p. 5 | An “Inconsistency” Explained by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 26, 1908

An “Inconsistency” Explained

By Editor

In the Washington Post of March 13 immediately after the mass-meeting which was reported in our last issue, there appeared under the heading “Liberty of Conscience” the following editorial:—

A great mass-meeting was held in this city recently. It was a coalition of the prohibition and Seventh-day Adventist forces, and was held under the auspices of the Religious Liberty Bureau. The prohibitionists gathered to pass resolutions demanding the arbitrary application of prohibition laws to the District, regardless of the will of those of the District’s citizens opposed to prohibition. The Seventh-day Adventists were gathered to denounce a law compelling Sunday observance on the part of citizens who are opposed to the observance. But the two parties joined forces and mutually agreed upon a platform which they would both support and which they embodied in a set of resolutions. The resolutions read in part:—

“That we hereby respectfully protest against the passage of the bills now before Congress which look to the enforcement of Sunday as a day of rest.

“That we continue to use our influence and our energies to prevent this proposed legislation, and to perpetuate among all men the blessings of civil and religious liberty.

“That we favor the prohibition of the liquor traffic, in both State and nation, and pledge ourselves to do all in our power for the suppression of this dangerous, expensive, and destructive traffic.”

The Post respectfully begs liberty to point out the inconsistency in this platform, and to suggest that the coalition of the prohibitionists and the Seventh-day Adventists appears singularly incongruous—when the difference of principles underlying the two movements is observed. The prohibitionists have demanded that temperance be forced upon its opponents whether they like it or not. They have denied liberty of action to those who disagree with their views of right. They excuse this on the ground that prohibition is for the common good, and therefore, while distinctly inimical to civil liberty, must be endured by those who suffer under it. On the other hand, the Seventh-day Adventists are fighting for the right to act as their own conscience directs them, and not according to the conscience of somebody else. They resent being coerced by the views of right and wrong of other people. They demand liberty—liberty of conscience and the privilege of free action in matters of conscience. If a Sunday observance law be argued as “for the common good,” they will rebel against sacrificing their own liberty of conscience for sake of “the common good.” In other words, the principle behind their movement is exactly opposed to that behind the prohibition movement. Prohibition opposes personal liberty, and so does the Sunday observance law.

Consequently, instead of aiding each other, as a matter of principle, these two forces should be against each other. To see them, therefore, as bedfellows is likely to lay them open to the charge of being actuated by selfish motives rather than by principles of justice.

In pointing out this inconsistency the Post wishes to make it plain that it is neither opposing the prohibition movement nor the Seventh-day Adventists. It has no quarrel with the cause of either. But it respectfully suggests that if liberty of conscience is a good thing for some of the people, why may it not be good for all of the people?

In reply to this editorial there was printed in the Post of March 17 the following letter:—

EDITOR POST: Referring to your editorial in last Friday’s Post on “Liberty of Conscience,” in which you point out an apparent “inconsistency” in the alleged coalition of the “prohibition and Seventh-day Adventist forces,” please permit a few statements by way of correcting an evident misapprehension and a misapplication, as we conceive, of a vital principle involved.

In the first place, there was no pre-arranged or preconcerted coalition of the prohibition forces of the District and the Seventh-day Adventists in the mass-meeting held in National Rifles’ Armory, on the 11th instant. The meeting was planned, arranged, and conducted solely by and under the auspices of the Religious Liberty Bureau. The only addresses in favor of prohibition were made by the chairman of the Bureau, who was also chairman of the meeting, and a national W. C. T. U. lecturer, chancing to be in Washington, who is in perfect accord with the principles and work of the Bureau. There was no compromising of principles or pairing of forces whatever on the part of any one who took part in the meeting. All are believers in religious liberty, and all stand for prohibition.

As to the consistency or inconsistency of the same individual, society, or mass-meeting standing for prohibition and opposing Sunday legislation, permit me to point out that the liquor traffic, as such, is purely a civil matter, and one, therefore, with which the state may properly deal, while the keeping of the Sabbath, or weekly day of rest, is primarily a religious question, and therefore a matter of conscience, and hence outside the province and sphere of civil government. No man runs a saloon because it is a duty he feels he owes to God. No one calls the saloon “holy,” nor the conducting of one a “holy calling,” but the Sabbath is “holy,” God himself having hallowed it in the beginning, and the divine command enjoining that the day be remembered “to keep it holy.”

Upon principle, therefore, Seventh-day Adventists, believing that civil government not only has a right, but that it has a duty to legislate for the preservation of society and for “the common good” within the civil realm, stand squarely for the prohibition of the liquor traffic. On the other hand, believing that religion is not within the purview of civil government, they are just as strongly opposed to religious legislation. Prohibition does not mean that the individual can not manufacture for himself and drink spirituous liquors; it means that he shall not make a business of manufacturing and selling to other men that which debases, enervates, and destroys. To prohibit this is no more an infringement of personal liberties or rights than is the prohibition to manufacture and sell impure foods, or the

law forbidding the ordinary civilian carrying firearms. Each is a menace to life or health or both. But to require all, irrespective of their beliefs or conscientious convictions, to observe Sunday or any other day of the week as a day of rest is an infringement of the dearest rights of man, the rights of conscience. The two questions stand upon entirely different ground. Our only fears are that Congress will fail to do the thing it ought to do, and, through adverse and unhallowed influences, be led to do the thing it ought not to do.

W. A. Colcord,

Secretary Religious Liberty Bureau.

As this editorial and the reply to it deal with an important principle, we have deemed it advisable to reprint both of them for the benefit of any of our readers who may be compelled to face the same charge.