religion of the dominant race in this country, in ridiculing Sunday laws and heading an anti-Christianity campaign, seems, to say the least, inconsistent.
Mr. Marshall, who is regarded by the Jews as their greatest “constitutional” lawyer, since the decline of Edward Lauterbach (and that is a tale!) originated, in a series of legal arguments, the contention that “this is not a Christian country nor a Christian government.” This argument he has expounded in many writings. He has built up a large host of followers among contentious Jews, who have elaborated on this theme in a variety of ways. It is one of the main arguments of those who are endeavoring to build up a “United Israel” in the United States.
Mr. Marshall maintains that the opening of deliberative assemblies and conventions with prayer is a “hollow mockery”; he ridicules “the absurd phrase ‘In the name of God, Amen,’” as used in the beginning of wills. He opposes Sunday observance legislation as being “the cloak of hypocrisy.” He advocates “crushing out every agitation which tends to introduce into the body politic the virus of religious controversy.”
But Mr. Marshall himself has spent the last twenty years of his life in the “virus of religious controversy.” A few of his more impertinent interferences have been noted above. These are, in the Jewish phrase, “religious activities” with a decidedly political tinge.
The following extracts are quoted from the contentions of Mr. Marshall, published in the Menorah Journal, the official organ of the Jewish Chautauqua, that the United States is not a Christian country:
When, in 1892, Mr. Justice Brewer, in rendering the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of the Church of the Holy Trinity against the United States (144 U. S. 457), which involved an interpretation of the Alien Labor Law, indulged in the obiter remark that “this is a Christian nation,” a subject was presented for the consideration of thoughtful minds which is of no ordinary importance.