CALIFORNIA has no “Sunday law,” and therein is, we believe, singular amongst the States. Of course, by “Sunday law” is meant prescription by the State, that leads toward a particular observance of the day, and inflicts penalties for its violation. There are Sundays and Sabbaths, and people of equal sincerity and religious sensibilities differ upon the question of which day shall be kept to fulfill the commandment, “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.” Perhaps, derived from the intense theocratic tendencies of our Puritan ancestors, we have been rather prone to give a “Thus saith the Lord” tone to our legislation upon the Sunday question. But powerful Christian bodies have risen in the country, which dispute the authority of the first day of the week and plant their faith in the seventh day, which they keep holy; and on the first day they resume their ordinary occupations. A Sunday law which inflicts penalties for plowing or planting, reaping or sowing, or ripping and sewing, on the first day, compels one set of Christians to smite another set, while both are sincere in their belief, of good report in their conduct, and equally serviceable to the State as good citizens. California did not hesitate when the issue was made. She abandoned that sort of Sunday laws, and now every man does as he pleases, and being left to himself, with his moral sense as a guide, we are happy to say that nearly every man chooses to do well on Sunday and on the Sabbath. No man is in danger of arrest because, having kept his own Sabbath, he does not also keep another man’s Sunday. The Israelites are freed from a sort of legal bondage, and California is peculiarly a land of religious liberty and toleration. A great many good people were appalled when the Sunday law was repealed in 1883. They277predicted all sorts of dire results that have not followed. We find in one of the religious newspapers of the State that a comprehensive inquiry has been made in nearly all the civilized countries of the world, to get a view of the condition of Sabbath observance that shall include them all. The question addressed in each case by the reverend gentleman who prosecuted the inquiry was: “Where have you seen the best Sabbath observance?” A San Francisco pastor answered: “Amongst the Christian people of California.” The inquiries and answers were wrought into a book published in 1885, in which the investigator records this conclusion: “Both laymen and ministers say that even in California the Sabbath is better observed and Christian services are better attended than five years ago.” And this was after two years’ experience of no Sunday law! The appearance of the word “even” in the verdict is slightly offensive. “Even in California,” as if from such sons of Belial but little is to be expected. California is the only State in the Union where the law and the gospel are independent of each other, and where the day of rest and the day to be kept holy needs no law to enforce its observance. Instead of being a sign of retrogression and impiety, it is a sign of progress up to that pitch of respect for the day and toleration of the convictions of those who lay by the garments of worldliness on different days, that need no spur of the law, no detective espionage, no judge nor jail to vitalize them. Instead of being the odium of the State it is its special glory and greatest credit. There is no room for compulsion in matters of religion. The Mohammedans believe in it. When they conquered Persia and converted it by force to the doctrines of the prophet, they made merry at seeing the Parsees, whom they had circumcised by force, continue their prayers to the sun. It seemed a great joke to them that the fire-worshipers should not know that he had changed his supernatural allegiance and was wasting his time asking protection of a power from which he had been surgically alienated. Really, Sunday laws have no higher origin than had this Mohammedan idea of conversion by duress. California has shown that such laws are unnecessary to the observance of one day of the week as a season of testimony to faith in things unseen. More faithful testify now than before. The State no longer beats the bush for the Church, but the Church gets more game than ever. We commend these facts and this example to the other States, hoping that their people will become as we are, devout and devotional, without being driven by the club of the law.—Daily Alta California, August 4, 1889.