A TRACT FOR THE ELECTIONS.
THE question in debate at the forthcoming election lies in a nutshell. It is a question of right and wrong which any honest man may decide without the help of lawyers, orators, or divines. Ought not every man to support his own religion? Has any church a right to tax those who hate it, or to compel its opponents to support it? In Ireland, nine persons of one religion are forced to pay their share towards the support of the religion of the tenth man, whose faith they detest. Is this just? Whether the nine men are
Mahometans or Jews does not enter into the essence of the question, and if the tenth man be or be not the most orthodox of Christians, the inquiry is not at all affected, for it stands thus: — Ought the tenth man to force the other nine to ease him in the personal duty of supporting his religion, and has he any right to make them submit to the establishment of his church as the church of the whole ten? In the present case, the nine (who are mostly poor men) first support their own clergyman, and then are required to pay their quota towards the minister of the tenth, who is usually rich. Is this justice? If the nine were Protestants, and the tenth a Romanist, what would Protestants think of the case? Candid Protestants will own that they would not deliberate for a moment, but would be most resolute in sweeping away so glaring an oppression without a moment's needless delay. But if the victims in this case are Romanists, is it any the less wrong to do them an injustice? Is it more right for a Protestant to be an oppressor titan for any other man? Does our superior light entitle us to do wrong? Ought it not rather to forbid our dealing ungenerously? Honorable minds would rather be oppressed than oppressing, and candid persons think a wrong done by Protestants, who boast their love of liberty, to be more lamentable than one perpetrated by Catholics prejudiced by long ages of superstition. Better far to be persecuted for righteousness' sake than to do violence to other men's consciences under the notion of upholding the truth. In the name of our reformed faith, let no Romanist suffer injustice at our hands, lest our good cause be defiled.
The case is too simple for our opponents to meet it on its own merits, they therefore try to bamboozle the public mind by raising party cries and agitating other questions. We are told that Protestantism will be
endangered by disendowing the Irish church! As if Episcopalianism and
Protestantism were one and the same thing. Look around, electors, and see if the Episcopal Church is not doing more to bring back Popery into
England than any other agency in existence. What are these Ritualists but Papists almost undisguised? Are they not all but avowed Romanists? The cry of "No Popery" ill becomes the mouth of a Church of England
clergyman, when it is by men of his cloth that the ceremonies of Rome are being forced upon us: the fox, with the hen in his mouth, might almost as well cry out, "No robbing of hen roosts!' Are not the Dissenting churches the most thorough Protestant communities in the land? Is it not a fact that very few of their ministers, or members, ever go over to Rome? Do they not, almost without a single exception
advocate justice to Ireland? Are not these sound Protestants very well able to judge what will injure Protestantism? Are they not quite as much in earnest to maintain religious liberty and the reformed faith as any set of men living? They have suffered long; their roll of martyrs is all but endless;
depend upon it they are not the men to lift; a finger to bring back Popery or even to aid its growth. Yet they all demand the disestablishment of the Irish Church, because they believe that injustice weakens the cause which is guilty of it, and that error is strengthened by oppression. They believe that it is for the best interests of Protestantism that everything like religious ascendancy should vanish. Truth they conceive to be most likely to conquer when unattended by anything like force and injustice. They hope that the day' when religious equality is fully established will be the
beginning of the end in which superstitions of all sorts will be utterly vanquished amid the songs of an educated and Christian people. Even if this hope did not cheer the honest man, even if he felt that his true faith might for awhile suffer loss, he dares not do evil that good may come; he leaves results with the eternal Patron of right, and commands that justice be done if the heavens fall.
The extreme age of the endowments of the Irish church is urged in their defense, but no lapse of time can make wrong right, or give immunity to robbery. Slavery was an ancient system, but it was right to abolish it, and the same holds good of state-churchism. The government has in past ages transferred ecclesiastical property from one sect to another by the same paramount right which now justifies it, while respecting all existing interests, in using church property for the general good. No one proposes to touch the private property of any church, it is only with its public endowments that the State will deal; they are now the source of continual
irritation and abiding injustice. That noble statesman, Mr. Gladstone, is to be honored for proclaiming that funds so long a curse to Ireland shall henceforth be employed for the benefit of the commonwealth.
Let every Christian vote for the proposed deed of justice as devoutly as he would pray, and feel as earnest in promoting it as in living righteously in his private life. Let Churchmen rise to disinterested nobility, as some of their clergy have done, and think more of right and of the national good than of party and power. Let Dissenters remember how long their fathers were oppressed, and show their gratitude to God for their present liberties by demanding the same justice for others which they hope to receive
themselves. The sin of a national establishment founded in wrong belongs to us all as citizens until by voice and vote we have protested against its continuance. We must not be partakers of other men's sins, as .we shall be if our inaction gives assent to them. We must do to others as we would that they should do to us; and as we would ourselves be free from oppression, we must aid our fellow subjects in dashing to the ground the galling yoke. Even if we avoid political discussions at other times, on this occasion we must act vigorously and promptly, and MAY GOD DEFEND
THE RIGHT!
SPECIAL TRACT. — From C. H SPURGEON'S "Sword and Trowel,"
published monthly, price 3d.; post free 4d. tracts, 64 pox 100; post free 8 stamps. — passmore and Alabaster, 15, Paternoster Row.
THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL
DECEMBER, 1868.