This would be an outrage on natural right." The Janesville (Wis.) _Gazette_, at the close of an article on the proposed amendment, speaks thus of the effect of the movement, should it succeed:-- "But independent of the question as to what extent we are a Christian nation, it may well be doubted whether, if the gentlemen who are agitating this question should succeed, they would not do society a very great injury.

Such measures are but the initiatory steps which ultimately lead to _restrictions of religious freedom_, and to commit the government to measures which are as foreign to its powers and purposes as would be its action if it should undertake to determine a disputed question of theology." The _Weekly Alta Californian_ of San Francisco, March 12, 1870, said:-- "The parties who have been recently holding a convention for the somewhat novel purpose of procuring an amendment to the Constitution of the United States recognizing the Deity, do not fairly state the case when they assert that it is the right of a Christian people to govern themselves in a Christian manner.

If we are not governing ourselves in a Christian manner, how shall the doings of our government be designated?
The fact is, that the movement is one to bring about in this country that union of church and State which all other nations are trying to dissolve." The N.Y._Independent_, Feb., 1870, spoke of the movement as having the same chance of success that a union of church and State would have.
The Champlain _Journal_, speaking of the incorporating the religious principle into the Constitution, and its effect upon the Jews, said:-- "However slight, it is the entering wedge between church and State.
If we may cut off ever so few persons from the right of citizenship on account of difference of religious belief, then with equal justice and propriety may a majority at any time dictate the adoption of still further articles of belief, until our Constitution is but the text book of a sect beneath whose tyrannical sway _all liberty of religious opinion will be crushed_." For a union of church and State, strictly so-called, we do not look.

In place of this, we apprehend that what is called "the image," a creation as strange as it is unique, comes in--not a State controlled by the church, and the church in turn supported by the State, but an ecclesiastical establishment empowered to enforce its own decrees by civil penalties; which, in all its practical bearings, amounts to exactly the same thing.

The direct aim of the movement is undoubtedly a union of church and State; a result which it will so nearly accomplish as to secure, by way of compromise, the erection of the image.
Some one may now say, As you expect this movement to carry, you must look for a period of religious persecution in this country; nay, more, you must take the position that all the saints of God are to be put to death; for the image is to cause that all who will not worship it shall be killed.
There would, perhaps, be some ground for such a conclusion, were we not elsewhere informed that in this dire conflict God does not abandon his people to defeat, but grants them a complete victory over the beast, his image, his mark, and the number of his name.