Religious Liberty Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 29, 1909

Religious Liberty Notes

A RECENT issue of the Milwaukee Free Press contains an entire column of extracts from an address by Elder H. W. Reed, State religious liberty secretary.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press of a recent issue contains quite a generous extract from a camp-meeting sermon by Elder J. G. Lamson. It also notices briefly what Prof. P. T. Magan said on the Eastern question.

A late number of the Joplin (Mo.) News Herald, a widely circulating daily among the one hundred thousand people of the closely united cities of Joplin, Galena, Webb City, Carterville, and Carthage, has a splendid notice of the work of one of our religious liberty evangelists, Mrs. Lulu Wightman. It gives a good outline of our position.

At a public-school graduation at Johnstown, Pa., one of the graduates took for his theme, “The Huguenots in America.” “Father” Bohan (Catholic) registered a strong protest in the Daily Democrat. “We don’t want Huguenot revivals in the closing exercises of the public schools; it’s a deep insult to Catholics,” said the incensed priest. Noticing this incident, the Western Watchman (Catholic), of St. Louis, remarks, “That’s the talk! Protestants need to be told that they have no more rights in the public schools than Catholics, Jews, or agnostics.” This is heroic religious liberty medicine administered by the Catholic doctors.

On a number of occasions lately President Taft has been saying, “We are coming more and more to realize the right of the individual to worship God as he may choose,” and this he calls “wider religious liberty.” We hope the President will maintain this doctrine. In a good-natured way he referred to our New England forefathers who came to this country to enjoy religious liberty, and forthwith began to oppress all who did not agree with them.

The Cleveland Leader and the Washington Herald congratulate the United States Steel Corporation on coming at last to a sane view of the Sunday-rest question. That great concern has hitherto operated every day in the week, but just lately has ordered closed doors on Sunday, not even allowing repairs to proceed. These papers note that the reason for this new move is not religious, but purely commercial,—machinery and men last longer and do better work.

After a scathing arraignment of sabbath (Sunday) desecrators, from the governor down to the golfer, Rev. Dr. S. G. Smith, of the People’s Church, St. Paul, Minn., closed a recent Sunday night sermon by an unexpectedly sensible and correct remark: “It is not a question to be settled by more or better laws,” he said. “It’s to be settled by more conscience and better conduct.” When so important a truth as that can be seen, how can a failure to see the true Sabbath be explained?

It seems that in Arkansas they have Sunday local option. The State is tremendously committed to Sunday legislation, but Jefferson County very much wished to have baseball on Sunday, and so petitioned the legislature, and actually got an exemption. The bill passed by but one majority. Pine Bluff is the county seat, and the columns of the Gazette of that city, as soon as the bill was passed, contained a letter from one of its Sunday-keeping citizens, which reads very interestingly from the standpoint of one who knows what true religious liberty means. The way in which appeal is made to “the fourth commandment of the decalogue” and the “Christian sabbath” is amazing, as is also the expressed fear lest the onlooking world will suppose Arkansas has turned pagan, when she legislates for baseball on Sunday.