "I know that I am right, and these 
 principles of freedom are taught in the Bible, 
 and yet of the thirty or more clergy only one 
 or two is supporting me. I cannot understand 
 it.'' The same indifference alienated the af- 
 fection of Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phil- 
 lips from the church as a saving institution; 
 and to those people who think the church may 
 lose in being too aggressive in the temperance 
 reform and in other civic matters, we say: 
 "Better offend the wicked by an aggressive 
 fight with them, and compel their respect as 
 a power for civic righteousness, than lose the 
 good, true, and noble by failing to do the ut- 
 most possible in helping them to make this a 
 better world here and now/' 
 
 45
 
 Ill 
 
 JESUS CHRIST, THE EMBODIMENT OF 
 DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 ONE half of the world is newly making the 
 experiment of self-government Austria, Ger- 
 many, Russia, China, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia. 
 
 In every breast is that same urge to freedom 
 that impelled our fathers, that propels us on, 
 and that makes you an American patriot. 
 
 The thought of the day, the trend of the 
 centuries, is to make the earth democratic. 
 The reign of the common people is at hand; 
 they are reaching for the scepter and the es- 
 tablishment of their rights, powers, and privi- 
 leges. Autocratic governments of church and 
 state must go. Even representative gov- 
 ernments have been a disappointment. Popu- 
 lar government is the slogan for the day. This 
 is not a spasm of sentiment nor a sudden im- 
 pulse. It is the evolution of the ages, develop- 
 ing that initial impulse that God planted when 
 he made us all to have dominion, and greatly 
 accelerated when the Greatest of the great 
 identified himself with the humblest of the 
 
 46
 
 JESUS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 humble. Then democracy became real ; it was 
 shown to be rooted in the divine will so that 
 anyone who sought the wisdom and spirit of 
 Jesus Christ would know that it was ordained 
 of God. When he came his introduction was 
 not to King Herod, the reigning monarch; 
 nor to Pilate, the Roman governor; nor to 
 Caesar, but to the band of faithful shepherds 
 keeping watch over their flocks by night. 
 
 All the forces that put the leverage of de- 
 mocracy under humanity and lifted us to the 
 altitude we occupy to-day, were born in the 
 manger of Bethlehem. The enfranchisement 
 and establishment of man is the work of the 
 nail-pierced hand. No unprejudiced mind can 
 fail to note that every charter of liberty which 
 has been wrung from the hands of greed and 
 selfishness during the past thousand years has 
 been closely related to the Man of Nazareth 
 and the gospel he gave mankind. Had it not 
 been for Jesus, for what he said and did and 
 was, our boasted civilization could not have 
 been. You and I would now be the bondsmen 
 of cruel masters and the slaves of tyrants. 
 
 We are proud of our modern democracy and 
 our American civilization, but it has not al- 
 ways been what it now is. As we look at the 
 path we have trod, the distance we have come, 
 and the forces which have impelled us forward, 
 
 47
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 we discover at the head of every advance the 
 Captain of our Salvation. It is a long dis- 
 tance from the stone pillars and the bloody 
 altars of the Druid temples to the beautiful 
 and spiritual worship of our sanctuaries, 
 "none daring to molest or make us afraid." 
 There have been many bloody battles, many 
 painful crosses between the two, but amid the 
 din of danger and the scorching fires of every 
 persecution there has arisen some leader 
 whose tongue of fire has been inspired by the 
 love of Jesus calling men to a higher, purer, 
 and better life. And they have not toiled in 
 vain. Mankind has grown, human liberty has 
 advanced, the race has been emancipated, and 
 the religion of Jesus in divine accord with na- 
 tional democracy has promoted all these rights 
 of man. 
 
 What, then, is the relation of Jesus Christ 
 and his gospel to these democracies? He is 
 the founder of them. They proceed from him. 
 He is the source, the life, the soul of them all. 
 Without what he did and said and was, they 
 never could have been. He never made democ- 
 racy a formal topic of discourse. Our phrases, 
 "the democracy of knowledge," "the democ- 
 racy of art," "the democracy of politics" are 
 not found on his lips. Nevertheless, Jesus is 
 the creator and the architect of democracy. 
 
 48
 
 JESUS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 It would not be difficult to show that the 
 New Testament is a handbook of democratic 
 principles. Jesus could not preach the doc- 
 trine of God's Fatherhood without reverting 
 to human brotherhood. He was asked once, 
 "What is the greatest commandment?" His 
 answer was that there were two, and not one. 
 A theologian might have answered, "The great 
 commandment is, 'Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart.' " But Jesus 
 added, "The second is like unto the first : 'Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' ' This 
 was startling doctrine to Jews who called Gen- 
 tiles dogs, to Greeks who called all others bar- 
 barians, to Romans who called all others 
 Plebes; but Jesus built Christianity on the 
 doctrines of race equality and human brother- 
 hood. 
 
 When Jesus came to deal with the people 
 his favorite term for himself was "The Son of 
 man," a term that is the most democratic that 
 could be put into human speech. Not "The 
 Son of a king" or of a priest, or of a royal 
 family, or of a class, or of a nation, but "The 
 Son of man." He told how the rabbis made 
 "broad their phylacteries, and enlarged the 
 borders of their garments, and love the chief 
 place at feasts, and the chief seats in the syna- 
 gogues, and the salutations in the market 
 
 49
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 places, and to be called of men Kabbi. But 
 be not ye called Eabbi : for one is your teacher, 
 and all ye are brethren. And call no man your 
 father on the earth: for one is your Father, 
 even he who is in heaven. Neither be ye called 
 masters: for one is your master, even Christ. 
 But he that is greatest among you shall be 
 your servant. And whosoever shall exalt him- 
 self shall be humbled; and whosoever shall 
 humble himself shall be exalted" (Matt. 23. 
 6-12). 
 
 On another occasion: "There arose also a 
 contention among them, which of them was ac- 
 counted to be greatest. And he said unto 
 them, The kings of the Gentiles have lordship 
 over them; and they that have authority over 
 them are called Benefactors. But ye shall not 
 be so: but he that is the greater among you, 
 let him become as the younger ; and he that is 
 chief, as he that doth serve. For which is 
 greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that 
 serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I 
 am in the midst of you as he that serveth" 
 (Luke 22. 24-27). 
 
 One needs only to read the life of Jesus in 
 the four Gospels to be perfectly saturated with 
 the principles of democracy, the equality of 
 men, the dignity of the poor, the stricken, the 
 sinful and the diseased, and of the humilia- 
 
 50
 
 JESUS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 tion of those who wore purple if the life was 
 sinful. 
 
 If one will study the treatment of Herod 
 Antipas, of the governor Pilate, and of the 
 high priest before whom Jesus stood, and will 
 see the utter contempt for the trappings of 
 authority that the Son of man displayed, he 
 will see that the greatest Democrat that ever 
 walked the earth never cringed before arbi- 
 trary authority. 
 
 On one occasion some elated disciples came 
 to Jesus with the good news that he had a 
 royal caller. Herod, the king, stood outside 
 desiring to see him. Christ turned for a mo- 
 ment from his discourse where the common 
 people had heard him gladly, and said, "Go 
 and say to that fox that I work to-day, to- 
 morrow, and the third day I am glorified," and 
 went on with his message to the people as 
 though the slight interruption of a king's call 
 had never occurred. 
 
 The greatest compliment he ever paid to 
 any man was when he said, "Among those 
 born of women there hath not arisen one 
 greater than John the Baptist." The signifi- 
 cance of this one can readily get by letting the 
 imagination run upon the facts that John was 
 the humble wilderness preacher whom the 
 reigning monarch had recently executed. The 
 
 61
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 sycophant would have climaxed his speeches 
 with the greatness of Herod and stood in with 
 those in authority, but Jesus puts the crown 
 on the head of the one who has been executed. 
 In the study of our government Charles W. 
 Eliot has shown that America achieved a re- 
 form that no other people ever attempted, and 
 he is thus quoted by Bryce, in his American 
 Commonwealth, volume two, page 649, and 
 Bryce, the world observer himself, says, "Of 
 all the differences between the Old World and 
 the New, this is the most salient : the separa- 
 tion of the church from the state." Where did 
 America get 'this, thought? It was Christ 
 who laid down the principles that the church 
 and the state are separate. "And the scribes 
 and the chief priests sought to lay hands on 
 him in that very hour; and they feared the 
 people: for they perceived that he spake this 
 parable against them. And they watched him, 
 and sent forth spies, who feigned themselves 
 to be righteous, that they might take hold of 
 his speech, so as to deliver him up to the rule 
 and to the authority of the governor. And 
 they asked him, saying, Teacher, we know that 
 thou sayest and teachest rightly, and acceptest 
 not the person of any, but of a truth teachest 
 the way of God: Is it lawful for us to give 
 tribute unto Caesar, or not? But he perceived 
 
 52
 
 JESUS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 their craftiness, and said unto them, Show me 
 a denarius." Holding it in hand, he inquired, 
 "Whose image and superscription hath it?" 
 And they said, "Caesar's." And he said unto 
 them, "Then render unto Caesar the things 
 that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that 
 are God's. And they were not able to take 
 hold of the saying before the people : and they 
 marveled at his answer, and held their peace" 
 (Luke 20. 19-26) . They observed that he had 
 answered a specific question definitely but 
 stated an everlasting principle of government 
 that gives freedom from all trammels for re- 
 ligion and liberates the state as well. 
 
 Jesus was "the sower who went forth to 
 sow." He planted the seed of democracy from 
 which sprang the great tree of human liberty 
 under whose wide-spreading boughs we and 
 our children sit in equity and power. He gave 
 to the world the radical, underlying idea of all 
 democracy, of all social growth, and of all hu- 
 man rights. How? By giving man a new 
 sense of the capacities, the relations, the du- 
 ties, and the destiny of man. The logical and 
 inevitable result of his teachings and life and 
 being has been to make real and vital these 
 facts : that the world was made for all and not 
 for a few; that every human soul is of im- 
 measurable worth; that every man has the 
 
 63
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OP DEMOCRACY 
 
 divine right, coequal with every other man, to 
 come to himself; that "every human being, 
 whatever his lot or station or wealth or race, 
 has noble powers to cultivate, solemn duties 
 to perform, unalienable rights to assert, and 
 a vast destiny to accomplish." 
 
 The only idea that can give this high order 
 of equality, promise, and potency is that every 
 man is too sacred, that every man is too pre- 
 cious, that every man is too great, to be awed 
 by priest or church or king or baron. That 
 idea Jesus made effectual in the world. Do 
 you ask me how he did it? If the late Mat- 
 thew Arnold, the distinguished representative 
 of the highest intellectual culture of our times, 
 should have selected twelve plain, ordinary, 
 ungifted men, if he should have associated 
 himself with them on terms of equality and fa- 
 miliarity every day, if he should have pub- 
 licly appointed them as the inner circle of his 
 disciples through whom his ideas of culture 
 were to be made known to the world, such se- 
 lection and association would be equivalent to 
 a declaration on Mr. Arnold's part that he be- 
 lieved these men to be capable of the highest, 
 the finest, the most perfect culture. 
 
 And when He, who is greater than all apos- 
 tles of culture, came and selected twelve such 
 men, by virtue of that very act he declared that 
 
 54
 
 the humblest men were equal to the highest 
 things. 
 
 Mark the openness, the entire freedom, with 
 which he gave his deepest truths to the plain- 
 est men. He preached his Sermon on the 
 Mount, as we are assured by all scholars, to a 
 motley crowd of ignorant peasants and rude 
 fishermen. They were gathered from the Gal- 
 ilaean Lake and the Galilean hills, and he 
 preached to them the longest sermon he ever 
 preached and containing some of the deepest 
 truths to which he ever gave utterance. To 
 this audience of ordinary men and women, and 
 not at Jerusalem to the educated and cultured 
 and refined, did he freely give these great 
 ideals. 
 
 In all systems of theology the doctrine of 
 God is justly declared to be the highest theme. 
 The doctrine of God with Jesus was certainly 
 his highest theme, and to whom and in what 
 circumstances did he most fully declare his 
 doctrine of God? To one person to a woman. 
 Not to a woman like Susannah Wesley or 
 Frances Willard or Clara Barton, but to a 
 woman whose name even has not come down 
 to us, to a woman not only unknown and ob- 
 scure, but to a lax woman, and to a woman 
 who was a heretic. To that woman Jesus 
 taught tyis doctrine of God. To that woman 
 
 55
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCEACY 
 
 he declared that it was not a question of 
 Gerezim or Moriah. To that woman he 
 declared that the question was not where 
 God should be worshiped, but how. To that 
 woman he declared, "God is a Spirit : and they 
 that worship him must worship in spirit and 
 truth." They who will may fling scornful 
 sneers at the degraded outcast, but while any 
 portion of his spirit fills my heart or guides 
 my life I will not cease to remember that Jesus 
 gave his doctrine of God to a lax, heretical 
 woman. Does not that begin to make men and 
 women shine with an unusual luster? Do you 
 treat them in that way? Do the schools? does 
 society? does the church? But Jesus did. 
 
 Consider his doctrine of the superiority of 
 men to institutions, to all customs and tradi- 
 tions and policies however venerable and how- 
 ever sacred. Our Master never once lost sight 
 of that truth so fully embodied in his gospel, 
 that institutions, ceremonies, ordinances, cus- 
 toms, and policies exist for man, and not man 
 for these institutions. You have seen the bark 
 on the tree. What would be thought of the 
 men who would insist that the tree lived for the 
 bark? Of what use is the casket except to pre- 
 serve the jewel? He who would think of teach- 
 ing that the casket was more important than 
 the jewel would be considered unworthy of 
 
 56
 
 JESUS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 hearing. Precisely at this point Jesus came 
 into collision with the religious teachers of his 
 times. They thought that everything depended 
 upon preserving the bark, and practically they 
 also said, "If the tree will not behave itself 
 concerning the bark, why, away with the 
 tree!" They had built up about the law a 
 hedge, high, thorny, prickly. They were try- 
 ing to keep the law on the other side, trying 
 to protect it. Their end was noble, their ob- 
 ject pure, but the means they employed were 
 narrow, cruel, dwarfing, inimical to the high- 
 est moral growth of the human race. He came, 
 and they began to rebuke him because of his 
 nonobservance of the law, because his disciples 
 ate with unwashed hands, because they rubbed 
 barley between their hands in passing through 
 the field on the Sabbath day. And how did he 
 answer them? Did you ever see the lightning 
 leap from the bosom of the peaceful cloud? 
 So hot and scorching wrath came from the 
 Lamb of God as "Woe! Woe! Woe!" leaped 
 and poured upon the men who taught that in- 
 stitutions were more sacred than man himself. 
 By the whole course of his life and teaching 
 our Lord lifted men above all institutions, de- 
 claring that institutions are to serve men, and 
 that when men grew too large for existing in- 
 stitutions they were to be displaced by such as 
 
 67
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 were adequate to the growing, expanding life 
 of man. Jesus Christ came to unfetter and en- 
 franchise men, to build up in this world a type 
 of manhood in harmony with his own char- 
 acter, and to bless and beautify his own king- 
 dom. He himself is the ideal man, the perfect 
 man, and God has been framing the ages to 
 produce in the kingdom of his Son and by the 
 power of his Spirit a complete and perfect 
 manhood. 
 
