The church cannot be heard to claim that it is a public or a quasi-public institution. It exercises no public function of any description which should warrant granting it immunity from the general laws binding on all members of the community. Its mission is to preach something which it calls the gospel. By its own insistent declaration, it derives its authority to teach solely from the being whom it worships as its deity.* It is not in any sense commissioned by the state or by the people, and asks no permission of either to carry out its purposes. Its members are held together by a body of doctrine accepted by them all; and they maintain a form of worship which they count pleasing in the sight of their God. If they are mistaken, it is labor and devotion thrown away; if they are right, they will be individually and collectively rewarded by heaven, either in this life or in some other. All this is strictly their own business and that of their deity. It does not concern the state in any way whatever. The state has no means of knowing whether they are right or wrong, and is not being served in any way by their ceremonials. Its work and theirs do not lie parallel in a single respect. The further function of the church, _as a church_, is simply to seek to convert others to the body of dogma which it puts forward as the message of God to man and the revelation of the divine will. Here, again, the state is in no way concerned, provided the alleged divine will is not an incitement to any form of lawlessness or crime. If the attempt at proselytism fails, the community is in no way affected; and if it succeeds, the state receives no possible benefit, and owes the church nothing for the putting forth of its activities. As God is the only possible beneficiary of the church's efforts, it is for him to pay its taxes*, if it is itself unable to do so. The state is under no moral compulsion to discharge his obligations. If he does not see fit to come to the rescue of his needy representatives, their conclusion must logically be that he expects them to pay their own bills. The church, like every other organized or unorganized group of human beings, receives certain definite and regular services from the state, which cost money to render, and which create a debt just as palpable as the debt to the carpenter who builds the meeting house or the coalman who furnishes fuel to keep it warm. If the church had any adequate conception of common honesty, it would pay its taxes without a whimper and as a matter of course*, just as it pays its gas bills or settles any of its accounts with individuals. It does not inform its private creditors that it should be exempt from payment for services rendered, just because it is a religious body; and it would be given small shrift by any court, should it attempt to evade such claims on such a ground. As little has it a moral right to take from the public without returning an equivalent in material remuneration.