Who Inspires Sunday Laws?

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 26, 1907

Who Inspires Sunday Laws?

SUNDAY laws are a culture, not a growth from the spontaneous demand of the people. This fact is attested by no less a personage than the Rev. W. F. Crafts in a signed article in the Northwestern Christian Advocate, of December 11. After setting forth the results of the work of his Bureau in behalf of Sunday laws, he says:—

The new Idaho Sunday law, although not a national act, has a national significance, for it brings the only State, save California, that had no Sunday law “into the union.” The Pacific Coast secretary of the International Reform Bureau combined in this bill the best elements of forty other State Sunday laws. It is especially a model to be studied and copied in that it provides that any executive officer found guilty of neglecting to enforce it is ineligible for any public office for two years. Every politician will see genius in that penalty, and will not be surprised to hear the law is well enforced.

Such a combination of religion and politics, forcing men to go through the motions of religion, and forcing them, under penalty of losing their office, to compel others to go through the same motions, debases politics, does despite to the very spirit of Christianity, and dishonors the name of Christ. No enemy of Christ can do more against the true cause of Christ than he does who compels religious observances under penalty of the law.