If any charges were ever preferred against him they never came to light.
This is only one of the many instances of cruelty that occurred during the latter part of this year, in which ministers of the gospel were persecuted and imprisoned, and some of them died of their treatment, not because they had been in rebellion, or because they were trying to save the Union, but because they were ministers trying to save the souls of men.
We have been accustomed to look upon ministers of the gospel as the divinely commissioned ambassadors of Heaven, sent forth with a dispensation of the gospel of peace, preaching “Jesus and the resurrection,” and “praying men in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God;” that their one work was to preach the gospel, build churches, devise ways and means for the furtherance of the kingdom of grace, project schemes for the enlargement of the borders of Zion and for the diffusion of the power and spirit of Christianity; to plant the gospel standard where it is not, and build up the waste places; to do the most possible good to the greatest number, and to do this work of love in the spirit of the divine Master, by “being an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity,” “by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned.” In this way and in this spirit to spread “scriptural holiness over these lands,” and promote “peace on earth and good will to men.” These ideas of the spirit and work of the gospel ministry have become so deeply rooted in the hearts of men, and so thoroughly interwoven with their thoughts, that any departure from that work as thus understood creates surprise, suspicion and distrust in the public mind.
When ecclesiastical bodies assemble it is assumed that they meet to deliberate upon the legitimate interests of the Church of Jesus Christ—how that form of it committed to them may be made more efficient in bringing men to a saving knowledge of Christ Jesus, the Head of the Church, and how their plans and polity may be improved and vitalized.
It was a sad day for this country when the gospel ministry first departed from this work and began to legislate upon questions purely secular and political; and if our free government should ever be broken up and our free institutions destroyed—if our religious liberties should ever pass away, and a political and ecclesiastical despotism be established in this land—the philosophic historian of the future, whose melancholy task it will be to chronicle the “decline and fall” of the greatest republic of the world, will linger with painful interest upon that sad event as the beginning of the catastrophe.
The separate but mutually dependent relations of Church and State, the support of the Church and her ministry by the voluntary contributions of the people, liberty of thought and speech, the freedom of worship and the rights of conscience, are almost peculiar to our country and form of government. In these things our institutions are distinct from, and in contrast with, the Church establishments and ecclesiastical hierarchies of Europe and Asia.
They constitute the soul and centre of our free Republican government. The very genius of our institutions resides in them, and the ægis of liberty shields and protects them. The State may not restrict or control them, and the Church dare not intermeddle with the affairs of State.
Tho two may exist together, but can never coalesce. They must be distinct and separate in their laws, their government, their administration, their spirit, their agencies and their objects, while they have the same subjects. So long have Church and State existed separately in this country, and so widely different in their spirit, agencies and objects, that it is both natural and philosophical for the public mind to be disturbed and alarmed by every attempt of the one to intermeddle with the legitimate affairs of the other.
Few events in the history of this country caused greater alarm for our peace and safety in the minds of reflecting men than the appearance before the Congress of the United States of three thousand and fifty clergymen of New England in the following protest against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854:
“To the Honorable, the Senate and House of Representatives, in Congress assembled: