p. 312 | The Religious Character of Sunday Legislation

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 23, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 39.

The Religious Character of Sunday Legislation

REFERRING to the Sunday-law agitation, the California Prohibitionist says:—

“It must be borne in mind that this is not a religious movement in itself, or disposed to establish a union of Church and State. It simply recognizes a benign natural law that one rest day in seven is necessary to the highest welfare of body and mind, and seeks to bring the laws of the State into harmony with the natural law; not in order primarily that the cause of religion may be advanced, but that the citizen may be protected in his rights to a weekly cessation from his life of toil, and that the character and power of his citizenship may be improved and strengthened by a regular day for recreation and self-improvement. The idea is that the State shall simply command a day of cessation from all public works except those of mercy and necessity. The manner in which the day shall be spent aside from the matter of labor, is to be left entirely to the individual conscience.”

If it be indeed true that this is not a religious movement, how comes it that the prime movers in it are religionists? When have ministers as a class ever originated any movement in the interests of either labor or health? Disguise the fact as they may, it is none the less true that with the prime movers for Sunday legislation the religious character of the day is the mainspring of action. What they want is not a day for recreation in the general acceptation of the word, but for religion; they think and say that when all the ordinary avenues of business and pleasure shall have been closed, the people will, to use their own words, “naturally gravitate toward the churches.”