Defense of the Faith and the Saints. B. H. Roberts

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      II.

      Jefferson's Contribution to Religious Liberty in America.

       Table of Contents

      On the plain headstone that marks the grave of Thomas Jefferson, after his name are these words:

      Author

       of the Declaration of

       AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE,

       of

       The Statute of Virginia

       For Religious Freedom, and

       Father of the University

       of Virginia.

      This inscription Mr. Jefferson himself wrote out. It evidently indicates what he regarded as the three most worthy achievements of his life; and when it is seen that next to being the author of the Declaration of American Independence, he prides himself on being the author of this "Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom," your committee may be pardoned, I think, for placing on the program for this evening the subject I am all too briefly to discuss—Jefferson's contribution to religious freedom in America.

      Men in their less serious moods may jest as they please at religion, but after all it is the most serious business of life. No really great mind is dead to its influence. And at some time or other in their experience, men who are great of soul seek to understand the truths religion teaches, and seldom are they disappointed in her lessons. Disappointed, indeed, would we have been had Jefferson taken no interest in so great a subject: one which so nearly concerns human happiness, and so largely affects the peace and well being of society. Both the texture of Jefferson's mind and his environment, however, were such as to make the subject one of profound interest to him. When he appeared at William and Mary college at 17 years of age, we are told that he possessed the three essential qualities of the successful student, namely, "perfect health, good habits and an inquiring mind." Fortunately for him, Dr. William Small was professor of mathematics in the college, and for a time he also filled the chair of philosophy. In his capacity of teacher and outside college companion of Jefferson, Professor Small doubtless did much that influenced the development of the future statesman's mind. He is described as a man of enlightened understanding, but it is also said that he was "not too orthodox in his opinions." But that is a circumstance scarcely to be regretted when the orthodoxy of that day is taken into account, for I am inclined to think that the further one was removed from that orthodoxy the nearer he might be to God.

      There are two acts in the life of Jefferson to which I shall allude, and which I think will sufficiently demonstrate the profound interest he had in the subject of religion. The first is the writing of a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, on the subject of that young man's religious studies. He urges him to a thorough and candid investigation of the subject of religion without regard to consequences. If young Carr's investigation ended in the conviction that there was no God, Jefferson was of opinion that his young relative would still find incentives to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness of its practice, and in the love of others it would procure for him. If on the other hand he should find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that he was acting under the divine approval—and I think the idea which follows has never been sufficiently emphasized—the fact of that divine approval would be "a vast additional incitement" to the practice of virtue. If he should find that Jesus was also a God, the student would derive comfort by the belief in his aid and love. Reason was the only oracle given him of heaven, and he was not responsible for the "rightness" of his decision, but he would be responsible for the "uprightness" of it.

      The other incident alluded to is Jefferson's complication of the four-fold text of the "Life and Morals of Jesus," consisting of selected texts from the four evangelists. I mean by "four-fold compilation" that he cut the passages respectively from Greek, Latin, French and English copies of the New Testament. For the "teachings of Jesus" he selected "only those passages whose style and spirit proved them genuine, and his own." This compilation was his own effort to "knock down the artificial scaffolding reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus." And of the teaching of Jesus thus set forth, he said:

      "A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus."

      I am not claiming that the Christianity of Jefferson was orthodox. His correspondence with Dr. Priestly, and his open admiration for the teaching of Dr. Channing fix the nature of his belief in the founder of Christianity. I refer to these matters merely to show that to the mind of this remarkable man religion was a subject of profound interest and respect; and also to suggest that it was really the religious nature of the man that prompted the part he took in securing religious freedom in the commonwealth of Virginia, and through that circumstance, with another to be mentioned later, aided mightily in securing religious freedom in America.

      Chiefly upon New England has been fixed the odium of religious intolerance in our country; but human nature in the eighteenth century was pretty much of the same sort of stuff throughout the British colonies; at least the difference was not so very great between New England and Virginia so far as it found expression in religious intolerance; for if in New England the people could be fined, whipped or put in the stocks for not going to church—in Virginia they could be punished for going to the wrong one, while Baptists, Presbyterians and Quakers were compelled to pay tithes to a church they did not attend. If in New England the people could be compelled to stay awake and refrain from smiling while in church, no matter how tedious or ridiculous the sermons were—in Virginia justices of the peace were committing Quakers to the pillory for keeping their hats on in church. If in Massachusetts, at one time it was a capital offense to celebrate mass—in Virginia heresy was punishable by burning at the stake. If in Massachusetts the Church of England services could not be performed, nor baptism administered by immersion, СКАЧАТЬ