THE RELIGIOUS NEUTRALITY OF GOVERNMENT.

CERTAIN acts of the Government of India, since the issue of the Queen's Proclamation, have made the Christian community in India think very deeply on the question of religious neutrality, as a moral principle, and more especially on the question, as understood and acted on by the Government. It is to be borne in mind that questions regarding religion assume a very different aspect in India from what they have in England. In India the vast majority of Christians are Government servants, civil and military; and the Government has power, and uses the power, of calling in question any act of any of its servants, which it thinks a violation of the principle of neutrality laid down as the guiding rule of the imperial authorities. In a word, a man may believe what he likes, but if he acts according to his belief,-yet so as to offend the opinion of those in power, he may be challenged, reprimanded, suspended, degraded, or dismissed by parties who are at once the accusers and judges. In England, where, happily, a Christian toleration under a government professing Christianity exists, a man may practice what mode of life he likes, may teach what doctrines he likes,-unless he offend criminally. Religion is a thing with which Government meddles not. Government says:-"We are Christian. Here is a church for you,-but if you don't like it, be what you like, teach what you like, believe what you like."

In India, while laying down a dogma of non-interference, and

VOL XXXI.

I

making it a formidable matter to interfere, Government, so far from acting on the principle laid down, actually interferes with all the religions of the country, and takes upon itself to dictate to individuals what they shall do, and what they shall not do. There is an interference with men's religion in this land, which would not for a month be tolerated in the United Kingdom. No wonder, then, if thoughtful Christians in India meditate deeply on this subject, and anxiously ask themselves -Why are these things so? Ought they to be? If they continue so, what will be the consequences, to the empire of India, and to the Church of Christ in the land?

Let us, in the first place, take up the matter on its first principles, and apart from any special case. The answer to the following questions will bring these out. Can any government whatever be absolutely neutral in regard to religion? Can any government, representing a dominant race among conquered people, where are citizens of both races, differing in religion, be the same to both? Can it look on both alike and act towards both alike?

The upholders of the system of the present Government of India, answer both these questions in the affirmative, while, as we shall strive to show, both are alike impossible.

A government may profess to be neutral, but in practice it can never be so absolutely. Governments are but men. They represent nations, and nations are but men. Laws are men's opinions, whence derived it matters not at present. The administration of laws depends still on men's opinion. Till government has proved itself to have some supernatural power of abstracting the human from those who enter its halo of legislation, or its bureaus of administration, government still is men-an aggregate of men. Now can any man separate himself from his religion? He cannot. It is a first principle of morals that a man must have a religion-must believe something with respect to soul-life. He can't help it. Be it God, be it Christ, be it Mahomet, be it Bhram, be it fetish, be it chance, be it nothinga man must believe in it. Man if he be, must religionize, and if he take a particular creed, that creed must influence all his life. The man is what his religion makes him. The light of his religion, or the darkness of it, lightens or darkens all his life, all his thoughts, words, habits, schemes and opinions; above all it influences his judgment. He cannot, because he is going to legislate, put his religion aside. He legislates from the stand-point of Christianity, of Deism, of Mahomedanism, of Fetishism, or of Atheism. No blame to him that he cannot. He cannot change his moral nature. The blame only comes when he says he is capable of doing what can't be done, and tries to mislead ignorant or unthinking men to believe he can perform impossibilities. Government in any country would not err in saying, "We can't be neutral, because we will just be what the belief of the majority of us makes us, and no more, but we will be as fair as we can." But any government would err if it said, "We are perfectly neutral," for in this statement is conveyed an impossibility. It is an attempt to make men believe what is philosophically false.

Suppose laws are to be made for the suppression of murder; does any man mean to say, that were he law-maker, his religious views would not lead him to the conclusions he formed of the heinousness of the crime, and the just mode of punishment? Does he mean to say that a Mussulman, who believes in fate, and a Hindoo, who believes in transmigration of souls, and a fetish-worshipper, who does not know even what soul is, and a believer-in-chance, who thinks that "dust to dust" is the the final of man, and a Christian, who believes in "life and immortality," and man's sin and possible repentance,— will one and all take the same view of murder? If a perfect neutrality is possible however, this is possible. All these might frame laws equally good and just. Impossible you say,-for the differences of civilization would render it so. The "broad principles of humanity" of the one, would hinder the one from doing what the other would. Exactly so. It is impossible, just because in religion men and nations cannot be neutral. Religion has civilized the one,-humanized the one. Religion has demoralized and brutified the other. They could not help judging from its standpoint.

My meaning is now evident. No government can ever so separate itself from the religion of the majority of its members, as to make a law, or administer a law, without some bias arising from that particular religion.

Further, it is impossible for a government when it belongs to a dominant race in a conquered country, where, if the citizens are of the same religion with itself, and of different religions, to administer, or frame laws in such a manner as to be the same to the citizens professing the different religions. A government might possibly be neutral in a sense. Suppose it had under it two or more religions differing from its own, and suppose that it had only the administrative function:-e. g., suppose a Mahommedan government to conquer a country half Parsee, half Buddhist, it might be said to be neutral; that is, to have a bias neither way. Though, even in this case, there would, in my opinion, be doubts whether the Mahommedan would not, unintentionally give a cast in favour of that side which came nearest its own ideas of justice, etc. But where the government has under it a large number of its own citizens, as well as many of other religions, and when it is administering laws of its own framing, and by means of men of its own sect, it is morally impossible that there should not be a bias in favour of those of the religion of the majority of members of government; a bias strong enough to violate any neutrality that might be boasted of.

