TAXING GOD'S HOUSE.

THIS essay appeared in "The Congregationalist," Feb. 18, 1875. A year later, in "The New-York Herald," March 7, 1876, appeared Gen. Dix's spirited and powerful letter; extracts from which having fallen under the eye of the writer, an interchange of papers and a pleasant correspondence took place, from which I take the liberty to make extracts, as also from the noble words of his public letter.

NEW YORK, 10 April, 1876.

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR, -I have read with great satisfaction your article in "The Congregationalist," which you had the kindness to send me, on "Taxing God's House." The coincidence of the currents of thought in your article and mine is certainly remarkable, the more so as I thought our side of the question had never been presented before. .

THERE is great danger, as has already become apparent, that the matter of taxing places of worship should be put upon false ground, or at least low ground; far below that upon which it ought to be argued; far below where it can be argued with most safety and cogency, and least friction of dissent; far below the plane where every religious mind — and all minds, we are told, are religious would feel that the matter rests.

The subject is debated under this title, "The Taxation of Churches." The arguments here, indeed, in favor of immunity from taxes to churches, vastly preponderate. But who that listens to argument on this subject from the benefits to society has not had a secret dissatisfaction, and the feeling that there

must be higher ground than this, which accounts for our strong repugnance to entertaining the idea of taxing our temples? 1

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This ground has, perhaps, been dimly seen; but some have not pressed forward to hold it, partly from the pitiful dread of appealing to the common moral sentiments of mankind.

"Shall we

Let us restate the question in its true form; not, tax churches?" but, "Shall we tax God's house?" Edifices consecrated to the Supreme Being-is it comely to subject them to the levying of tax to pay the expenses of human government? Shall men take that gift which they have placed above their heads at the feet of the Supreme, and make it pay tribute? Let six of the most accomplished debaters of the land argue this question strictly, "Is it right to tax God's house?" and the whole subject would lie in so clear light in all minds, that this crepuscule of thought upon it would have vanished utterly.

The principle at root is, that what is rightfully given up to a higher Power is beyond our plane or level. Is it not the same principle, that it would be uncomely for the State to tax the NavyYard, or the Springfield Armory, or any other property formally committed to a higher Power? United-States property is high above all transactions of levying and collection for State expenses. So our church-edifices are more than "meetinghouses: " they are "houses of God," formally consecrated to a higher Power. "Render therefore to God the things that are God's."

It was, of course, competent to the States out of which the District of Columbia was formed to cede or to retain that territory; but, once ceded, that tract of land belonged to the General

1 "The politico-economical side of the question had been exhausted by Pres. Eliot of Harvard University, and by Mr. Andrews, one of our city assessors, in a series of able articles in the New-York Times; and I thought it due to the importance of the subject to present the religious side. I thought, too, that the prevailing disregard of the sacred character of houses of worship justified stronger language than I am accustomed to use in the discussion of ordinary questions of policy or principle." -JOHN A. DIx, Correspondence.

2 "In manifold instances, both in the Old and New Testaments, a house of worship is called the house of God; and it is always named with appropriate expressions of reverence. The universal heart responds to this designation: and, no matter how humble the edifice consecrated to his service, all men, when within its hallowed walls, feel more sensibly than they do amid the turmoil of the outer world that they are in the presence of the Omnipotent Being by whom the great forces of the universe are moved and controlled; and that, by ignoring him, they renounce all hope of a higher state of existence."-JOHN A. DIX: Letter to NewYork Herald, March 7, 1876.

Government. It is competent to the State to say how much land, and how much of wealth and worth, shall be allowed to a house of worship; but, once dedicated to God, it should be beyond taxation. It is also competent to the State to limit, as should be done, the dedication to the mere house of worship, and to forbid the withholding from taxation of church-lands or other property; as also, if she choose, to tax the separate pews as the property of the individual owners.

The State might draw a legal distinction, if it be not drawn already, between dedication and consecration, allowing only those religious edifices to be dedicated which are to be legally exempt from taxation, and considering as merely consecrated all such religious property as men have given up, so far as they are concerned, to a higher use, but which the State does not consider beyond taxation. Thus church edifices only, and such buildings as are actually employed for Sabbath instruction in the things of God, should be allowed to be dedicated in the legal sense. We all pray to be delivered from such a state of things as has existed in all countries of large monastic endowments; for example, in France at the time of the Revolution, as described by Geffcken: "Add to this a vast host of ecclesiastical sinecures, without reckoning, indeed, the numerous and often very opulent monastic foundations, which were in a frightful state of decay. The crown had confiscated many of these as royal demesnes, but had granted them as benefices, exempt from all obligations; and they had offered to youthful ecclesiastics belonging to noble families an income adequate to their rank, until a suitable bishopric should fall vacant. Bestowed as they were by those who were powerful at court, it is easy to imagine the crowd of elegant abbés that surrounded a Madame de Pompadour. The whole enormous aggregate of ecclesiastical property the revenue of which was estimated at a hundred million livres derived from tithes, and from sixty million to seventy million livres derived from landed possessions-was absolutely exempt from taxation. The clergy gave to the State a few millions as a gratuity (don gratuit), but resisted with the bitterest indignation any attempt to subject their estates to the universal obligation of taxation; and as late as 1788, when the financial embarass