 Jesus Christ considered the individual of 
 infinite value. He put them all on the same 
 plane, and this principle of his not only con- 
 demns monarchy but it forever rejects the 
 ancient idea that the individual exists for the 
 church, or for the state, or for the most sacred 
 institutions. So when Christ was healing sick 
 people, restoring sight to the blind, doing good 
 even on the Sabbath day, those who put in- 
 stitutions ahead, of men were mortally of- 
 fended. Disciples who had watched him at his 
 work without taking time to eat, grew so hun- 
 gry that passing through the fields of corn 
 they broke off the ripened ears on the Sabbath 
 day, but the worshipers of institutions were 
 horrified. "And the Pharisees said unto him, 
 Behold, why do they on the Sabbath day that 
 which is not lawful? And he said unto them, 
 Did ye never read what David did, when he 
 
 58
 
 JESUS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 had need, and was hungry, he, and they that 
 were with him? How he entered into the house 
 of God when Abiathar was high priest, and ate 
 the showbread, which it is not lawful to eat 
 save for the priests, and gave also to them that 
 were w r ith him? And he said unto them, The 
 sabbath was made for man, and not man for 
 the sabbath: so that the Son of man is lord 
 even of the sabbath" (Mark 2. 24-27). 
 
 One cannot pick up at random anything 
 about Jesus without being impressed with his 
 democratic spirit. Every principle he stated, 
 every example he set, every doctrine he incul- 
 cated, was democratic. One need not look for 
 texts ; they cluster about almost any narrative 
 of his life. 
 
 "Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus 
 knowing that his hour was come that he should 
 depart out of this world unto the Father, hav- 
 ing loved his own that were in the world, he 
 loved them unto the end. . . . knowing that 
 the Father had given all things into his hands, 
 and that he came forth from God, and goeth 
 unto God, riseth from supper, and layeth aside 
 his garments ; and he took a towel, and girded 
 himself. Then he poureth water into the 
 basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, 
 and to wipe them with the towel wherewith 
 he was girded" (John 13. 1-5). Thus he 
 
 59
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 taught for three years that he is greatest who 
 is the servant of all, that greatness in the king- 
 dom of heaven is not through heredity, posi- 
 tion, honor, education, or even qualifications, 
 but is in the spirit and act of service. "He that 
 is the greater among you, let him become as 
 the younger; and he that is chief as he that 
 doth serve." He now adds this impressive ob- 
 ject lesson to show that as their Lord and Mas- 
 ter he was not above serving the humblest, and 
 it is no wonder that the apostles went out from 
 such association to teach that "there can be 
 neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither 
 bond nor free, there can be no male and fe- 
 male; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus" 
 (Gal. 3. 28) ; and if ye are Christ's, the fic- 
 titious distinctions of race, class, rulership, 
 freedom or slavery, male supremacy or female 
 rights, all melt away in the oneness of Chris- 
 tian love and by the power of Christ's own ex- 
 ample who never taught the Divine Father- 
 hood apart from its implications of human 
 brotherhood. 
 
 There is a significant reference to the democ- 
 racy of the disciples trained under Jesus found 
 in Acts 4. 1, 2. "And as they spake unto the 
 people, the priests and the captain of the tem- 
 ple and the Sadducees came upon them, being 
 sore troubled because they taught the people." 
 
 60
 
 JESUS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 
 
 We often quote this text as if the trouble of 
 the ruling classes grew out of the fact that 
 they were teaching people Christianity, but the 
 text specifically teaches that the rulers were 
 troubled because they were teaching the people 
 at all. Their estimate of the people was, 
 "This multitude that know not the law are 
 accursed." It never occurred to them that 
 the ignorance of the masses is the disgrace and 
 crime of the classes who have deprived their 
 brethren and equals of the sources and means 
 of knowledge. 
 
 After our New Testament the next docu- 
 ment that clearly states Christ's principles 
 that the most sacred institutions are but a 
 means for the use of the end, man, is the Dec- 
 laration of Independence. "We hold these 
 truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
 created equal, that they are endowed by their 
 Creator with certain inalienable rights, that 
 among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness. That to secure these rights gov- 
 ernments are instituted among men, deriving 
 their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
 erned," and every proposition in the immortal 
 Declaration is a New-Testament fundamental 
 doctrine: all men equal; endowed by their 
 Creator ; inalienable rights to life, liberty, hap- 
 piness; governments instituted for man and 
 
 61
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 his rights, not men maintained for the pro- 
 tection and expansion of the state; states gain- 
 ing their right to exist only by consent of the 
 governed. These were the doctrines pro- 
 claimed by Jesus, elaborated by Paul and by 
 John, and no one can study the New Testa- 
 ment as a source book of American principles 
 without discovering Jesus Christ to be the 
 creator and founder of modern democracy. 
 
 It is no wonder that the Virgin Mary, with 
 the prophetic afflatus upon her, giving expres- 
 sion to the mission of the Child who was to be 
 born of her, should have shown that a dis- 
 tinctive mission of his life was not only to 
 glorify God and teach his Fatherhood but also 
 to make the world democratic. 
 
 "He hath showed strength with his arm ; 
 He hath scattered the proud in the imagina- 
 tion of their heart. 
 
 He hath put down princes from their thrones, 
 And hath exalted them of low degree. 
 The hungry he hath filled with good things; 
 And the rich he hath sent empty away." 
 
 He hath obliterated fictitious distinctions, 
 He hath leveled the mountains that were insur- 
 mountable to the masses, 
 
 And hath exalted the valleys of humanity to the 
 levels of the hills. 
 
 62
 
 IV 
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES A CHRISTIAN 
 NATION? 
 
 WE are often told that public speakers, es- 
 pecially in the pulpit, should avoid personal- 
 ities. I hope it will not be thought that I too 
 much violate this standard of good taste in 
 discussing the question, "Is Uncle Sam a 
 Christian?" 
 
 To this question, "Is Uncle Sam a Chris- 
 tian?" there are thoughtless writers and 
 speakers who claim that because the name of 
 God is not in our Constitution, the assembly 
 that formed our government was atheistical. 
 To jump to such a conclusion is to break away 
 from all the facts of our history, the inclina- 
 tions of our people, the commitments of our 
 institutions, and the heredity, education, and 
 environment of our fathers. 
 
 To say that the assembly that formed our 
 Constitution was atheistical contradicts all 
 the facts of history. When the delegates of 
 the thirteen colonies assembled to form our 
 Constitution, five weeks passed without result, 
 and in hopeless confusion the assembly was 
 
 63
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 about to break up when Benjamin Franklin, of 
 four-score years, arose and said : 
 
 "Mr. President, I perceive that we are not 
 in condition to pursue this business any fur- 
 ther. Our blood is too hot. We indeed seem to 
 feel our own want of political wisdom, since 
 we have been running about in search of it. 
 We have gone back to ancient history for mod- 
 els of governments and examined the different 
 forms of those republics which, having been 
 formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, 
 now no longer exist. In this situation of this 
 assembly, groping as it were in the dark, to 
 find political truth, and scarce able to distin- 
 guish it when presented to us, how has it hap- 
 pened, sir, that we have not hitherto once 
 thought of humbly applying to the Father of 
 lights to illuminate our understandings? In 
 the beginning of the contest with Great Brit- 
 ain, when we were sensible to danger, we had 
 daily prayer in this room for divine protection. 
 Our prayers, sir, were heard; and they were 
 graciously answered. All of us who were en- 
 gaged in the struggle must have observed fre- 
 quent instances of a superintending Provi- 
 dence in our favor. 
 
 "To that kind Providence we owe this happy 
 opportunity of consulting, in peace, on the 
 means of establishing our future national fe- 
 
 64
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 licity ; and have we now forgotten that power- 
 ful Friend? Or do we imagine that we no 
 longer need his assistance? I have lived, sir, 
 a long time; and the longer I live the more 
 convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God 
 governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow 
 cannot fall to the ground without his notice, 
 is it probable that an empire can rise without 
 his aid? 
 
 "We have been assured, sir, in the sacred 
 writings, that 'except the Lord build the house, 
 they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly be- 
 lieve this; and I also believe that without his 
 concurring aid we shall succeed in this po- 
 litical building no better than the builders of 
 Babel. We shall be divided by our little par- 
 tial local interests; our projects will be con- 
 founded and we ourselves shall become a re- 
 proach and a byword down to future ages; 
 and, what is worse, mankind may hereafter 
 from this unfortunate instance despair of es- 
 tablishing governments by human wisdom, 
 and leave it to chance, war, and conquest, 
 
 "I therefore, move you, sir, that we separate 
 for three days, during which time in a con- 
 ciliatory spirit we talk with both parties; for 
 if ever we make a constitution it must be the 
 work of compromise; 1 and while I am on my 
 
 iQver the then existing evil of chattel slavery. 
 65
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 feet I move you, sir, and I am astonished that 
 it has not been done before, for when we signed 
 the Declaration of Independence we had a 
 chaplain to read the Bible and pray; and I 
 move now that when we meet again we have a 
 chaplain to meet with us each morning before 
 we proceed to business, and that we have 
 prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven 
 and its blessings on our deliberations." 
 
 Washington's face beamed with joy as he 
 stood to second the motion. At the end of 
 three days they met, had prayer together, and 
 without a jar formed our Constitution, which 
 Gladstone has pronounced the "greatest state 
 document of all Christian ages." 
 
 Seeking thus divine guidance, is it not a 
 natural conclusion that our fathers diligently 
 searched his Word for light in their dilemma? 
 
 These men had adopted the Declaration of 
 Independence only a little while before the 
 Constitution, "appealing to the Supreme 
 Judge of the world for the rectitude of our in- 
 tentions," and "with firm reliance on the pro- 
 tection of Divine Providence," and we should 
 remember that, as already stated, the very 
 dollar with which we pay our debts proclaims 
 to the world the truth, "In God We Trust." 
 
 Those of you who remember the episode of 
 a few years ago when Mr. Roosevelt as Presi- 
 
 66
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 dent recommended the removal of those words 
 from the silver dollar, know just how much 
 they mean to the American people. They may 
 not live up to their professions always, but 
 they will tolerate no tampering with their 
 standards; and the perfect hornets' nest that 
 the great President stirred up when he sug- 
 gested the removal of those words from the 
 currency of the nation will prevent its ever 
 being attempted again. It may be interesting 
 to know how this sentiment got on our money 
 and why they sought to remove it. 
 
 "In God We Trust" first appeared on the 
 copper two-cent piece, issued in 1864, during 
 Lincoln's administration and is the first use 
 of the word "God" on any government money 
 issued. This suggestion came from James 
 Pollock, an ex-governor of Pennsylvania, who 
 was director of the Mint, and it had the ap- 
 proval of Salmon P. Chase, then secretary of 
 the treasury and one of the greatest American 
 statesmen. It appeared in the 1866 issue of 
 the double eagle, the eagle and half eagle ; also 
 on the dollar, half dollar and nickel five-cent 
 piece in lieu of the long existing motto "E 
 Pluribus Unum." 
 
 In the trade dollar issue of 1873 both mot- 
 toes were retained; "In God We Trust" ap- 
 pearing on the obverse side of the silver dollar 
 
 67
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and half-dollar and nickel five-cent piece, and 
 on the other side the motto "E Pluribus 
 Unum." These national sentiments have ap- 
 peared on all important coins since, as a re- 
 minder that this nation owes its allegiance to 
 something higher than politics and higher 
 than money. It is not a sectarian sentiment. 
 It does not offend a Jew or Mohammedan, or 
 a deist even, but reminds the American people 
 that life consists of more than meat and the 
 body more than raiment, and that commercial- 
 ism can never make a nation any more than it 
 can build an individual character. 
 
 Why was it proposed to remove this senti- 
 ment from the nation's money? Was it be- 
 cause we had learned our lesson so well that 
 we were in no danger of falling into a life of 
 mere commercialism? Was it because we had 
 risen so high in the moral and spiritual scale 
 as to need no further reminders of that Power 
 higher than ourselves that works for right- 
 eousness? Was it because somebody objected 
 to the sentiment expressed? 
 
 One reason assigned by the President was 
 that he had heard slighting remarks about it 
 by certain of his companions, and he did not 
 wish to see the sentiment ridiculed. But was 
 there ever a noble sentiment or an unselfish 
 act, or a great moral effort that was not sus- 
 
 68
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 ceptible of ridicule and cheap facetiousness? 
 I have heard men warning public audiences 
 against our drift toward materialism and com- 
 mercialism say, "If we continue in this direc- 
 tion we shall soon have to change our motto to 
 'In Gold We Trust' instead of the old- 
 fashioned sentiment about God." But it never 
 occurred to me that because of such a facetious 
 remark we should haul down our flag for fear 
 the enemy would fire upon it. 
 
 This is of a piece with a criticism I heard 
 about the American Revision of the Bible, 
 generally agreed to be the best translation of 
 the original now extant. A friend of mine ob- 
 jects to the version because the word "Jeho- 
 vah" is given wherever that name for the Deity 
 occurs in the original, instead of following the 
 example of the old version in substituting the 
 word "Lord." This friend fears that the name 
 "Jehovah" being thus prominently brought 
 out will soon be used in swearing, which would 
 shock him very much! My remedy would be 
 to instill principles of reverence, or at least of 
 social decency, to prevent swearing. His 
 remedy seems to be to keep the world in ig- 
 norance of this noble name lest they should 
 misuse it. 
 
