The Sunday Persecution

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 16, 1908

“The Sunday Persecution”

THE above is the title of the leading editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Dec. 17, 1907, which contains some plain statements of truth worthy of the consideration of those who are seeking the enforcement of a religious ordinance by civil law. The editor says, in part:—

If they [Sunday laws] were not religious laws they would not apply to Sunday only. They are religious laws because they aim to compel the religious observance of a particular day. If they were not religious laws—if they were, in fact, such sanitary, social, and police regulations as the courts hold them to be—they would not specify one day in the week as holy; they would prohibit seven days of work.

The high importance of a day of rest is denied by nobody. It is absolutely essential to the welfare of mankind. No one is more vitally interested in its preservation than the toiling millions. They can not afford to be deprived of it. But their profoundest concern in the matter is social and physiological, and not religious. With freedom they can order their wholesome leisure as they please. Without freedom they might as well be at work.

Since the purpose of Sunday laws when adopted was wholly religious, it is plain enough that they have failed of their object. They do not compel men to go to church. They do not even promote piety. They do more harm than good, for, so far as they are enforced, they interfere with more powerful tendencies already potential in establishing one day, any day, of rest.

This writer sees in the drastic enforcement of such laws the strong probability of “a reaction which will be mischievous,” and therefore strongly advises the advocates of religious legislation to “surrender wholly the idea that the kingdom of God is to be ushered in by a be-it-enacted.” He further says: “The churches promoting this sort of thing may be properly reminded that an awakened sense of justice in this country may not hesitate at reprisals.” That the idea will not be abandoned is shown by the many utterances of those “promoting this sort of thing,” to the effect that “the kingdom of Christ must be ushered in through the gateway of politics.” That declaration of policy has never been repudiated. The above writer’s hint at “reprisals” is also well founded, as a careful student of the book of Revelation well knows; but they will not come until Christendom has been united under the leadership of Rome, and that will be too late to bring any release or comfort to those who make the reprisals. Rev. 17: 15-18.