Not satisfied with example, Jesus is quoted as setting forth
the principle specifically and unequivocally in plain words. The
representatives of Judaism put the question to him plainly. "Is it
lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?" There could be no dodging
the issue. They who inquired of him stood for the church of his period,
the church which he himself recognized as such. "They were intrusted,"
said Paul, "with the oracles of God." Jesus himself referred to their
temple as the house of God, and indignantly drove from its precincts
the traders who sought to commercialize the sacred enclosure. It was his
custom to attend the synagogue, and occasionally to take an active part
in the service. If the ministers of sacred things are rightfully exempt
from taxation, the Jewish nation, constituting as a whole a priesthood
to God, as the channel of his revelation to man, might surely, from the
standpoint of the faithful Bible believer, claim that exemption. Nor
were indications wanting that they themselves felt so, and looked upon
it as blasphemy to assert the contrary. In the hope to fasten a charge
of either blasphemy on the one hand, or sedition on the other, on the
wandering teacher, they eagerly awaited his answer. When it came, it was
unanswerable. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto
God the things that are God's." Caesar was the lord of the coinage which
bore his "image and superscription," God of the thoughts of their hearts
and their private lives. Hence, the former rightfully laid claim to the
tribute which enabled the public treasury to carry on not only the work
of the coinage, but all other public works of a secular character; while
the latter would hold them in the end accountable for their failure to
obey his commandments, summed up in the injunction to "love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."
The difference between the Pharisees, to whom Jesus laid down the law in
favor of the payment of honest taxes, and the churches, who are called
upon to-day to perform this elementary civic obligation, lies simply in
the greater impudence of the latter. The interlocutors of Jesus, says
the text, "marveled, and left him, and went away." It is not stated that
they proceeded to mend their ways, and to become honest; but they at
least had the decency not to attempt to bluff themselves out of a false
position. Confronted with the same issue, the churches of our time
reject the commands of their alleged lord and master, and consult only
their own greed of profit. They will cheat both Caesar and God out of
what is due. That which they themselves hypocritically pretend to
adore as the word of God they spit on in their actual performance, by
deliberate disobedience. In spite of the almost unlimited capacity of
human nature to deceive itself, it is practically incredible that they
can seriously believe in the puerile sophistry by which they seek to
conjure up pretexts for stealing the public revenues. The one plain
reason is that they want the money, and are not honest enough to do
their duty to the state which shelters and fosters them. They know
this perfectly well, however glib they may be in trying to persuade the
credulous that in cheating the community out of part of its revenues
they are actuated only by the highest and holiest motives, and that
the fact that they happen to be beneficiaries of the steal is merely an
irrelevant coincidence. It is possible that there are still marines, to
whom such a tale can be told.
In justice to sincere believers in Christianity, who do not make their
piety a cloak for greed and dishonesty, it should be stated that a
conscientious minority in the churches has consistently accepted the
principle of religious liberty and of equal justice and has steadily
protested against every infringement of the secular principle, even when
the abuse seemed to favor their own interests.