 The last man in our national history whom 
 I would have expected to advocate lowering 
 
 69
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 standards in order to prevent higher standards 
 from being misrepresented, was the manly and 
 righteous Roosevelt; and much as I admired 
 him, I must maintain that we still need the 
 elevating, educating and inspiring sentiment 
 on every silver coin issued by our national 
 Mint "In God We Trust." And if the senti- 
 ment is not strictly true, there are ministers 
 and missionaries, teachers and lecturers, edit- 
 ors and authors enough to lift our people up 
 to a moral plane on which it shall be true. 
 
 During the Civil War a Negro color bearer 
 in the thick of the fight was beckoned to by 
 the colonel of his regiment, who cried, "Bring 
 those colors back to the line." The excited and 
 patriotic Negro, however, responded, "You 
 bring that line up to the colors; these colors 
 cannot come back." Let us not drop our col- 
 ors to any lower level. I would rather join 
 with those who sing: 
 
 "She's been in many a fix since 1776, 
 
 But the old flag never touched the ground." 
 
 Noah Webster, in the Preface of his great 
 dictionary, wrote: "The United States com- 
 menced their existence under circumstances 
 wholly novel and unexampled in the history of 
 nations. They commenced with civilization, 
 with learning, with science, with arts, with a 
 
 70
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 constitution of free government, and with the 
 best gift of God to man, the Christian reli- 
 gion." 
 
 All the progress of past ages was required to 
 produce a people capable of maintaining our 
 form of government, for no nation can main- 
 tain a better form of government than it can 
 make. All the elements of good in past prog- 
 ress were gathered up in the ideals of the na- 
 tional rights of man to govern himself, and of 
 religious liberty for all. This plan conceived 
 in the minds of a few procured for them the 
 appellation of "Puritans," and before they 
 could find a field adapted to the making of 
 their experiment they had all become Pilgrims. 
 But their sentiment appealing to the natural 
 instincts and strongest desires for man found 
 a response in the best material of every civil- 
 ized nation, and Plymouth Rock became the 
 nucleus of world-wide growth toward free- 
 dom. 
 
 Our nation is classed among the nations of 
 the world as a Christian republic. It was set- 
 tled by Christians, who came to glorify God 
 and extend the influence of the Christian re- 
 ligion. A reading of the charters of New Eng- 
 land, of the grants of land to the Virginia, 
 Connecticut, and Massachusetts colonies will 
 astound the average person with the number 
 
 71
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and fullness of the declarations that the land 
 belongs to God, that they were going across to 
 extend the honor of his name and the Chris- 
 tian religion. The Constitution of the States 
 recognized that the Christian religion is a true 
 religion, that the Holy Scriptures of the New 
 and Old Testaments are of divine inspiration 
 and are the rule of faith and practice and 
 underlie all enactments, constitutional and 
 statutory. Those who look up the charters of 
 the colleges which have helped to make our 
 history will be equally surprised to find that 
 they are "for the propagation of the pure gos- 
 pel of Christ, our only Mediator, to the praise 
 and honor of Almighty God." 
 
 A significant fact is the recognition of Sun- 
 day, the Lord's Day, as a Christian Sabbath 
 and therefore as an American institution. The 
 United States Constitution provides that the 
 President shall have ten days to consider all 
 bills. If he disapproves, he returns it with his 
 veto, and then it specifies that if it is not re- 
 turned by him within ten days (Sundays ex- 
 cepted) after it shall have been presented to 
 him, it becomes a law. Similar provisions 
 have been found in the Constitutions of most 
 of the States and in thirty-six out of forty- 
 eight the words "Sundays excepted" are in- 
 cluded. 
 
 72
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 In Louisiana they left out these words in the 
 revision of their Constitution in 1864, and the 
 question of the governor's veto came up in the 
 supreme court. That court decided that these 
 words are constructively there, because this is 
 a Christian state and Sunday is a part of our 
 Christian institution and therefore implied. 
 The court, therefore, unanimously held that 
 Sunday was to be excluded in the count. 
 
 This constitutional provision, of course, 
 justifies all the long chain of Sabbath legisla- 
 tion designed to protect the workingman in 
 his right to rest and the Christian Church in 
 its right to worship and the Christian citizen 
 in his right to a quiet day. 
 
 The name of God frequently appears in the 
 State Constitutions and courts. You find the 
 words in the Preamble to the Constitutions 
 of the various States, "Grateful to Almighty 
 God," and by Constitution and statute the of- 
 ficial oaths are to close with the words, "So 
 help me God.'' The common commencement 
 of wills is, "In the name of God, Amen," and 
 every foreigner attests his renunciation of al- 
 legiance to his former sovereign and his accept- 
 ance of citizenship in this republic by an ap- 
 peal to God. The employment of chaplains in 
 the army and navy, as officers of legislative 
 assemblies, the whole range of their service, 
 
 73
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 whether in prayer or preaching, is an official 
 recognition of Christianity. If we should turn 
 to the decision of the courts, we find them 
 unanimous that the Christian religion is a part 
 of the common law of the several States. 
 
 It is not surprising in the light of these facts 
 that a committee of patriots consisting of Dr. 
 Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson 
 appointed on the same day that the Declara- 
 tion of Independence was adopted to prepare 
 a seal for the United States, should have pro- 
 posed a scriptural device, a picture of Pharaoh 
 in an open chariot, a crown on his head and a 
 sword in his hand, passing through the divid- 
 ing waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the 
 Israelites, with rays from the pillar of fire 
 beaming on Moses, who is represented as 
 standing on the shore extending his hand over 
 the sea, and causing it to overwhelm Pharaoh's 
 hosts. Surrounding this picture is the motto : 
 "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." 
 
 But if we were to undertake the recital of 
 the borrowings from the Bible in the early 
 laws and customs of our colonies, we should 
 be reproducing the Pentateuch and delivering 
 a volume instead of a lecture. The Massa- 
 chusetts historical collection shows that the 
 Bay colony refused to use the English com- 
 mon law and adopted the Pentateuch. They 
 
 74
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 made a code from this called "The Body of 
 Liberties," which was copied verbatim from 
 Moses. A common topic for sermons during 
 the Revolutionary period was "The Republic 
 of the Israelites an Example to the American 
 States.'' It was after a sermon on this sub- 
 ject before the general court, June 5, 1788, 
 by Dr. Langdon, that the State of New Hamp- 
 shire met and adopted the United States Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 As truly as Keppler has said, "An undevout 
 astronomer is mad," so may we aver, "An un- 
 devout American is mad"; for, while the as- 
 tronomer sees the marks of design in the stel- 
 lar world, we see the proofs of God's care in 
 the freedom of body, mind, and spirit that we 
 enjoy. 
 
 When Columbus was two thirds way across 
 the ocean on his first voyage of discovery the 
 prow of his vessels was pointed for the Dela- 
 ware Bay, but a flock of birds passed over his 
 little fleet going to the southwest. Judging 
 that land lay in that direction, Pinton per- 
 suaded the admiral to change the course of his 
 ships and so he landed on a small island of 
 the West Indies. 
 
 The secularist closes his eyes in this to all 
 but a flight of birds; but the Christian opens 
 his, and sees the hand of God directing that if 
 
 75
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Spanish misrule is to curse any part of this 
 hemisphere, it should be confined to the south- 
 ern islands; and that this North American 
 continent should be saved to become the base 
 for the greatest continuous empire of mankind 
 and the cradle for a multiplying nation of 
 English-speaking Protestants. "Never," said 
 Humboldt, the Prussian philosopher, "had a 
 flight of birds such important consequences." 
 
 John Richard Green, the greatest historian 
 of the English people, recounts the popularity 
 and power of John Wesley's preaching, de- 
 scribes the number of his societies and his 
 marvelous system of church government, and 
 then says: "He recreated England. But for 
 the new life created by the Wesleyan revival 
 Pitt could never have come into power in the 
 British government, as there would have been 
 nothing on which he could stand." 
 
 He then shows that Pitt in one decade, by 
 the sword of Wolfe, drove the French beyond 
 the Saint Lawrence, and made this great 
 Protestant English-speaking people possible. 
 
 In the same decade he drove the French out 
 of the Indies and rescued that empire of three 
 hundred millions for Protestant Christianity. 
 
 He rescued Frederick the Great from the 
 French and the Spaniards and so preserved 
 the German nation. 
 
 76
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 These three greatest Protestant nations on 
 earth arose under God's providence from the 
 evangelical fervor created by one man raised 
 up in the nick of time. 
 
 That God destined this country to be the 
 home of civil and religious liberty and the 
 torch-bearer of democracy is shown in its nat- 
 ural resources and its providential discovery 
 and religious settlement. "The Lord sitteth 
 upon his throne in the heavens, and his king- 
 dom ruleth over all." He carries out his will 
 by human leaders. Nations are his greatest 
 agents. The Hebrew Scriptures show us God 
 in his world. The fault of our historians is 
 that they ignore this and try to rule God out 
 of his own realm. 
 
 The foundations of national life are moral. 
 If these fail, the structure falls, and it ought 
 to fall. "Where the carcass is, there will the 
 vultures be gathered together." Our annals 
 are chiefly of dead nations; for nations have 
 special divine missions. When they fail God 
 puts them aside. They have no future life; 
 their judgment must therefore come in this 
 world. 
 
 We are deeply interested in the lands that 
 rule the world. What shall be their future? 
 We know that morality is the life of the na- 
 tion; and that religion is the life of morals, 
 
 77
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and if the principles of the divine kingdom 
 be breathed into our constitution and laws, 
 into our public and private life, we shall en- 
 dure, 
 
 "Till the sun grows cold, 
 And the stars are old, 
 And the leaves of the judgment book unfold." 
 
 To this end some trust in preparedness and 
 some are "too proud to fight," But I say, let 
 us get back to the conscience of the people. 
 The highest statesmanship in a government 
 like this is to line up the people to a simple 
 proposition in righteousness as often as pos- 
 sible. Make it increasingly clear that while the 
 principle is old there are ever new applications 
 of the truth that "Righteousness exalteth a na- 
 tion, but sin is a reproach to any people." 
 
 As a people we do well to take note of na- 
 tional blessings. They indicate our obligation 
 and stimulate our gratitude and reveal the 
 source of our mercies. The heavens rule ; the 
 government is in the hands of the manger 
 cradle, the thorn-crowned King, the Son of 
 God. By him governments are set up, rulers 
 decree justice, and national structures stand 
 or fall, flourish or decay. On his head are 
 many crowns, and he rules the world in the 
 interest of man's redemption, the outcome of 
 
 78
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 which must be righteousness, justice, and ever- 
 lasting peace. 
 
 For the epoch of our national life and for the 
 bounds of our habitation both of them by di- 
 vine appointment we have cause for thanks- 
 giving, for God has not dealt so with any na- 
 tion; no such heritage has he given to any 
 other people. He has placed us at the highest 
 era of the world's progress in civilization and 
 culture, climate and landscape, that this fair 
 planet can afford. He has gathered to us out 
 of all the nations a population that makes us 
 half brother to the world, with something good 
 and bad from every land. In the use of free 
 and enlightened institutions with the blessing 
 of Providence, we may cast off the brute in- 
 heritance of an evil past and rise to become 
 the crowning race of human kind, leading the 
 world to its millennial day. Let us thank God 
 for an outlook so inspiring. 
 
 Through all our changes the one great idea 
 of human liberty sailed in safety, and, not- 
 withstanding the clamor of men, the measures 
 and platforms of political parties, this great 
 idea of human liberty has held the ascendancy 
 every moment, and the principles of democracy 
 have never suffered a wreck. Bodies politic, 
 like natural bodies, die, but principles, like 
 souls, are immortal. Our government, based 
 
 79
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 on the capability of man to govern himself, is 
 founded on God's decree of man's freedom; 
 and thus, as the Latin maxim says, "The voice 
 of the people is the voice of God." Whatever 
 the majority of the nation does is democracy. 
 When and wherever the people rule there is a 
 democratic triumph. Democracy may have 
 many desires, frame many petitions, and make 
 many requests, but can never have but one 
 article of faith, and that is founded <m man's 
 inalienable right and capacity for self-govern- 
 ment, and it never can depart from the right 
 of the people to rule. 
 
 In the great religious commotions that arose 
 beyond the Atlantic the best blood of Europe 
 came to this country seeking religious free- 
 dom. There was a religious basis to every 
 colony. The great revival of 1740 was a nat- 
 ural outgrowth of the characteristics of the 
 settlers. Tens of thousands were brought into 
 the church, and those foundations of a free- 
 dom-loving, Bible-reading nation were laid be- 
 fore the Revolution broke out. From then till 
 now we have demonstrated that it is possible 
 for a nation to exist with no King but Jesus, 
 and no government but the free, untrammeled 
 will of a sovereign people, who believe in and 
 worship God and live his Golden Rule. 
 
 Many have been the misgivings and fears 
 80
 
 IS THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN? 
 
 of good men lest the ark which bears the fam- 
 ily of God to glory should founder in the 
 storm. The fear is needless. Learn a parable 
 of the scanty relics of our race, once drifting 
 upon the surge, without a compass, helmsman, 
 sun, or stars to pilot them yet they were un- 
 devoured. A sleepless Eye kept watch upon 
 their vessel's course, an unwearied Arm guided 
 them to their summit of repose; thence they 
 went forth to repair the waste places and to 
 replenish the earth a type of mercy rejoicing 
 against judgment. 
 
 Thus far the old ship, constructed by the 
 wisdom and launched by the strength of our 
 fathers, has weathered the storm on her own 
 as well as foreign seas. She has passed out of 
 harbor in a gale, crossed the bar in a heavy 
 land swell, and run far beyond the heaving of 
 the angry surf. She has encountered the broad 
 ocean and felt the shock of the raging storm ; 
 and, in proud defiance of the angry elements, 
 she still floats, a monument of the wisdom of 
 her great builders and of God's providential 
 care. 
 
 "Thou too sail on, O Ship of State, 
 Sail on, O Union, strong and great. 
 Humanity with all its fears, 
 With all its hopes of future years, 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate." 
 81
 
 PAGAN INROADS ON AMERICAN 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
 DURING the World War two men were con- 
 versing on a car seat back of me. One said, 
 "Germany is nothing but a pagan nation." 
 That remark started a train of thought; and 
 I said to myself : "That man is mistaken. Ger- 
 many is not a pagan land; she is a Christian 
 nation secularized, or, as the Methodists would 
 say, 'back-slidden.' 
 
