Not satisfied with example, Jesus is quoted as setting forth the principle specifically and unequivocally in plain words. The representatives of Judaism put the question to him plainly. "Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?" There could be no dodging the issue. They who inquired of him stood for the church of his period, the church which he himself recognized as such. "They were intrusted," said Paul, "with the oracles of God." Jesus himself referred to their temple as the house of God, and indignantly drove from its precincts the traders who sought to commercialize the sacred enclosure. It was his custom to attend the synagogue, and occasionally to take an active part in the service. If the ministers of sacred things are rightfully exempt from taxation, the Jewish nation, constituting as a whole a priesthood to God, as the channel of his revelation to man, might surely, from the standpoint of the faithful Bible believer, claim that exemption. Nor were indications wanting that they themselves felt so, and looked upon it as blasphemy to assert the contrary. In the hope to fasten a charge of either blasphemy on the one hand, or sedition on the other, on the wandering teacher, they eagerly awaited his answer. When it came, it was unanswerable. "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Cæsar was the lord of the coinage which bore his "image and superscription," God of the thoughts of their hearts and their private lives. Hence, the former rightfully laid claim to the tribute which enabled the public treasury to carry on not only the work of the coinage, but all other public works of a secular character; while the latter would hold them in the end accountable for their failure to obey his commandments, summed up in the injunction to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."
The difference between the Pharisees, to whom Jesus laid down the law in favor of the payment of honest taxes, and the churches, who are called upon to-day to perform this elementary civic obligation, lies simply in the greater impudence of the latter. The interlocutors of Jesus, says the text, "marveled, and left him, and went away." It is not stated that they proceeded to mend their ways, and to become honest; but they at least had the decency not to attempt to bluff themselves out of a false position. Confronted with the same issue, the churches of our time reject the commands of their alleged lord and master, and consult only their own greed of profit. They will cheat both Caesar and God out of what is due. That which they themselves hypocritically pretend to adore as the word of God they spit on in their actual performance, by deliberate disobedience. In spite of the almost unlimited capacity of human nature to deceive itself, it is practically incredible that they can seriously believe in the puerile sophistry by which they seek to conjure up pretexts for stealing the public revenues. The one plain reason is that they want the money, and are not honest enough to do their duty to the state which shelters and fosters them. They know this perfectly well, however glib they may be in trying to persuade the credulous that in cheating the community out of part of its revenues they are actuated only by the highest and holiest motives, and that the fact that they happen to be beneficiaries of the steal is merely an irrelevant coincidence. It is possible that there are still marines, to whom such a tale can be told.
In justice to sincere believers in Christianity, who do not make their piety a cloak for greed and dishonesty, it should be stated that a conscientious minority in the churches has consistently accepted the principle of religious liberty and of equal justice and has steadily protested against every infringement of the secular principle, even when the abuse seemed to favor their own interests.
AMERICA'S FIRST SECULARIST.
The first great voice raised on these shores for the complete separation of church and state was that of the Baptist preacher Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony, which as a state has proved in the latter days one of the worst traitors to the spirit of democratic justice. While the Baptist church as a whole has become no more loyal to religious freedom than any other, and has thus cheaply and basely surrendered its once glorious heritage, it has always embosomed individual members who could not forget that the founders of their sect suffered persecution to the death for proclaiming full freedom of conscience, and for declaring that the state could not lawfully meddle with affairs of religion. The Rev. Dr. Alvah Hovey, for many years head of the famous Newton (Mass.) Theological Seminary, wrote more than one book in which the principles of Secularism were proclaimed in full measure from the standpoint of orthodox religion, and enforced by numberless arguments drawn from the Bible and from theological lore. The relatively small sect of Seventh Day Adventists is constantly active in fighting for the complete separation of church and state, maintaining with ardor that Christianity stands in no need of patronage from human government. Indeed, it is amazing that any Christian, who is not playing a part, but truly believes in the divine origin of his faith, can come to any other conclusion. If the church is of God, it will live and conquer, though all men forsake it, and needs not the feeble prop of political favor; if it is of man, and must therefore risk failure unless bolstered up by artificial aid and by state subsidy, there is no reason why anybody not directly interested in its prosperity should wish to preserve it. Whether of God or of man, it is in no legitimate sense the ward of the state. In recent years, numerous church members are beginning to have some inkling of these truths, and to express their willingness to renounce the adulterous union with the politicians. At the hearings before the Committee on Taxation of the New York Constitutional Convention, in June, 1915, for example, preachers and laymen, representatives of individual churches and of Men's Christian clubs, appeared in favor of abolishing the exemption from taxation enjoyed by the churches. They did so, not as enemies of the church, but as its most far-sighted friends. Thoroughly believing in its divine mission, they were convinced that it could not afford to make itself dependent on graft for its very life.