I do not mean to say that because a man is a Mussulman, and another a Parsee, that a Mussulman judge cannot so far forget that the Parsee is a Parsee, and not of his religion, as to administer equal justice to each. I mean to give him credit for every possible candour, and for a great endeavour to be entirely neutral-but this I mean, that a Mussulman,—whose surroundings had ever been Mussulman,―set to make or administer Mussulman laws in the supposed Parsee subject country, could not avoid giving a Mussulman tinge alike to legis

lation and administration. Nor would the principle be altered, from the fact of the government being Christian. Further, suppose the Government takes up another function, that of superintending education, or of organizing an educational system; in this department it is equally impossible for it to be absolutely neutral. The Government system of education may exclude what books, what formula of religion, what creeds it likes, but this does not make the education neutral, nor can it render the education secular. A secular education, -if by that you mean an education in which no religion is taught,— is impossible. You cannot ignore the soul in your education. The teacher cannot get quit of his religion in life, any more than he can live without the permeating life-blood. His antecedents and surroundings have made him what he is-religious antecedents and surroundings, of his education,-parentage,-country, thought. He can't get quit of these, just because he can not put off himself. He teaches, must teach, cannot help teaching everything in the light or darkness of his religion, though he may mention no dogma of religion, no book, no formula, or confession of faith.

It is one of the prevailing fallacies of statesmen and others in the present day, and it is almost amusing to see how eagerly sects are led by belief in it, that secular education, or, in other words, perfect neutrality in religion, by its utter exclusion,-is gained by forbidding certain books, and the mention of the names and statements of certain creeds.

The idea seems to be almost as absurd, as if a man were to flatter himself that he had succeeded in expelling all the salt from the ocean, because he had got rid of certain packages of prepared salt of peculiar form, which some one had made by his own process of evaporation, drying and compressing. Or, as if a man should think he had expelled all the oxygen from the air, because he had taken away certain peculiar bladders-full of that gas. Yet, in spite of these ideas, the ocean would be salt. Men, when they wanted it, would still extract their salt, and form it as delighted them. Men would still find oxygen in air, and breathe it, or condense it, or cage it as they pleased. So in spite of the ideas of men, that when you have prohibited, and as far as schools are concerned, utterly destroyed all forms of religion, -banished Bible, and Koran, and Shastra, and 39 Articles and Confession of Faith, and all creeds or confessions whatever,-you have not taken religion from your education, you have only kept out the forms of it. The principle is there. It is in the teacher, and he cannot separate himself from it, and there is something in the taught one's heart which leaps up in unison, or leaps out in opposition. Neutrality in sense of complete secularity in religion then cannot be. So wrapped in every thing concerning science of every kind is religion, that if you teach truth in any form, you teach a part of true religion, and if you teach falsehood, you teach something against true religion, and so violate your boasted neutrality in either case.

Suppose you were to teach in some savage country, the doctrine of

causes, and to tell an ignorant fetish worshipper how the world came to be, if you belong to a sect of true philosophers (I suppose you do not wish to appear to be of any religion), how would you proceed? You would tell the truth of course. You would, (unless you wished to teach a philosophical falsehood,) teach that there was a great first Cause. The candid secularist must confess that he is shut up to that. But mark you, the moment you teach this, "religious neutrality" is infringed. The principle taught is a thing diametrically opposed to the religious creed of many sects. Why, an article of religion with some has been, that this universe is the result of a "fortuitous concourse of atoms," and millions of Hindoos at this very hour believe that in the universe there is nothing but God. Their tenet is, "God is all, and all is God." Thus in teaching the so-called most secular branch of education, the elements of physic,-you are forced, if you teach truth, to teach that which contradicts the creed of millions of the world's inhabitants.

Show us how you abstract all religion from men's souls, and then we will believe in "secular education." Show how, when a man has believed in any given religion, he can free himself utterly from all influences of it. Then, and not till then, will we believe that legislators can frame, and teachers carry out, a system of national education perfectly "neutral."

Again, Government must violate its neutrality, in dictating to its own peculiar officers its opinions of what neutrality is. Where a government proclaims that it will act upon the principles of "religious neutrality," all the subjects of that government are surely entitled to demand that it shall not interfere in any way with them in the exercise of whatever religion they may possess. The government servant, the soldier, the sailor, the judge, the clerk, surely does not cease to be a subject, and to have the privileges of subjects, because he holds a place under government. Yet he must give up many things which his ideas of religion lead him to esteem right, because government has formed its own idea of what neutrality is, and insists on his acting on that idea. Government, so far from being neutral to him and his religion, actually interferes and hinders him from free action according to his religious ideas. It may be, nay is, proper, that Government should oversee and guide the conduct of all its officials, from the secretary of state down to the lowest officer. This is needful if Government mean anything; all I wish to show is, that just because this is so, Government cannot be neutral in religion to a very large class in every country.

On these principles, and guided by these ideas, thus meagrely expressed, we are shut up to the following conclusions:

No government can be neutral in religion.

:-

It must have some religion, that of the country whence its members come, and of the majority of these.

All that a government can do justly in favour of conflicting religions, is to say, "we have a religion we believe true. Any of you may have another, and we will not interfere with you, but just as