 One hundred years ago she was the most 
 Christian nation in Europe and represented 
 the purest type of Christianity. She was the 
 most thoroughly committed to the Christian 
 ideals in her institutions, her professions, tra- 
 ditions, and the grip of her Bible upon the 
 literature and education of her people. We 
 boast of our King James Version and its in- 
 fluence over the English-speaking people, but 
 it was no greater than Martin Luther's mar- 
 velous translation of the same Scriptures into 
 the German tongue, and its hold upon the 
 German civilization. 
 
 There came a day when the native conceit 
 went to work, through the process called 
 
 82
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 "higher criticism, 1 ' to undermine the faith of 
 the people in the integrity of their own Book, 
 by negative processes of studying the letter of 
 the Bible for eliminations, mistakes, and over- 
 sights. They did not look for principles or 
 precepts or promises but for errors. They 
 had a buzzard's scent for carrion. These 
 critics, hunting the Bible for mistakes, remind 
 one of the darkey who took a dark lantern on 
 a dark night and went down into a dark cellar 
 to find a black cat that was not there. With 
 an imagination that was characteristic, they 
 cut up the Bible and formed it into a 
 crazy-quilt, and carried on a picking process 
 until it was in shreds and the faith of the peo- 
 ple in the integrity of the Book was gone. 
 
 They then adopted a system of rationalism 
 by which they explained away everything that 
 was left in the faith of the people; the old 
 Book and its inspiration, the virgin birth and 
 the resurrection of Christ, regeneration and 
 the Pentecost, all evaporated in a rationalistic 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Next it was easy to adopt a system of phi- 
 losophy known as materialism, by which every- 
 thing reasonable was denied and thought was 
 reduced to physical forces at play in the brain. 
 The universe was without a Head, and force 
 was without a law or a Lawgiver. This left 
 
 83
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 spirit a nonentity, immortality a delusion, and 
 God was dismissed as irrational. 
 
 They banished the Bible from the public 
 school systems, turned the Sabbath into a Con- 
 tinental Sunday of beer-drinking, gambling, 
 and brutal pleasures, and made the most de- 
 bauching of drinks known to mankind the na- 
 tional beverage beer, the scientific effect of 
 which on its drinker is that the last traits that 
 are developed in the human evolution are the 
 first to go down. As soon as one begins the 
 drinking of beer he commences to move down- 
 stairs. After a while he drags his feet along, 
 drags his thoughts, and drags his soul. Speak 
 to one, and his voice is not a human voice but 
 a brutal growl, and the degrading effect seen 
 in every individual beer-drinker showed forth 
 in the nation that adopted it. 
 
 When religion had evaporated there was 
 nothing for morals to stand on. You cannot 
 build a moral system without a religious basis. 
 You cannot have a brotherhood of man unless 
 you have the Fatherhood of God to establish 
 the relation. Drag down on the Godward side 
 and the manward side will not hold up. I 
 never knew a man or nation that had a 
 stronger left-hand grasp on human brother- 
 hood than his right-hand hold on God and 
 destiny. Some people think religion and mor- 
 
 84
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 als are separate and can be kept in different 
 compartments. They are not separate nor dif- 
 ferent parts of something. They are absolutely 
 one. Religion is morality in relation to God. 
 Morality is religion in relation to man. When 
 religion and morals were demolished the bru- 
 talizing effect of her skepticism, low-grade life, 
 and beer-drinking had completed the oblitera- 
 tion of a great Christian nation. 
 
 To know by fruitage has the Saviour's sanc- 
 tion. The civilized world in death-grapple is 
 trying to throw off the ideals of German ra- 
 tionalism, to repudiate her system of criticism, 
 and even to find a better philosophy. Why? 
 Because the race stands appalled in the pres- 
 ence of the fruit that grew on that tree. 
 A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. 
 It was no different on this side of the water. 
 The attempt to get an expression from five 
 hundred German professors in American col- 
 leges condemning the policy of frightfulness 
 of their Fatherland fell flat. With only 
 eighteen exceptions they all stood for it. 
 
 Let us take our stand against any imposition 
 of their theology, their morals, their philoso- 
 phy, or their critical methods upon our church. 
 Their emasculated Christianity will not do in 
 America, Their rationalized Christ is not our 
 Saviour. Their crazy-quilt Bible is not our 
 
 85
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Holy Scripture. Their brutalizing beverage 
 ought to go out of America forever. You can't 
 prop up moral distinctions so they will stand 
 without religion fbr a base. Y"ou can't build 
 a religion on negatives. When you get far 
 enough away from it the whole story of the so- 
 called higher critic will appear the silliest fad 
 and the most excuseless craze ever adopted 
 by Christian citizens of the nineteenth century, 
 a process by which they, seated on the outer 
 end, sawed off the limb of the tree of life on 
 which they themselves were resting. 
 
 The process which had decivilized Germany 
 would be equally destructive to Christian 
 democracy in the United States ; and if I had 
 my way as an American, I would have my 
 Uncle Sam face that stairway down which 
 Germany ran to ruin and put his feet on every 
 one of those steps, and walk over them in the 
 opposite direction upstairs. 
 
 THE STEPS UPSTAIRS 
 
 1. We should maintain the strictest kind of 
 law enforcement and an educational agitation 
 that will hold all officers to the standard of 
 their oath of office, from the President, who 
 swears to protect, defend, and enforce the Con- 
 stitution, to the sheriff and policeman, who are 
 under oath to enforce without fear or favorit- 
 
 86
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 ism the laws of the State and the ordinances 
 of the cities. We will never consent to the 
 nomination, or, if nominated, the election of 
 any man as President of these United States 
 who opposes prohibition, would be lukewarm 
 in its enforcement, or who proposes to tinker 
 with the people's law rather than make the 
 law a success and the government a triumph 
 by seeing that the people live up to their own 
 standards. We should follow this policy down 
 the line to governors, sheriffs, district at- 
 torneys, and other representatives of the peo- 
 ple. Let reverence for law be breathed upon 
 the conscience of America. A republic is in 
 danger at this point. The people are so close 
 to the processes of making their own laws that 
 they are not in awe of the lawbook or the 
 courthouse, as they are where their govern- 
 ment is handed down to them from a so-called 
 "higher source." All the more reason why we 
 should teach respect for law, obey it ourselves, 
 and see that it is obeyed by others. If we con- 
 tinue to sow the spirit of lawlessness with 
 reference to the Eighteenth Amendment, we 
 will reap the whirlwind when it is too late to 
 get to shelter. 
 
 2. We should inaugurate a total abstinence 
 pledge signing campaign in view of the help 
 that abstainers are now getting by the removal 
 
 87
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 of organized and legalized temptation from 
 their path. A man may get liquor in some 
 places if he hunts it, but, thank God, the cities 
 of America are not hunting down men who 
 wish to quit, and now that prohibition has 
 crippled the public traffic, education and 
 scientific instruction in the effect of alcohol, 
 narcotics and opiates with appeal to the will 
 through the motives of home life, and the 
 power of example should supplement the pur- 
 pose of the law by eliminating the private 
 habit. Beer is the most brutalizing beverage 
 known to man. It leaves brutality uncon- 
 trolled, and one needs no tfurther proof of this 
 truth known than Germany. 
 
 3. It is time for church, state, and school to 
 start an educational and moral suasion cam- 
 paign against the personal use of the doped 
 cigarette foisted upon the country in war 
 times. Men who were able to throw off the 
 nicotine in the activities of the field, the 
 march, and the strenuous life of the trench are 
 going to pieces utterly in the sedentary habits 
 which they enter upon their return to civil life. 
 Their eyes must be opened to this poisonous 
 habit. The tobacco interests, by their methods, 
 have gone so far beyond the pale of decency 
 that they should be rebuked by the American 
 people for trampling on their rights in war 
 
 88
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 times. Those lying advertisements, "Cigar- 
 ettes won the war," should bring the blush of 
 shame to every American who fought or had a 
 loved one in the war. We must do something 
 about this. If we do not wake up, the tobacco 
 interests will repeal every law we now have 
 against selling cigarettes to minors. They 
 would not only make it universal among men, 
 but they are organizing to make it the custom 
 among women and children. 
 
 4. As we have seen what a secularized nation 
 comes to when it casts off the true religion, 
 and lest we go the same way, we should insist 
 that the whole Bible, fountain of classic Eng- 
 lish, the book that has given us our national 
 ideals and our moral standards, the book that 
 taught us the equality of man and the need for 
 his moral betterment, shall come back to the 
 public schools of the United States as it was 
 before certain hyphenated citizens who owe 
 their first allegiance to a foreign potentate, 
 crowded it out of the back door of the little 
 red school house from four fifths of our Amer- 
 ican cities, and would thus deprive our Amer- 
 ican citizens of an intellectual foundation for 
 American morality. The Bible that Washing- 
 ton kissed, that Lincoln loved, that Theodore 
 Roosevelt lived, should return as the heritage 
 of American children, that they may have some 
 
 89
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 knowledge of the book that has made our type 
 of civilization possible. 
 
 5. Instead of importing the Continental 
 Sunday, with its loose morals and low ideals, 
 we should replace our American Sabbath on 
 its civic foundations as it stood before it was 
 trampled in the dust of our American cities to 
 establish on its ruins a Continental Sunday, 
 foreign to our forms of government and in- 
 imical to the morals of our people. We need 
 the Sabbath day for the sake of the men and 
 women who toil, for the support of the family 
 life of the republic, that the father and mother 
 who are separated in the shop and factories 
 of the week may have one day when the old 
 loves and sentiments that brought them to- 
 gether shall reassert their potent spell over 
 their lives and hold together the affections of 
 home life. We need it for the opportunity of 
 the church to keep the moral standards parallel 
 with the mental advance and material welfare. 
 We need it for the intellectual life of Amer- 
 ican workers and for the sake of decent cour- 
 tesy to the prevailing religion. 
 
 6. We should establish red-light abatement 
 laws in every city and State and the teaching 
 of old-fashioned American morality that 
 stands for the clean life for two, for equal 
 standards of decency in both sexes, for a pure 
 
 90
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 American home life such as our Pilgrim 
 Fathers and mothers brought to Plymouth 
 Rock and planted on American soil, the 
 fruition of which is American civilization. 
 
 7. We must give a strong push on the wheels 
 of the anti-prizefighting movement. Our boys 
 saw enough scenes of blood and fields of 
 carnage during the war, which is altogether 
 responsible for this present carnival of crime 
 we are witnessing, without our still further 
 brutalizing mankind by turning bruising and 
 blood-letting into a sport for the education of 
 our youth away from the higher reaches of 
 their manhood to the lower levels of the brute. 
 
 There is hardly a State where organized and 
 well-financed propaganda is not at work at 
 this moment and scarcely a State Legislature 
 can meet without the sinister influence of the 
 confederated interests that prey showing their 
 hand. I have just crossed the continent and 
 been in sixteen States, and in every one the 
 symptoms were unmistakable. One State was 
 legalizing race-track gambling. Another was 
 trying to repeal the law against the selling of 
 cigarettes to minors. Another was trying to 
 annul the red-light abatement laws. Four of 
 them were seeking to nullify the Eighteenth 
 Amendment, though every officer in them knew 
 that his oath of office required him to provide 
 
 91
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OP DEMOCRACY 
 
 for its enforcement. Three States were trying 
 to abolish the Sabbath laws that protect the 
 workingmen and their homes. In all of these 
 States were newspapers that before prohibi- 
 tion banished liquor advertisements, were not 
 in partnership with the liquor traffic, and yet 
 were taking this whole propaganda of evil and 
 giving it advocacy and respectability. It is no 
 time for the church to go to sleep. There is a 
 call for good fighting all along the line. 
 
 8. For instance, we are going to be com- 
 pelled, unless there is a great clean-up in the 
 moving picture industry, to insist on a na- 
 tional censorship and a board of supervision 
 over the motion picture industry. One of the 
 greatest business enterprises which has grown 
 in the last decade to marvelous proportions 
 should help America by its lessons of human 
 uplift and not degrade popular thought and 
 character by purveying base and debauching 
 influences. These shows should feature the 
 beautiful, clean home life in America and not 
 simply display the looseness and vileness that 
 winds up in the divorce courts. They should 
 picture some of the great political and busi- 
 ness enterprises and not limit themselves to 
 the exploitation of crookedness, immorality, 
 and crime that makes viciousness popular. 
 
 9. Then we are in for a great anti-gambling 
 
 92
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 crusade and must ultimately shut out from 
 the mails, telegraphs, and interstate service 
 the transportation and sale of race-track bet- 
 ting odds, their ticket issues, and advertise- 
 ments. We cannot have a great United States 
 and an honorable people if we disintegrate the 
 business integrity of America and permit the 
 spreading of the gambling mania through our 
 nation's mails, over the wires, and by means of 
 other public service. Every business transac- 
 tion a man engages in advances industry, aids 
 home life, and builds his own integrity. If 
 one goes into a butcher shop and spends $1.50 
 for a beefsteak, he thus serves the three parties 
 concerned, but if he goes into a gambling es- 
 tablishment he will do one of two things. 
 He will get something for nothing or nothing 
 for something. If he gets nothing for some- 
 thing, he is a fool; if he gets something for 
 nothing, he is a thief. But he has not been 
 engaged in a business transaction ; he has not 
 built up his honor, but he has disintegrated his 
 integrity and character, and there is nothing 
 more insidious than this mania. 
 
 I believe that the women of our country 
 have saved our civilization in the past. I have 
 seen men saturated with tobacco, sogged with 
 intoxicants, stained with personal vices, their 
 lips soiled with profanity, and their natures 
 
 93
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 groveling ; and have said to myself, "What will 
 become of the next generation with such 
 fathers?" Still, in such homes were pure, 
 hard-working, devoted Christian women, and 
 they had character and pure blood enough to 
 counteract the evil fathers and give to us clean 
 American children with the possibilities of 
 splendid usefulness locked up in their souls. 
 But a generation ago, say when we were chil- 
 dren, there came a time when the women mis- 
 stepped. One can recall the days when the 
 progressive euchre fad swept the women of the 
 land, and there were people that boasted that 
 they had played progressive euchre five after- 
 noons in a week and seven evenings. A study 
 of criminology at first hand in our jails and 
 penitentiaries, shows a large number of men 
 now serving sentences who were always 
 thieves because of maternal inheritance. We 
 must stamp this habit out of our life and this 
 mania out of our civilization if we would have 
 a business integrity that shall maintain Amer- 
 ican honor among the nations of the earth. 
 