THE GENUINE SHOULD BE CONSCIENTIOUS.
From the Christian standpoint, the argument against church exemption is as unanswerable as that from the standpoint of the independent citizen. A sham Christian, to whom the church is a means of getting ahead in the world, and whose profession of faith is a cloak to cover his greed and egotism, or a means of purchasing popularity and business success at any easy rate, may find it natural to carry over into his religious life the spirit of commercialism with which he gouges his fellowmen every day in his business relations. It is only natural that such a one should be impatient of any attempt to introduce ethical considerations into a question of self-advantage; for to him it is axiomatic that any way of getting money without being arrested is good enough for himself and therefore good enough for the church, honesty being merely a question of keeping out of the clutches of the police. He is so ignorant of the very elements of morality that he does not even know that he is a hypocrite, and that the kind of thing which stands for religion to him is as worthless as the cheap varnish which constitutes his imaginary respectability. To such as he, church exemption is justified by the fact that the church is clever enough to get away with it. A genuine believer in the Christian revelation, however, will wish the church, as its divinely commissioned repository, to "keep itself unspotted from the world." He will insist that, so far from seeking its private advantage by questionable means, which may by casuistry be made to appear defensible, it shall conceive of itself as "a city set on a hill," which "cannot be hid," and shall, in all things and at any sacrifice, let its "light shine before men," that by reason of its good works and spotless character it may prove that it is of God, and not of men. In case of doubt, he will demand that it refuse to set an example whereby the weakest observer may be caused to stumble.
With a keener jealousy for its purity than that ascribed to the ancient Roman, who declared that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," he will insist that it avoid the very appearance of evil. Such a believer will never be found in the halls of legislation, howling for the loaves and fishes, and asking that a secular state stultify itself by stealing money from its individual taxpayers, in order to subsidize the proselytism of the sects. And a church composed of such sincere believers will not give occasion to the enemy to blaspheme by evading its obligations through shallow quibbles about its moral influence in the community, but will prefer to give a practical demonstration of its boasted moral quality by willingly paying its honest debts.
THE CHURCH HARMED BY GRAFT.
Like all false principles, the habit of accepting a subsidy from the state does not fail to bring harm to the church itself, as the intelligent and high-minded among its friends are beginning to realize. It is not with impunity that an individual or institution adopts parasitism as a basic condition of existence. At the New York hearing already referred to the Rev. Charles T. Terry, pastor of the Brick Presbyterian church of New York City, did not hesitate to aver that the removal of the exemption graft would kill many churches. A divinely ordained institution is indeed in a parlous state when it has no shame in confessing that it is dependent for its very life on the favor of the politicians, its God having totally forsaken it. Such an organization is better dead. If the alleged divine head of the church is not able or willing to preserve it, in accordance with his emphatic promise, "even unto the end of the world," it is plain either that his promises are spurious, and hence the whole Christian fabric rests upon imposture and deserves to perish; or that the church which fails for lack of divine aid is a pretender and not the real body of believers whom he is pledged never to forsake. Let those so-called Christians, who cling frantically to the legislature instead of to Christ for the preservation of the agency for preaching his gospel, take which horn of the dilemma they please.