The demands of those who require that religion, and especially Christianity should be ignored in our national, state, and municipal laws, are not only unreasonable, but they are in the highest degree unjust and tyrannical. It is a condition of service in connection with any railroad which is operated on Sundays, that he employee be not a Christian. If Christianity is not to control the action of municipal, state, and general governments, then if elections be ordered to be held on the Lord’s Day, Christians cannot vote. If all the business of the country is to go on, on that as on other days, no Christian can hold office. We should thus have not a religious, but an anti-religious test act. Such is the free thinker’s idea of liberty. (A free-thinker is a man whose understanding is emancipated from his conscience. It is therefore natural for him to wish to see civil government emancipated from religion.) But still further, if Christianity is not to control the laws of the country, then as monogamy is a purely Christian institution, we can have no laws against polygamy, arbitrary divorce, or “free love”. All will demand that we yield to the atheists, the oath and the decalogue; and all the rights of citizenship must be confined to blasphemers. Since the fall of Lucifer, no such tyrant has been made known to men as August Comte, the atheist. If, therefore, any man wishes to antedate perdition, he has nothing to do but to become a free-thinker and join in the shout, “Civil government has nothing to do with religion; and religion has nothing to do with civil government.”
Hodge,Charles.
Systematic Theology, Vol III (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Pub, 1982) Page 346.