 10. We maintain that the protection of the 
 American flag and all consular service must 
 be withdrawn from any citizen of these United 
 States who goes into Mexico, China, Africa, 
 or to any foreign country to engage in a traffic 
 or to set up an institution which has been out- 
 
 94
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 lawed by the Constitution and statutes of these 
 United States. Our nation cannot consistently 
 involve itself in international difficulties to 
 protect disloyal citizens of our land in doing 
 that against the weaker people of other nations 
 for which we would imprison them if the of- 
 fense were committed at home. 
 
 11. Americanism is that achievement of na- 
 tional unity as an equipment for world service, 
 which the nation found it needed at the out- 
 break of the Great War, and which need was 
 just as imperative before we found it out. To 
 this end I would insist on the English lan- 
 guage as the exclusive basis for American edu- 
 cation in all of our public schools up to the 
 eighth grade, and as the medium of communi- 
 cation through every American published 
 newspaper. If we must have a foreign lan- 
 guage press in this country, there should be 
 an American translation in a parallel column 
 for every line in a foreign tongue. We must 
 eliminate these little foreign-language groups 
 segregated from the rest of our people and 
 from the assimilative processes of America, 
 that keep up their Old- World customs, plan- 
 ning disloyalty in peace time and plotting 
 treason in war time. One language would be 
 a unifier among us. 
 
 12. The divine right of democracy implies 
 
 95
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 the sovereign right of the people to rule them- 
 selves, to make their own government, to write 
 their laws, direct their institutions, and select 
 their officers for executive, judicial, and legis- 
 lative branches of their own service. We shall, 
 therefore, stand for the direct primary in every 
 State. Through it the people can name the 
 candidates of their own parties, after which 
 the same sovereign people may select between 
 candidates so chosen by their parties after the 
 unfit have been weeded out. We should resist 
 every attempt to side-track the direct primary 
 as an assault upon the rights of the people to 
 choose self-government and to rule. We should 
 stand for it against all comers as the primary 
 right of the individual to eliminate the bosses 
 and to govern his own country. And in view 
 of the efforts of the politicians in the National 
 Conventions of 1920 to defeat the will and 
 choice of the people we should extend the 
 direct primary to every State; and its appli- 
 cation to the choice of the Presidential and 
 Vice-Presidential candidates, thus making un- 
 necessary the holding of another national 
 nominating convention as long as the republic 
 endures. 
 
 13. Popular government machinery de- 
 mands the initiative, referendum, and the re- 
 call for the fullest expression of the people's 
 
 96
 
 PAGAN INROADS 
 
 power. When God made man capable of self- 
 government and told him to have dominion, 
 he made kings unnecessary and bosses inex- 
 cusable. All the machinery necessary to en- 
 able men to start any measure for the statute 
 books or the Constitution, to call for a referen- 
 dum of the people's judgment on any measure 
 passed by their representatives, or to recall 
 any officer who betrays by his falsity or proves 
 unfit by his weakness to meet the responsibil- 
 ity with which he is intrusted, is necessary for 
 the expression of the people's right to rule 
 their own land, to direct their own public serv- 
 ants, and to discharge the unfit. 
 
 14. This is a Christian nation. The su- 
 preme court was right when it declared it so 
 and said that the Scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testament are an integral part of our 
 common law, that the Sabbath is incorporated 
 into the second article of the Constitution, 
 that God is the recognized Sovereign over all, 
 that the Bible is his Word, that the govern- 
 ment is his agent for the promotion of mo- 
 rality, religion, brotherhood, and the public 
 welfare, and that these institutions, pillars of 
 support for our civilization, shall stand, and 
 the gates of Bolshevism, the I. W. W., an- 
 archy, and the lawlessness that circumvents 
 the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments 
 
 97
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and brazenly attempts the Eighteenth Amend- 
 ment shall not prevail against us. For when 
 these principles prevail, "Violence shall no 
 more be heard within our streets, wasting nor 
 destruction in our borders ; but they shall call 
 our walls salvation and our gates praise." 
 
 The Church of Christ has a supreme task 
 and a program for its opportunity. By voice 
 and vote, by platform and press, through the 
 sights and sounds of street speeches she will 
 stand for the government, the Constitution, 
 the laws, the flag. She should stand with any 
 party candidate or officer w r ho faithfully 
 executes our laws, fight for him as long as he 
 keeps these standards, and turn against him 
 and his party if they abandon the right and 
 fail to serve the people and their government. 
 
 We nail to our masthead no such ignoble 
 sentiment as "My country, right or wrong," 
 but "My country, may she ever be right; but 
 should she go wrong, God give me grace and 
 strength to help set her right," 
 
 We do not seek to unite the church with the 
 state, nor to make the church domineer the 
 state, nor to let the state oppress the church, 
 but we will help to see that the church aids the 
 state in maintaining good government, and 
 thus to furnish a fulcrum of uplift for the 
 moral betterment of mankind. 
 
 98
 
 VI 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW IN CIVIL 
 GOVEENMENT 
 
 HUMAN laws are intended to be applications 
 of the laws of nature to protect natural rights. 
 And, as Blackstone says, "a law that contra- 
 venes the law of God or a law of nature is no 
 law at all." The Jewish and Christian Scrip- 
 tures claim to be expressions of the laws of 
 nature and the will of God; and, if it could 
 be demonstrated that in any material fact they 
 contravene or run counter to nature ( which is 
 the certain expression of the will of God), 
 their teaching to that extent would be worth- 
 less. 
 
 The object of human law is not to enact the 
 laws of nature but to enforce them, furnishing 
 sanctions by putting a penalty to their viola- 
 tion. But their execution is beyond the reach 
 of all created intelligence. All violations of 
 natural laws depend upon two causes, igno- 
 rance and inability. The first does not neces- 
 sarily involve moral turpitude, though it finds 
 no excuse in the realm of nature. The second 
 
 99
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 is the result of abuse that produced the in- 
 ability. With the abuse human law has noth- 
 ing to do. Nature demands the use of every 
 faculty, settles her own accounts, and never 
 pardons a delinquent. Her jurisdiction ex- 
 tends only to the realm of justice, "An eye for 
 an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." But while 
 "eye" and "tooth" by abuse lose ability to per- 
 form their functions, they cannot escape the 
 demands of nature nor the consequences of 
 their inability to perform such natural func- 
 tions. 
 
 The people of an Eastern city were recently 
 excited at the discovery of a living, newly born 
 infant on a pile of city rubbish, cut and 
 bruised by being cast away. A charitable 
 mother of natural instincts resuscitated and 
 gave it a mother's care. The difference be- 
 tween these two mothers was not that nature 
 had denied the one the natural instincts of a 
 mother and bestowed them upon the other. 
 Even admitting a difference by heredity, that 
 difference can never be traced to a gift of na- 
 ture, for nature in a purely natural state never 
 makes such distinctions. No gorilla in the 
 jungles of Africa or grizzly bear of the Rocky 
 Mountains would cast off or refuse protection 
 to an offspring, but would defend it at the 
 peril of her own existence. 
 100
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 When the infant in question was discovered 
 the offending mother was sought for to be 
 punished, but, to the astonishment of some of 
 the wise jurists, no law could be found in 
 statutes of that State to meet the case ; and it 
 might be both interesting and instructive to 
 say that no human legislator ever attempted to 
 legislate on this subject. To command a 
 mother to protect her offspring is a law which 
 finite beings can neither make nor enforce. In 
 vain do we seek to find such a law in the rec- 
 ords of antiquity. Neither Solon, Lycurgus, 
 nor Justinian has jurisdiction here. None 
 but the Creator can enact such a law, for the 
 simple reason that no other has power to en- 
 force it. No law but that of love can reach 
 this point; and this can never be produced by 
 statutes, pains, and penalties. No law can 
 compel a mother to take care of her offspring. 
 Compulsion finds no place in moral actions. 
 
 When a mother refuses, who can compel, 
 and in what way ? God himself would be impo- 
 tent, as he has but one remedy to change 
 her nature, and this only by her own consent 
 and cooperation, for "a good tree cannot bring 
 forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree 
 bring forth good fruit." Where is the remedy? 
 Certainly not in law. If every human mother 
 should refuse to own and care for her offspring, 
 
 101
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 where would be the difficulty and what the 
 remedy? The difficulty would be in the cor- 
 ruption or loss of natural instinct; and the 
 only remedy is its restoration. 
 
 It seems startling that the perpetuity of the 
 human race should hang on such a seemingly 
 slender thread as maternal instinct; but no 
 more so than that the whole material fabric 
 of nature should hang on an invisible and in- 
 comprehensible force we call gravity. Gravity 
 unifies and upholds the material universe. 
 Love does the same in the moral realm, while 
 faith prompts the obedience of all moral be- 
 ings. Human authority may prevent an im- 
 moral act, but neither human nor divine au- 
 thority can ever compel an unwilling moral 
 action. 
 
 When creative energy had been expended in 
 the formation of the planetary system, had 
 these planets been given volition and free will 
 by a decree of the Creator, their motions and 
 harmony would be no longer under his control. 
 If, in the exercise of their freedom, they should 
 refuse obedience, but one remedy would be 
 left: their destruction. But in the case of 
 man who had offspring, far different. 
 
 LAW AND ITS PENALTY 
 
 If we look for the ultimate source of all prog- 
 102
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 ress, we find it in the above title, "Law and Its 
 Penalty." 
 
 Law to the obedient means protection. Pen- 
 alty to the disobedient begets fear. To all in- 
 ferior creatures the fear of penalty is the sum 
 total of their wisdom. To man, an intelligent 
 creature, "the fear of the Lord [lawmaker] is 
 the beginning of wisdom." Fear to the whole 
 animal world is the means of protection and 
 progress. 
 
 "Law is a rule of action," says Blackstone. 
 This he took from the Hebrew idea of law an- 
 swering to a line or straight-edge (Hebrew, 
 Torah). To verify this, see examples of law 
 in the New Testament. In Paul's controversy 
 with the Jews they contended that law was a 
 rule of justification. Paul contended that the 
 law condemned us. See his analogy : "If there 
 had been a law that could have given life, 
 verily righteousness had been by the law." So 
 if there had been a line that could make the 
 crooked straight, straightness had been by the 
 line." "The law maketh nothing perfect." The 
 line maketh nothing straight. 
 
 But, says the psalmist, "The law of the Lord 
 is perfect"; the line of the Lord is straight. 
 Paul says, "The law is tutor to bring us unto 
 Christ." The law put upon a bad man's char- 
 acter shows his departure from truth and 
 
 103
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 right. The line put upon a stick of timber 
 shows its bumps and protuberances. To frame 
 a building by a crooked square would destroy 
 the material. To govern mankind by bad or 
 false laws will destroy families and nations. 
 A law that is not founded in the law of nature 
 is not law (Blackstone). A falsehood has no 
 absolute existence and as such must perish. A 
 counterfeit is only a false representation, has 
 no entity. A picture is only the shadow of a 
 substance; a hypocrite is only the false re- 
 flection of a true character. A law reflecting 
 false principles manufactures destroying in- 
 dividuals and nations. Law without a penalty 
 is a misnomer; remove penalty from law and 
 it becomes only advice. The whole universe is 
 under the "reign of law," and there is but one 
 law, the law of nature (Blackstone) ; and all 
 just human laws are only true reflections from 
 it; and all unjust laws are not "bad laws," 
 but are "not laws" (Blackstone) ; they are 
 only false reflections. No man is bound by 
 the law of God or man that violates a law of 
 nature. "Children," says the apostle, "obey 
 your parents in the Lord," but a parental com- 
 mand is not obligatory on a child when it re- 
 quires a violation of the law of God. 
 
 Law is the only natural educator in the 
 universe. The penalty affixed to and admin- 
 
 104
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 istered by the laws of nature regulates the 
 actions of all creatures below man in the ani- 
 mal kingdom, and keeps every creature in the 
 place nature assigned it, One step taken out 
 of its natural sphere is met by the penalty of 
 violated law, and it either dies or returns to 
 its obedience. 
 
 "Said a downy young duck to a fluffy young chick, 
 
 'Come down to the water and swim ; 
 By the best kind of luck the right path I can 
 
 pick, 
 And the horse trough is full to the brim.' 
 
 "The chick saw him dive and come up still alive, 
 
 And, full of ambition and pride, 
 At the slip of his toe, he felt himself go, 
 And fell into the water and died." 
 
 Had that young "chick" made his escape 
 from that "horse trough," never again would 
 it have gone into water. A dog will never be 
 caught in the same trap the second time, but 
 a man may get drunk, and in that helpless con- 
 dition get his ears, toes, and fingers frozen off, 
 or meet with some other calamity ; and, instead 
 of his learning an effectual lesson (as in the 
 case of all inferior creatures), he is only quali- 
 fied to repeat the act, as we see by actual ob- 
 servation ; and every time the act is repeated, 
 with less resistance, until nothing remains but 
 
 105
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 appetite; and this in Scripture is called fixed- 
 ness (Luke 16. 26), and "an eternal sin" 
 (Mark 3. 29). It is described in one word, 
 "Lost" separated from everything but him- 
 self, with no regard for anything but himself, 
 out of harmony with himself, with no resources 
 to draw from but himself, and all knowledge 
 of his natural relations forever lost. This is a 
 finished character produced by disobedience to 
 law; and "sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3. 4). 
 Hence "Sin, when it is full grown, bringeth 
 forth death" (James 1. 15). 
 
 On this passage Dr. McKnight says, "The 
 soul which the Greek philosophers considered 
 as the seat of the appetites and passions is 
 called by Phila to thalm, the female part of 
 our nature, and the spirit to aggen, the male 
 part. In allusion to that notion James repre- 
 sents men's lusts as an harlot who entices their 
 understanding and will into its impure em- 
 braces, and from that conjunction conceives 
 sin, and sin being brought forth, it immedi- 
 ately acts and is nourished by frequent repeti- 
 tion till at length it gains such strength that 
 in its turn it begets death, which destroys the 
 sinner. This is the true genealogy of sin and 
 death; lust is the mother of sin, and sin the 
 mother of death, and the sinner the parent of 
 both." 
 