ments of the nation and the misery of the lower orders had reached their climax, their reply to a demand of that kind, returned not in a synod, but in an assembly convoked for secular purposes, was this: 'Ces biens sont voués, consacrés à Dieu. Notre conscience et notre honneur ne nous permettent pas de consentir à changer en tribut nécessaire ce qui ne peut être que l'offrande de notre amour.' 'This property is devoted, consecrated to God. Our conscience and our honor do not permit us to consent to make an obligatory tribute that which can be only the offering of our love.'”

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This enormous evil, of large church properties exempted, can be prevented by allowing legal dedication only to church edifices, temples for the worship of God.

But it may be said, if the house is dedicated to God, then the protection of it belongs to him. The State should not be taxed for care of it, just as the United States, after the ceding of the Navy-Yard, requires no further care for it from Massachusetts.

The answer is simple, that the State may properly, in consideration of the supreme majesty of the God to whom all temples are consecrated, give guard and protection, without compensation, to all his temples. Were there an extensive, raging fire at the Charlestown Navy-Yard, the state or the cities might, if they chose, properly give the service of their fire departments for its extinguishment. Had "The Brandywine" been donated to the illustrious Lafayette, the State might properly freely have given the whole of her police force to guard it, without exacting any tax in return from the distinguished stranger. The claim is not valid, then, that, because in some sort ceded to God, the temple should not, therefore, receive the State's protection without compensation or tax.

Even Rome regarded all worship.2 Dionysius of Halicarnassus says, "Men of a thousand nations come to the city, and must worship the gods of their country according to the laws at

1 Geffcken: Church and State, ii. 472.

2 "From that day to this, during the lapse of nearly sixteen hundred years, no government has undertaken to make church edifices pay tribute for the privilege of worshipping God. Even the pagans, through the veneration in which they held the temples dedicated to their idols, manifest more reverence than the promoters of this raid upon religious worship." — Letter to Herald.

home." There were many religiones licitæ and dei publice adsciti. Their houses of worship were not taxed.

From his own religious point of view, mutatis mutandis, this principle, it is believed, will strike every man as according to the universal feeling of reverence.

This will be the natural view of the Christian and the Israelite. Imagine the taxation of the Holy of Holies to support Solomon's fish-ponds! It is not comely for governmental exactors to cross the threshold of the "Father's house."1 Christ did not deem it a thing to be borne, that money transactions should go on in God's temple, even when auxiliary to an offering to God: how much more had government-officers, exacting from God to the State, entered there!

But atheists, pantheists, and idolaters, it is thought, would not allow this principle. How unduly afraid we are to trust to the religious nature in man which we are constantly asserting to be there! If to that which any man reveres as the Supreme, be it to a known or an "unknown god," he build an altar, pillar, temple, joss-house, pagoda, mosque, pantheon, or whatever, that structure, consecrated to his Supreme, every man's religious sense tells him should not be subjected to profane mingling with barter, trade, or taxes. Let Mr. Emerson erect an altar to the "Over-Soul," and his fellows assemble for prayer, the "highest meditation," the Chinaman his joss-house, the German atheist his hall formally consecrated to Aletheia or Humanitas exempt those edifices, exempt the chapel of the Parsee and of the serpent worshipper.

"But," said one to me, "the steamer of the Japanese in which they perform river-worship-would you exempt that?" Certainly, if publicly and permanently consecrated to their Supreme. "Render to God that which is God's," to Cæsar only that which is Cæsar's. The main principle in the matter is, not that the joss-house, or the sacred vessel, or the church, is

1 "The Divine Founder of our faith gave an impressive proof of his conception of the sacred character of edifices consecrated to the service of God by driving the money-changers out of the temple, the only act of violence in his meek and compassionate life; and I trust we shall have courage and reverence enough to imitate his example, and prevent the moneychangers from getting a foothold in our houses of worship, and converting them into dens of thieves." Letter to Herald.