THE CONSCIENCE. 



147 



objectors " to military service who base their objection on what 

 are described as moral, not religious grounds. To some mem- 

 bers of Tribunals, little accustomed to meditate on the relations 

 of morality and religion, an objection did not seem to be religious 

 at all or entitled to respect in that character, which neither 

 appealed to a text of Scripture nor depended on the formal 

 tenets of a recognized religious body. Sometimes, too, to the 

 objector himself the associations of the word " religion " were 

 exclusively with texts and creeds and organizations for common 

 worship, so that, not acknowledging the authority of texts or 

 creeds, nor belonging to any religious denomination, he preferred 

 to call his objection "moral" rather than "religious," and 

 thereby puzzled his judges by a distinction to which they were 

 not accustomed. Of course the objection thus called " moral " 

 was really in most cases essentially " religious." The distinction 

 had practical importance only because the existence of the view 

 put forward lacked the external attestation afforded by it being 

 on record as a tenet of a religious body, or as the literal 

 meaning of a text acknowledged as authoritative. But the 

 whole difficulty went to confirm the original association in the 

 minds of most men, of " conscientious objection," properly so 

 called, with religion. 



Historically, it is manifest that it has been mainly over 

 questions of Eeligion that men have fought and died for Liberty 

 of Conscience. What was it then precisely that they were 

 fighting for ? 



I think it will be found that, where we most readily allow 

 the champions of Liberty of Conscience to have been in the right, 

 they were contending for the right not to be disqualified for the 

 privileges of citizenship by religious opinions irrelevant to the 

 duties of citizenship, or even (as some early Christian apologists 

 pleaded in their own behalf) predisposing them to the perform- 

 ance of those duties. With the Quaker's scruple at the form of 

 an oath, we may or may not sympathize : but we shall most of 

 us admit that, since he attached no less sanctity to his affirma- 

 tion than other men attached to the oath, it would have been 

 unreasonable to go on insisting upon a formality, however 

 superstitious the objection to it, which a man might be an 

 exemplary citizen and yet dislike, and even dislike on grounds 

 that might be held should be conceded by the State, so far as 

 the State professed Christianity. There was, in a word, nothing 

 m the Quaker's objection to the oath inconsistent with the 

 common understanding upon which the existence of the State 

 depends. 



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