 106
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 This idea is as old as Job 28. 22. In speak- 
 ing of heavenly wisdom he says, 
 
 "Destruction and Death [abbaddon varna- 
 veth; literally, "the devil and his off- 
 spring death"], say 
 
 We have heard a rumor thereof with our 
 ears." 
 
 Here Christ is represented as wisdom (choch- 
 moh) and the "life" and offspring of God; 
 and "death" the offspring of the devil. See in 
 Rev. 9. 11 the king of the bottomless pit is 
 called Abaddon and Apollyon. Abaddon is 
 his name in Hebrew, and the very word used 
 by Job, and Apollyon is the same in Greek 
 letters. The violation of law produces death, 
 and the devil is the father of lies. The law of 
 nature is the only rule of action that protects, 
 and fear produces obedience to the law. Hence 
 "fear" is the beginning of all wisdom. 
 
 Laws in all human governments are de- 
 signed for protection and education, and they 
 accomplish their purposes only as they are 
 obeyed or enforced. When no law is made no 
 penalty can exist, and where there is no pen- 
 alty there is no fear, and when there is no 
 "fear" education has failed of results. 
 
 While there is but one kingdom of nature, 
 there are three kingdoms in nature: mineral, 
 
 107
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 vegetable, and animal. A stone lives in but 
 one, the mineral; a tree in two, the mineral 
 and the vegetable; a man in all three. Each 
 of these kingdoms has its own immutable laws, 
 strictly administered in its own department. 
 Death is the penalty of transgression in all. 
 And death has been defined by Herbert Spen- 
 cer, "to be out of harmony with environment." 
 A tree lives in two kingdoms, its root in the 
 mineral and its stock and branches in the vege- 
 table. Out of harmony with either kingdom 
 means death to the whole tree. It can die 
 through its roots or through its trunk. Out of 
 harmony with either environment destroys 
 root and branches. A man lives in all three 
 kingdoms, and is circumscribed by the laws of 
 each; and if out of harmony with either, the 
 whole man dies. Either kingdom had power 
 to serve him; but if the forces of either turn 
 against him, he is ruined. 
 
 Now, apply these scriptural principles to 
 the temperance question! There is no law 
 against drunkenness; and, as there is no pen- 
 alty, no man is afraid to get drunk. He is 
 recognized and protected as one of the social 
 compact and cannot be restrained until he per- 
 forms an overt act by becoming disorderly, 
 disturbing the public peace, or becoming a 
 menace to public safety. As there is no law 
 
 108
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 against drunkenness a man commits no crime 
 when he gets drunk and destroys his capability 
 for self-government; he is still a member of 
 society, is protected, and cannot be restrained. 
 Society must chance the danger and stand the 
 consequences, take all the risks for the de- 
 struction of life and property, and protect the 
 man in what is termed a self-responsible con- 
 dition. This may be right under moral law; 
 but under social law it logically will demolish 
 the whole social fabric. 
 
 Why not allow a man to build a combustible 
 shanty on a corner lot of a densely populated 
 city, and make society take the risk of future 
 danger? That shanty might stand for years 
 before it takes fire, causing the destruction of 
 life and property ! Why not wait till the dan- 
 ger develops into results? Why not allow a 
 man to trot a horse or run an automobile a 
 mile in two minutes through the streets of a 
 populous city? Simply for the reason, that, 
 while in society, he must be made to obey the 
 social law. Otherwise he should be put out 
 of society. 
 
 It might be asked if this be so, have not 
 the temperance people under this rule a right 
 to refuse to pay taxes incurred by inconsistent 
 legislation? Not if the law was the fairly ex- 
 pressed will of society. In such a case it 
 
 109
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OF DEMOCKACY 
 
 would be the duty of temperance people to 
 obey the law or (like the Pilgrim Fathers) 
 leave the social compact. A refusal to obey 
 such a law would not be a crime against na- 
 ture, nor a violation of natural law, but it 
 would be a crime against society, as resistance 
 would engender greater evils and prevent 
 moral reform. Resistance would change the 
 field of contest, array the majority against the 
 minority, and moral reform w r ould come to 
 an end by arraying against it a superior force, 
 taking it out of its own sphere of action. 
 
 The "survival of the fittest" is the continu- 
 ance of that which fits the environments. A 
 moral reform can never succeed against su- 
 perior numbers ; and in a political or physical 
 contest nothing but moral forces can promote 
 moral reform; and, when it gains a firm con- 
 trol over the moral sentiment of a people, it 
 crystallizes in the form of law. It is then out 
 of the hands of the moral reformer. 
 
 In the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- 
 ments to our Constitution we see the struggles 
 of a moral reform w r ith a pagan institution ; in 
 the Eighteenth Amendment are crystallized the 
 results of two thousand years' contest with 
 another; and the laws of the whole Christian 
 world but record the struggles of Christianity 
 with pagan institutions. No pagan nations 
 no
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 make any such history or show any such prog- 
 ress. Moral reformers are always in the mi- 
 nority, and moral force is their only weapon. 
 When anything is substituted for this, the 
 moral reformer abandons his post and moral 
 reform is at an end. 
 
 THE UNWRITTEN LAW 
 
 Lord Coke once said, "The reason of the law 
 is the life of the law^; and, if a man know law 
 and know not the reason thereof, he will soon 
 forget his superficial knowledge." This means 
 that a knowledge of the fundamental principle 
 and purpose of law is a safer guide than the 
 committing of specific enactments. 
 
 This harmonizes with Paul's great state- 
 ment that "the letter killeth, but the spirit 
 giveth life." The purpose of law is to preserve 
 order and protect human rights of life, prop- 
 erty, fame, and family. Whatever subverts 
 this principle is unlawful. Whatever helps 
 it is in harmony with the principle of law. 
 
 Accordingly, Blackstone affirms, "If a judge 
 is sworn to administer a specific law, and it 
 can be shown that that law contravenes the 
 law of God or the law of nature, his oath binds 
 him to set aside this law, not on the ground 
 that it is bad law, but on the ground that it is 
 not law ; for if the object of the lawmaker was 
 ill *
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 to confine his law to the law of God, if he made 
 a mistake, it is only like a clerical mistake, so 
 that in setting aside his law, the judge carries 
 out his intention." 
 
 It is perfectly in harmony with this state- 
 ment that in all civilized nations and through 
 all past time a man has been regarded as the 
 natural protector of his home, his wife, his 
 sister, and his daughter. It has, therefore, 
 been recognized that when the good name of 
 either was at stake, it was not unmanly for the 
 natural protector to defend her, if necessary, 
 with his life; and it speaks well for American 
 manhood that a jury cannot be found that will 
 convict a man of murder who thus defends his 
 own household. 
 
 This unwritten law as thus defined, instead 
 of being a retrograde movement, is strongest 
 in the most highly civilized. The statutes cov- 
 ering criminal jurisprudence are all man- 
 made; and even our constitutions were each 
 made by delegated bodies of men ; but the un- 
 written law is the law of nature, and, there- 
 fore, the law of God. Any laws or sentiments 
 in conflict with it must be lower laws, for 
 there can be none higher. 
 
 When Jesus said, "If the master of the house 
 had known in what hour the thief was coming, 
 ... he would . . . not have left his house to 
 112
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 be broken through," he was giving expression 
 to the universally recognized truth that when 
 a house is attacked a man does not have to call 
 an officer but is himself the natural protector 
 of his own domicile. Civilization has accepted 
 this idea of Jesus as a fundamental, legal 
 axiom, but it has a wider significance than men 
 are accustomed to give it. The law of self- 
 defense is universally recognized; and the 
 Saviour quoted with approval Adam's refer- 
 ence to his wife, "This is now bone of my 
 bones, and flesh of my flesh: . . . Therefore, 
 shall a man leave his father and his mother, 
 and shall cleave unto his own wife" (Gen. 2. 
 23). One has the same right to protect his 
 wife as himself. 
 
 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 
 
 One of the most notorious defects in our 
 civilization is the utter inadequacy of our 
 criminal law and its administration to prevent 
 murder. We have in single States more mur- 
 ders annually than in all of Great Britain. 
 Our laws are so loose that a shrewd criminal 
 with money can slip through, and the ad- 
 ministration is so lax that hardly anyone crim- 
 inally inclined is afraid of the law. One mur- 
 derer gets more modern sympathy than all the 
 murder victims in the State combined. 
 
 113
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Yet with crimes increasing and murder 
 abounding, we find this modern sentiment or- 
 ganizing against capital punishment even for 
 rape and murder. 
 
 A judge, now deceased, who for thirty years 
 administered the law in the Courts of Com- 
 mon Pleas, once remarked when the subject of 
 punishment for crime was under discussion, 
 "The taking of life after due process of the 
 law as penalty for murder seems to be the only 
 form of life-taking to which the average Amer- 
 ican has an objection." The same judge once 
 declared, to the shocked sensibilities of cer- 
 tain practitioners and their clients in the old 
 quarter sessions, that drunkenness could not 
 be pleaded before him in extenuation of the 
 crime of murder; that to his mind it was an 
 aggravation of the offense. 
 
 Recently a governor, in declining to inter- 
 fere in the cases of two culprits for whom 
 drunkenness was advanced as an excuse, had 
 the courage and good sense to decline to inter- 
 fere on any such grounds. "I may say that 
 in view of the disregard of human life which 
 some elements of our population continually 
 exhibit, I do not think that our criminal law 
 for the punishment of murder in the first de- 
 gree should be relaxed." 
 
 Of course the emotional propaganda that 
 
 114
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 proposes to change our fundamental law by the 
 elimination of capital punishment will always 
 try to quote the Bible. Wherein does their 
 fallacy lie? Where all fallacies lie in a con- 
 clusion drawn from a statement of fact; false 
 conclusions drawn from the facts of nature 
 are the source of all false views of nature, and 
 erroneous conclusions drawn from statements 
 of revelation form the basis of all religious 
 error. 
 
 Science is from scio ("to know") and the 
 history of its teaching and progress would be 
 a revelation of exploded ideas, human thoughts 
 perverting true lessons of nature's facts. All 
 progression is based on ignorance. Where 
 there is no ignorance there is no room for 
 progression. 
 
 The Legislature of Michigan abolished capi- 
 tal punishment from a conclusion drawn from 
 the Bible statement that God protected Cain 
 after the murder of his brother Abel. "And 
 Jehovah appointed a sign for Cain, lest any 
 finding him should smite him." From this 
 statement they conclude that God was opposed 
 to capital punishment. But after an incalcula- 
 ble amount of evil, and the sacrifice of many 
 innocent lives, the conclusion was seen to be a 
 false inference. No civil government was then 
 in existence where life could be taken by a 
 
 115
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 process of law, and individual retribution or 
 inob violence was what was forbidden. This 
 was clearly expressed, "lest anyone finding 
 him should smite him." But as soon as gov- 
 ernment was established and a. law published 
 the criminal was turned over to legal authority 
 and the mandate issued, "Whoso sheddeth 
 man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." 
 
 Have the criminals who do outrageous 
 things any rights which can overbalance the 
 natural instincts of manhood? The apostle 
 to the Gentiles says : "They that practice such 
 things are worthy of death" (Rom. 1. 32). 
 
 A study of the thirteenth chapter of Ro- 
 mans, where the purpose of law is shown to be 
 "a terror to evildoers and a praise to them 
 that do well," and the administrator of law 
 is made "an avenger for wrath to him that 
 doeth evil," will show the basis for civil gov- 
 ernment and indicate its right to take even 
 life for the public good. 
 
 We think a careful investigation will show 
 that wherever the death penalty for murder 
 is relaxed murders will multiply. In our tem- 
 perance campaigns embarrassing statistics 
 have been presented to the "Drys" about the 
 number of murders in Kansas over Nebraska, 
 a wet State. There was only one reason that 
 there were more murders in the dry State than 
 
 116
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LAW 
 
 in the wet, and that was that there was no 
 death penalty for any crime in Kansas; and 
 its penitentiaries are populated with murder- 
 ers, who came across the State lines to commit 
 their deed, and waited their opportunity to 
 entice their victims where it would be safe to 
 kill them, and where for such deeds they were 
 boarded at public expense in as palatial quar- 
 ters as they ever expected to live in, with a 
 guarantee of it for the balance of their life, 
 and a possibility that a governor could pardon 
 them out at any time. Imprisonment has never 
 been a sufficiently strong deterrent to keep men 
 from committing rape or murder. 
 
 117
 
 VII 
 
 THE LATEST EVOLUTION OF 
 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
 
 THE State of Oregon was founded by mis- 
 sionaries. It was built on the foundation of 
 the Bible and church, schools and homes. Its 
 pioneers labored for the glory of God and the 
 weal of man. It has collected and grown a 
 population of the most progressive thinkers 
 and independent actors to be found under our 
 flag. It has more colleges in proportion to its 
 population than any other State. It is a land 
 of churches, schools, homes, and modern sys- 
 tems of government. I believe it is building 
 the purest civilization with the highest moral 
 standards and the freest popular government 
 of any State in the Union or country of the 
 world. The Australian ballot system was tried 
 out there and passed on to the other States. 
 The direct primary nominations were inaugu- 
 rated in Oregon and have since been adopted 
 elsewhere. The anomaly of allowing United 
 States senators to be elected for the people 
 by proxy was wiped off the map in Oregon and 
 
 118
 
 THE LATEST EVOLUTION 
 
 a direct method of permitting the people to se- 
 lect their own senators was tried out, made 
 good, and finally was embodied in the federal 
 Constitution, so that every State in the Union 
 could follow Oregon's lead. 
 
 There came a period of corruption and po- 
 litical chicanery. Oregon representatives no 
 longer stood for the ideals of the people and 
 outraged their moral sentiment with impunity. 
 Conspiracies to rob the government were rife, 
 and land fraud cases going unrebuked created 
 no comment. But the people secured the 
 direct primary, adopted the initiative, referen- 
 dum, and recall, so that they could select their 
 own leaders, write their own laws, repeal those 
 that did not suit them, rewrite those that 
 ought to be changed, and call back from office 
 those whom they had trusted and who had 
 proved unworthy. 
 
 Some years ago I lectured on this subject 
 before the Illinois Bar Association and was 
 justifying the recall of judges on any needed 
 occasion when an Illinois judge inquired: 
 "How many judges have you ever recalled in 
 Oregon?" 
 
 I replied, "Not one." 
 
 "Then why all this to-do about it?" 
 
