“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.  Rev. 15:2.  We further read respecting this earthly power, that he causeth all to receive a mark in their right hand or their foreheads; yet chapter 20:4, speaks of the people of God as those who do not receive the mark or worship the image.  If, then, he could “cause” all to receive the mark, and yet all not actually receive it, in like manner his causing all to be put to death who will not worship the image does not necessarily signify that their lives are actually to be taken.

But how can this be?  Answer:  It evidently comes under that rule of interpretation in accordance with which verbs of action sometimes signify merely the will and endeavor to do the action in question, and not the actual performance of the thing specified.  George Bush, Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature in New York City University, makes this matter plain.  In his notes on Ex. 7:11, he says:—­

“It is a canon of interpretation of frequent use in the exposition of the sacred writings that verbs of action sometimes signify merely the will and endeavor to do the action in question.  Thus in Eze. 24:13:  ‘I have purified thee, and thou wast not purged;’ i.e., I have endeavored, used means, been at pains, to purify thee.  John 5:44:  ’How can ye believe which receive honor