




                        The Christian Foundation,

                                   Or,

                     Scientific and Religious Journal

                              Vol. 1. No 2.

                             February, 1880.





CONTENTS


The Influence Of The Bible Upon Civil And Religious Liberty.
Liberty Of Conscience.
The Orthodoxy Of Atheism And Ingersolism, By Rev. S. L. Tyrrell.
The Shasters And Vedas, And The Chinese, Government, Religion, Etc.
Ancient Cosmogonies.
Some Of The Beauties (?) Of Harmony Among Unbelievers.
Is God The Author Of Deception And Falsehood?
Darwinism Weighed In The Balances.
Was It Possible?






THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE UPON CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.


Civil government is a state of society in which men are reduced to order;
it is a government in which every citizen has full power over his own
rights, but is not at liberty to infringe upon the rights of others. The
deepest thought in the word _civil_ is the idea of being hedged around by
restraints, so as to be shut in from all privilege, or right, of meddling
with the rights of others. The Welsh use the word "cau," to shut, inclose,
fence, hedge.

Civil liberty is liberty modified by the rights of others. No man has a
right, by any Divine warrant, to infringe upon the rights of another; and
cannot do it without forfeiting more or less of his own. This thought,
that a man may forfeit his rights, is as essential to proper conceptions
of civil government, and civil liberty, as the thought that a man has
rights; for if there be no forfeiture of rights through crime, then all
legal punishments are without foundation in justice; even the right of
self-defense, individually and nationally, ceases to exist. And if this be
taken away, all support and strength in civil government is gone; anarchy
and ruin only may remain. In all civilized nations a man is regarded as
forfeiting his right, _even to life_, by trampling upon the _life-right_
of another, and, while the danger lasts, the assailed may defend his life,
in the absence of any other defense, even at the expense of the life of
the assailant. To deny this doctrine of the right of self-defense, it is
only necessary that we deny that a man can forfeit the right of life. To
do this is equal to the affirmation that God is the author of coexisting
and conflicting rights. Such rights can exist only at the expense of the
destruction of all governments, both human and Divine, as well as all
healthy influences of social institutions. It is essential to civil
liberty to restrain men from all interference with the rights of others.
The greatest degree of civil liberty is enjoyed where men are successfully
restrained from such officious interposition. A people may enjoy civil
liberty without extending the right of suffrage to all ages and to both
sexes; without making all eligible to office; without abolishing paternal
authority over minors; without abolishing the punishment of criminals, or
the right of the State to the service of its citizens when the public good
requires it.

The word _civil_ also signifies courteous, complaisant, gentle and
obliging, well-bred, affable, kind. From this it will be seen that civil
government depends upon the intelligence and righteousness of the people.
The absence of all legal demands and all legal restraints would be the
absence of all government. It would be libertinism or lawlessness. The
great majority of men, from the earliest ages of the world to the present
time, have been under the control of tyrants, and have known little
exemption from despotic rule. There is not a single Pagan, Mahomedan, or
anti-Christian country to-day in which the spirit of liberty has an
abiding place. She may have brooded over them at intervals, but, like
Noah's bird, found no resting place.

The influence of the Bible preventing the young, the mature, and the aged
from crime, causing men and women to love and respect our humanity, is of
necessity _to the same extent_ the very life of civil government, and
consequently the life of civil liberty. It has been said the Bible is the
great protector and guardian of the liberties of men. It was an axiom in
an apostate church, that ignorance is the mother of devotion; but the true
origin of this axiom is that ignorance which fastens the chains of civil
and ecclesiastic despotism.

It is not possible for a people thoroughly under the influence of the
teachings of the religion of Christ