 I said, "You may have the recall through 
 generations and never need to use it, but the 
 
 119
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 States that do not have it need it all the time. 
 It is like the Texan's pistol. The minister, 
 arguing with him that he should not carry a 
 revolver, said, 'How long have you carried it?' 
 
 " 'Ten years.' 
 
 " 'Have you ever needed to use it?' 
 
 " 'No/ he replied. 'A man may carry one 
 of these things a lifetime and never need it, but 
 if it's ever called for, he needs it bad.' ' 
 
 The more I travel over other States the more 
 justification I see of the Oregon system of 
 government. We have the best State govern- 
 ment and the best governed cities, with the 
 freest expression of the popular will and the 
 highest type of Christian civilization to be 
 found under our flag. Most of the moral re- 
 forms that have been adopted wiping off the 
 stain of our political corruption, open gam- 
 bling, lewdness and looseness, closing the sa- 
 loons on Sunday, then at midnight, then pro- 
 hibiting the liquor traffic day and night for- 
 ever have come about not through legislative 
 enactments, nor through the help of profes- 
 sional politicians, but have come to pass 
 through the initiation by the people them- 
 selves, or by a referendum to the people, or by 
 putting the fear of God upon the politicians 
 through the recall. 
 
 A list of the bad measures rejected by the 
 
 120
 
 THE LATEST EVOLUTION 
 
 people and another list of the good laws ac- 
 cepted since we have possessed the parapher- 
 nalia for popular government, would be the 
 most powerful argument for this method of 
 legislation. More beneficent laws were passed 
 in Oregon in the first ten years of the people's 
 reign than in the entire previous history of the 
 State. 
 
 Every defect that has developed in our de- 
 mocracy can be cured better by more democ- 
 racy than by less. The same old struggle that 
 began on the dark vortex of history is on in the 
 United States to-day. In our republic it is 
 not the petty tyrant or the hereditary sover- 
 eign but the wily politician who tries to 
 thwart the will of the people. And the upward 
 trend in America is the downing of the po- 
 litical boss and the uprising for the people's 
 rights. Our patriotic fathers adopted the 
 right principle and wrote it into their Con- 
 stitutions, but it was new to them ; and when 
 they came to apply it they hedged a little. 
 They said, "The people can be trusted to elect 
 all but the Presidents and the United States 
 senators. These are so important that the 
 people might make a mistake. We will let 
 them elect electors who, acting for them, shall 
 select a fit man for President." So we have 
 inherited our cumbrous system of Presidential 
 121
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCKACY 
 
 elections from the fearful timidity of our fore- 
 fathers. The Constitution provided that the 
 people might elect the lower House of Congress 
 but the senators should be elected in the sev- 
 eral State legislatures. 
 
 It is interesting that the only two big blun- 
 ders made by the founders of our nation were 
 the two that limited the people's power in self- 
 government. The first one has been corrected 
 by common consent through the custom of 
 practically instructing the Presidential elec- 
 tors and they dare not ignore that instruction. 
 
 Then Oregon led the States in taking the 
 election of senators out of the political rings 
 that too long had controlled, and permit- 
 ting the sovereign people to say who should 
 represent them in the highest branch of the 
 government. They passed a law in Oregon 
 that any candidate for the Legislature must 
 sign one of three statements. Statement num- 
 ber one : "I will always vote for that candidate 
 for United States senator who shall have re- 
 ceived the largest number of votes in the pri- 
 mary election preceding." Statement number 
 two : "I will vote for that candidate who shall 
 receive the highest number of votes within my 
 party." Statement number three: "I decline 
 to say beforehand for whom I will vote for 
 senator." Of course we never elected anyone 
 122
 
 THE LATEST EVOLUTION 
 
 who signed the third plank, and only a few who 
 signed the second. The people believed in the 
 first proposition. They selected four United 
 States senators before the government passed 
 the federal amendment electing United States 
 senators by popular votes, and they never al- 
 lowed the hands of the political boss to touch 
 their ark of the covenant the integrity of 
 popular government. I saw a Kepublican 
 Legislature with practical unanimity elect 
 George E. Chamberlain, the Democratic candi- 
 date, because the people had made him their 
 choice. This has been criticized, but more gen- 
 erally commended, for the people cannot be 
 said to rule unless they can select from either 
 party the man they want. Party machine or 
 no machine, the people of America have set 
 their hand to the task of asserting the people's 
 choice in selecting officers and writing laws 
 and to deal with the men who dare to sell 
 them out or to betray their trusts. 
 
 When the people had selected George E. 
 Chamberlain, a Democrat, but elected an over- 
 whelmingly Eepublican Legislature, there fol- 
 lowed one of the shrewdest plays ever made 
 to get honorable men to betray their trust. 
 The old-line politicians proposed to get up a 
 petition to be signed by Republican voters of- 
 fering to exempt these elected representatives 
 
 123
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 of the people from fulfilling their promise in 
 view of the fact that the unexpected had hap- 
 pened and the people had chosen a Democrat. 
 
 I was at that time pastor of a prominent 
 Methodist church in Portland, and as bearing 
 on our fight for the people's right to rule, I 
 delivered an address which was printed in 
 seventy newspapers and sent in popular form 
 to every member-elect in the Oregon Legisla- 
 ture. It did its share in the making of history 
 for popular rights. It was entitled, "That 
 Petition for Perjury." 
 
 It recalls some matters of history. In 1824 
 there were four Presidential candidates Wil- 
 liam H. Crawford, Andrew Jackson, Henry 
 Clay, and John Quincy Adams. Jackson re- 
 ceived the vast majority of the popular vote 
 and a majority of the electoral vote, but not 
 having a constitutional majority over all the 
 candidates, there was no election and the se- 
 lection was thrown into Congress. Clay, who 
 had received the smallest number of votes, 
 withdrew and threw his influence for Adams, 
 and Crawford's following w r ent to Adams, so 
 by this combination the people's choice was 
 defeated. Adams made Clay his secretary of 
 state as a reward, but the people later re- 
 pudiated the whole scheme, defeated nearly 
 every representative who had betrayed them, 
 
 124
 
 THE LATEST EVOLUTION 
 
 and in four years afterward triumphantly 
 elected Andrew Jackson as the people's choice 
 by a larger proportional majority than any 
 other candidate has received save Lincoln on 
 his second term. 
 
 Another lesson from history. In the cam- 
 paign of 1876 James Russell Lowell was 
 elected Presidential elector from Massachu- 
 setts. He was a Republican and was for 
 Hayes. But before the meeting of the electoral 
 college Lowell became convinced that Tilden 
 was elected by the people, and contemplated 
 casting his electoral vote for him. He finally 
 decided that it was not his vote to cast, but 
 right or wrong, it belonged to the people who 
 elected him, and therefore he must cast that 
 vote as they expected him to and as their votes 
 had instructed him. 
 
 Jackson's famous slogan, "Shall the People 
 Rule?" is always the supreme issue; and, when 
 the House of Representatives made bold to 
 trample the will of the people under foot the 
 people repudiated their act. The Congress had 
 a constitutional right to do it, but no moral 
 right; and we protested that our Legislature 
 had no moral right to elect any other than the 
 people's choice for our senator. We went 
 down to the Oregon Legislature to see the re- 
 sults, and if there had been a man in our Legis- 
 
 125
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 lature who tried to use his vote in the old way 
 for party purpose or for a machine candidate, 
 we would have stopped him and said: "Stop, 
 sir. That vote in your hand is not yours to 
 give. It belongs to the people of this State, 
 and they told you for whom they wish it cast, 
 We protest against your intention and deny 
 your moral right to bestow it against the peo- 
 ple's will. We know the voice we hear plead- 
 ing for a strict party vote is the voice of Jacob, 
 but the hands are the hands of Esau." 
 
 At this period Theodore Roosevelt met 
 George E. Chamberlain, the Democratic choice 
 of the people, and the great President said: 
 "I am glad to see you, Governor Chamberlain, 
 and senator-to-be. I would have preferred to 
 have a Republican come from Oregon, but I 
 stand for the right of the people to rule; and 
 therefore I want to see you elected senator." 
 What a contrast is this sentiment from that 
 of the small politicians who were trying to 
 scheme out some plot to defeat the people's 
 will! 
 
 I was present in the Capitol at Salem on 
 that day, making the opening prayer at the 
 joint session of the Legislature. I heard the 
 roll called, and every man in both Houses who 
 had taken statement number one pledge, stood 
 up and voted for the people's choice regardless 
 
 126
 
 THE LATEST EVOLUTION 
 
 of party politics. Every man of them stood 
 with the people and voted as they were in- 
 structed. It is safe to go up or down with 
 the people of this country. They will be here 
 doing business at the old stand when the cor- 
 ruptionists who seek to entice them to betray 
 their trusts, only to forsake them in their 
 weakness and folly and shame, are all forgot- 
 ten. It is a great tribute we pay to the average 
 morality and loyalty of Oregon men when we 
 state this fact. For loyalty to principle is 
 higher than loyalty to party. The first is 
 founded upon the eternal verities of nature 
 and nature's God, the second upon the shift- 
 ing sands of political policies. Far above any 
 flickering light or battle lantern of party is the 
 Everlasting Sun of Kighteousness in whose 
 beauties are the duties of men. 
 
 THE MODERN MAGNA CHAETA 
 
 It is significant that in a far Western State 
 there should have been evolved the outstand- 
 ing characteristics of the best system of popu- 
 lar government known. First the Australian 
 ballot system was adopted to secure honesty 
 in elections. An effective registration law fol- 
 lowed, which guards the integrity of the privi- 
 lege of American citizenship participation in 
 government. Then came the direct primary, 
 
 127
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 which absolutely insures popular selection of 
 all candidates, and establishes the responsibil- 
 ity of the public servant to the electorate, and 
 not to any political boss or special interest or 
 convention. Plainly stated, the aim and pur- 
 pose of these laws was to destroy the irrespon- 
 sible political machine and to put all elective 
 officers in the State in direct touch with the 
 people as the real source of authority ; to give 
 full force to the ballot of every individual 
 elector, and to eliminate dominance of cor- 
 porate and corrupt influences in the adminis- 
 tration of public affairs. The Oregon laws 
 marked the course that must be pursued be- 
 fore the wrongful use of corporate power can 
 be dethroned, the people restored to power, 
 and lasting reform secured. They insure ab- 
 solute government by the people. 
 
 In all this modern movement to put the 
 power of government back in the hands of the 
 people Oregon has been a leader. Her initia- 
 tive and referendum became the keystone of 
 the arch of popular government. Under it, 
 if a certain percentage of the voters say ten 
 per cent sign a petition for a law, and file 
 it with the proper officials, the law is published 
 by the State in a State book of measures and 
 mailed as a State campaign document. In it 
 arguments on both sides of each proposition 
 
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 may be presented by the individual or com- 
 mittee responsible for bringing up the measure 
 and by the one who would be affected should 
 the measure pass. This book is mailed by the 
 State to every registered voter and becomes the 
 political Bible of the Oregonian for the cam- 
 paign mouths; and though I have known the 
 State to vote on thirty- two measures at one 
 election, the average man could discuss every 
 one, giving the pros and cons of the argu- 
 ments with the ease of a practiced lawyer. The 
 educational value of this experiment in gov- 
 ernment is limitless. 
 
 The initiative is defined as the giving of the 
 people the right to propose legislation which 
 is to be acted upon, properly designated on the 
 official ballot. Every measure is voted upon 
 by "Yes" or "No." A majority of one "Yes" 
 makes it the people's law. 
 
 The referendum is the method of referring all 
 legislation to the people for their final ac- 
 ceptance or rejection. As generally advocated 
 it requires that no law save a strictly defined 
 class of urgent measures for the public peace, 
 health, and safety, which usually must have a 
 two-thirds majority to pass, shall go into ef- 
 fect without waiting a fixed time, say ninety 
 days. If during this time a part of the voters 
 say ten per cent sign a petition for a refer- 
 
 129
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 endum on that law it will not go into effect 
 until the next regular election, when the people 
 vote on it, and if a majority vote "No," it is 
 as though never enacted. 
 
 The referendum measures are divided into 
 optional referendum referred on the basis of a 
 petition for it, or compulsory referendum, 
 where the law requires that legislation of that 
 subject matter be referred to the people with 
 or without their petition. 
 
 The initiative and the referendum provided 
 for what is known as direct legislation by the 
 people rather than indirect or legislation 
 through representatives, and in some States 
 the people have taken over so much of the 
 power of making and unmaking laws, electing 
 and recalling officers, that the phrase popular 
 versus representative government has come to 
 be a standard of measurement. 
 
 The next great forward step in restoring to 
 the people the rights of self-government was 
 the adoption of a Corrupt Practices Act, which 
 prevents any abuse under the initiative and 
 referendum, direct primary or the recall. It 
 was such a provision recently invoked in Min- 
 nesota, where a candidate ran in the primary 
 against A. J. Volstead, author of our prohi- 
 bition law. He made a campaign against him, 
 asserting that he was an atheist, and unfor- 
 
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 tunately won the Republican primary on that 
 false charge. But there is a provision that if 
 any man secures for himself a nomination or 
 election to a position of emolument or honor 
 on a false charge against his opponent, the 
 courts shall set the election aside. Mr. Vol- 
 stead came into the court and proved that he 
 was a Christian, a church member, and fre- 
 quently made addresses in the churches around 
 Washington, and the result of the primary was 
 set aside. Volstead was nominated by his 
 party and triumphantly reelected. 
 
 The recall is a plan by which the people, 
 having trusted any man with one of their of- 
 fices, can upon learning that he has been un- 
 faithful in the discharge of duty, has been 
 corrupt, or drunk, or treacherous, or unmind- 
 ful of the people, be removed by them as easily 
 as he was elected by them; the theory being 
 that any power that has the right to employ 
 for its own service ought to have the right to 
 discharge for a failure to render the service. 
 
 The sensitiveness which has been displayed 
 in the mortal dread of what is known as the re- 
 call applied to judges, has never in America 
 experienced a single fact to justify it. There 
 is no logical reason why the courts should not 
 be within the power of the sovereign people as 
 well as their executive and legislative depart- 
 
 131
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 ments. What is there about judges that makes 
 them so sacred that the people who elected 
 them and pay them and submit to their de- 
 cisions should not discharge them if they be- 
 tray the people's trust? They are all lawyers ! 
 Oregon has had this system for fifteen years 
 and has never proposed to use it upon one 
 judge, but that does not prove that the system 
 is not needed. It is an admonitory or precau- 
 tionary measure the existence of which pre- 
 vents the necessity for its use. But it is an 
 essential feature of the complete system of 
 popular government and puts the fear of God 
 upon those who are no sooner in office than 
 they adopt the creed of a certain Tammany 
 leader, "The public be damned.'' 
 
 These reforms are essential to adapt a gov- 
 ernment to modern civilization and should be 
 adopted quickly by the States, that our laws 
 may conform to our present needs as the bark 
 of a growing tree expands with the swelling 
 trunk. Any reform which brings the govern- 
 ment nearer the heart of the people and the 
 convictions of the people to bear directly upon 
 legislation and law enforcement is not only 
 good American doctrine, but it is divine doc- 
 trine, for it is in harmony with Him who said, 
 "Let us make man in our image, . . . and let 
 them have dominion." 
 
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 Those States that have adopted all this para- 
 phernalia of popular government have been 
 the first to secure the commission plan for 
 their cities, with amazingly good results in 
 almost every place. Under the old system with 
 a city council of politicians having no sense 
 of responsibility to their own constituents, our 
 government became so corrupt that in a thou- 
 sand cities the council was the sore spot of the 
 place. The old order has been superseded by 
 the Galveston plan of electing a mayor who 
 supervises the business and the executive work 
 of the city and placing a responsible head, not 
 to represent each ward, but to represent the 
 city as a whole in the management of a given 
 department for which he is held responsible. 
 This more nearly resembles the President's 
 Cabinet, making each man the head of a de- 
 partment, locating responsibility and eliminat- 
 ing that collective body of irresponsible poli- 
 ticians we used to call the city council. 
 
 THE COMMON PEOPLE TO THE RESCUE 
 
 The present, representative system is weak 
 in both theory and practice. It interposes an 
 easily corrupted Legislature between the peo- 
 ple and their law and likewise places a politi- 
 cal party, no less easily corrupted, and made 
 up in its managing members of those who de^ 
 
 133
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 pend upon their party connections for daily 
 bread, and consequently hold their honor and 
 their loyalty to the people cheaper than the 
 price daily offered by the monopolist and the 
 saloonist. The good citizen, on the contrary, 
 can exercise little influence in politics or gov- 
 ernment, his activities being engrossed in the 
 business of making a living. 
 
 The initiative and referendum, however, is 
 no longer an experiment. The people have 
 shown themselves qualified to elect and legis- 
 late for themselves. They have passed upon 
 thirty-eight charter amendments in one city 
 at one time with a discrimination that would 
 have been a credit to any legislative body that 
 ever assembled in that State. Their intelli- 
 gence and honesty have been brought directly 
 to bear upon the machine of government by 
 the new system. The collective citizen holds 
 no caucus, feels the lash of no party whip, fears 
 no monopoly. He is free to vote his best con- 
 viction without fear or favor and is less in- 
 fluenced by party prejudice than ever before. 
 The recall puts us in close touch with our 
 public servants. They are within commanding 
 distance and subject to discharge for disobe- 
 dience. If we are going to direct the job, we 
 want to be able to reach our employee. 
 
 The people enjoy the direct exercise of their 
 
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 sovereignty. They have power; they can get 
 things done ; effort is worth while. The system 
 is a great educator and infuses the average 
 citizen with courage and interest in public af- 
 fairs. The farmer or fisherman out in my 
 State can discuss law and politics with you 
 and keep you busy. They study every measure 
 and the arguments for and against. They can 
 get honest legislation, for there is no infidelity 
 in the collective citizen body, and its judg- 
 ments are sound and its collective honesty 
 complete. It has sober sense, rational mental 
 processes, and its purposes are exalted. The 
 whole trend of legislation by the electorate is 
 social, economic, progressive, and reformatory, 
 while the tendency of their legislature is to 
 be machine controlled, self-centered, and cor- 
 rupt. Wherever the people have been given 
 the means of control in lieu of proxy govern- 
 ment the State has been purified, and laws that 
 have been needed for a thousand years and 
 never could be passed anywhere were passed 
 the first time they were proposed in Oregon. 
 For instance, civil suits are settled by a three- 
 fourths jury vote, which is just as safe and saves 
 the taxpayers' money on new trials. The 
 many are wiser than any one. Everybody 
 knows more than anybody. 
 
 One inherent and peculiar merit of the sys- 
 
 135
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 tem is that if the policy is adopted and proves 
 unsuccessful, the initiative, referendum, and 
 recall can be repealed under their own pro- 
 visions, thus providing an easy and certain 
 remedy by which the entire law or any of its 
 provisions can be modified or eliminated alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Laws proposed under the initiative are not 
 subject to amendment and therefore must be 
 carefully drawn to stand the scrutiny of the 
 entire State for a four months' campaign. If 
 errors or jokers are discovered, they are in- 
 variably voted down. Legislative blackmail 
 and grants of special privilege are made impos- 
 sible by the referendum. People act with care 
 and caution and with that spirit of fairness 
 that characterizes the man w r ho earns his liv- 
 ing and acquires his property by legitimate 
 means. 
 
 As a voting citizen of Oregon for sixteen 
 years I look back over the course of the com- 
 mon people's supremacy with absolute admira- 
 tion. They have elected many United States 
 senators, first weeding out the unfit and un- 
 worthy, nominating the best men that ever 
 ran for office, men infinitely better than the 
 convention system ever produced. They have 
 elected thousands of city, county, and muni- 
 cipal officers, and our State was never so well 
 
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 represented in the personnel of its public men 
 as in these years. They have passed upon lit- 
 erally hundreds of measures, and if they have 
 erred, blundered, or failed to discriminate, I 
 am unable to cite the instance. Of course they 
 differed from me sometimes, but they knew 
 what they wanted and why. 
 
 I recall one instance of surprise. It was in 
 1908. The lower river men had gotten up a 
 bill to restrict the fishermen on the Upper 
 Columbia. The Upper Columbia men retali- 
 ated by preparing a complicated bill designed 
 to prohibit fishing at the mouth of the river. 
 I had studied all the measures but these two. 
 Standing in the voting booth, this meditation 
 came : "I don't understand the relative merits 
 of these two bills; each crowd is trying to re- 
 strict the other. They seem to agree on the 
 principle of restriction. I will vote for both 
 bills." Imagine my surprise when I found 
 that fifty thousand other voters were as sharp 
 as I was, and had overwhelmingly carried both 
 bills and given the fish a rest ! 
 
 In 1910 the people thought they could use 
 the State initiative to get through county di- 
 visions. Nine such bills were presented. The 
 people resented this dragging of local matters 
 into a State contest and voted every one down 
 by a vote of from ten or twenty to one. The 
 137
 
 THE DIVINE EIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 conservatism of the electorate is proven by the 
 fact that of the thirty-two measures presented 
 on the ballot in 1910 just nine were adopted, 
 while the general interest of the people in the 
 measures is shown by the fact that an average 
 of seventy-five per cent of the qualified voters 
 acted on them. There has never been general 
 dissatisfaction as a result of a vote. The plan 
 has been found inexpensive. You could put 
 one hundred measures on the ballot and edu- 
 cate the people in the State on all the measures 
 cheaper than you could maintain a Legislature 
 in existence until they w r ere thrashed out. 
 
 Then it has corrected so many old abuses. 
 Our Legislature once rejected a corporation 
 franchise tax law, but the people at once had 
 power to pass it by the referendum. The Legis- 
 lature rejected a direct primary law, but the 
 people at once adopted it by a vote of more 
 than three and a half to one. The Legislature 
 rejected a corrupt practices act, but the people 
 adopted it overwhelmingly. I recall that the 
 Home Telephone System wanted to come into 
 Portland, and because of the poor service and 
 insolence of the old monopoly the folks desired 
 it, but the old corporation made its signs to 
 the city council and a charter for the new com- 
 pany was refused. By the following election 
 the people had the initiative and they gave a 
 
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 charter to the new company by a vote of six- 
 teen to one, which proportion may recall 
 sacred memories to some. The knowledge 
 that the electorate can take a given matter 
 into its hands if the Legislature is recreant 
 has proven the best corrective of the abuses 
 that have sprung up in representative govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Think of States like Pennsylvania and New 
 Jersey, where up to the adoption of the Eigh- 
 teenth Amendment, the sovereign people did 
 not have the poor privilege of voting "Yes" 
 or "No" on local option for their county, or 
 prohibition for their State. 
 
 Amid the complexities of modern civiliza- 
 tion the people have no time for that eternal 
 vigilance which is the price of liberty under the 
 old system, where you must go to caucus and 
 watch the game with sleepless vigilance, and 
 then be thwarted by the men who have nothing 
 else to do but scheme out politics. Give us 
 a government where the average man can 
 exert a direct control on nominations in the 
 primaries and in the elections upon the selec- 
 tion of officers, and the making of laws, and 
 then the people rule. 
 
 Let us not stay or hinder popular govern- 
 ment on its road to the throne of power, but 
 aid to our utmost that evolution in our system 
 
 139
 
 THE DIVINE BIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 which links every department legislative, ju- 
 dicial, and executive indissolubly with the 
 power that is responsible for it, the people 
 themselves. In the complicated needs and per- 
 plexities of our time every State in our Union 
 ought to have the whole Oregon system of re- 
 forms, "that government of the people, by the 
 people, and for the people, shall not perish 
 from the earth." 
 
 140
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 MANY years ago I was thrown into intimate con- 
 tact with that philosopher and great original expos- 
 itor of Scriptures, the Rev. I. D. Driver, pioneer in 
 the Oregon country. He called my attention in 
 many conversations to the parallel between the 
 Hebrew commonwealth and our own nation. I owe 
 the seed thought which has developed into the first 
 chapter of this book to his initiative and information, 
 and eighteen years of subsequent investigation has 
 confirmed me in the belief in that parallel which he 
 pointed out. 
 
 (Works read or consulted in the preparation of 
 this volume) 
 
 United States Constitutional History and Law. 
 
 Albert H. Putney, 1908. 
 Sources of the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 C. E. Stevens. 
 The Growth of the Constitution. William H. 
 
 Meigs. 
 The Origin of Republican Forms of Government. 
 
 Oscar S. Straus. 
 The American People: Planting of a Nation.. A. 
 
 Maurice Lowe. 
 
 The American People: The Harvesting of a Na- 
 tion. A. Maurice Lowe. 
 A Treatise on American Citizenship. John S. 
 
 Wise, 1900. 
 
 141
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Legal Ma&ims and Commentary on the Law. 
 Broom. 
 
 The Evolution of the Law: A Historical Review. 
 Henry W. Scott. 
 
 A History of tJie Development of the Law. M. F. 
 Morris. 
 
 The Puritan in Holland, England, and America. 
 Douglas Campbell. 
 
 Leading Cases Simplified. (Criminal Law, Com- 
 mon Law, Equity.) 3 vols. John D. Lawson. 
 
 Criminal Law. (Contracts, Non-Contracts, Mar- 
 riage, and Divorce.) 2 vols. Bishop. 
 
 Principles of the American Law. 2 vols. William 
 Raimond Baird. 
 
 International Law. I. D. Woolsey. 
 
 Principles of the Constitution: Constitutional 
 Limitations. Thomas M. Cooley. 
 
 Biblical Lectures. I. D. Driver. 
 
 The Social Institutions and Ideals of the Bible. 
 Theodore Gerald Scares. 
 
 Sociological Study of the Bible. Louis Wallis. 
 
 Constitutional and Parliamentary History of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church. James M. Buck- 
 ley. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Law. Revised Edition. Henry and 
 Harris. 
 
 Digest of Methodist Law. Bishop Stephen M. 
 Merrill. Revised by David G. Downey. 
 
 A Guide in the Administration of the Discipline. 
 Osmon C. Baker. 
 
 Judicial Decisions of the General Conference. R. 
 J. Cooke. 
 
 Law of Evidence. Sir James FitzJames Stephen. 
 
 The Law of Evidence. 2 vols. W. N. Best. 
 
 142
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Practical Christian Sociology. Wilbur F. Crafts. 
 
 Digest of Evidence. T. W. Hughes. 
 
 The Law of Evidence. 2 vols. Simon Green leaf. 
 
 A Dictionary of Law, Judicial Decisions and Ex- 
 planations. William C. Anderson. 
 
 American Democracy Versus Prussian Marxism. 
 Clarence F. Birdseye. 
 
 Steps in the Development of American Democ- 
 racy. Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin. 
 
 An Abridgment of Kent's Commentaries of Amer- 
 ican Laic. Eben Francis Thompson. 
 
 The American Spirit. Oscar S. Straus. 
 
 The Science of Power. Benjamin Kidd. 
 
 Have Faith in Massachusetts. Calvin Coolidge. 
 
 Americanism Versus Bolshevism. Ole Hanson. 
 
 Democracy and the Church. Samuel George 
 Smith. 
 
 Fear God and Take Your Own Part. Theodore 
 Roosevelt. 
 
 The Battle of Principles. Newell D wight Hillis. 
 
 Social Welfare and the Liquor Traffic. Harry S. 
 Warner. 
 
 The Star of the West. Poleinus Hamilton Swift. 
 
 Supremacy of Law. Bishop John P. Newman. 
 
 The Control of the Drink Traffic. (England.) 
 Henry Carter. 
 
 Cyclopedia of Temperance, ProJiibition, and Pub- 
 lic Morals. Deets Pickett, Editor. 
 
 The Problem of Gambling. E. Benson Perkins. 
 
 The United States A Christian Nation. David J. 
 Brewer. 
 
 Christianity and the United States. John F. 
 Goucher. 
 
 143
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 The Power of Ideal in American History. 
 Ephraim Douglas Adams. 
 
 America in the Making. Lvman Abbott. 
 
 Conditions of Progress in Democratic Govern- 
 ment. Charles H. Hughes. 
 
 Four Aspects of Civil Duty. William Howard 
 Taft. 
 
 Moral Law and Civ-il Law. Eli F. Hitter. 
 
 The Legalized Outlaic. Samuel R. Artman. 
 
 The Logic of Prohibition. Matthew S. Hughes. 
 
 Sunday the True Sabbath of God. Sewall Walter 
 Gamble. 
 
 Our Military History. Leonard Wood. 
 
 The Book of Freemen. Julius F. Seebach. 
 
 My Neighbor the Working Man. James R. Day. 
 
 The Peace Negotiations. Robert Lansing. 
 
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