The Sunday-Law Question

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

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

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The Sunday-Law Question

In discussing the Sunday-law question the California Prohibitionist says:—
“That the provisions of the proposed law may not oppress any who conscientiously and honestly observe another day of the week as a day of rest, all such are to be excepted from its application. Under these circumstances it would certainly seem as though the movement were worthy of the support and co-operation of all good citizens.”
This is only to say that those who observe a day other than Sunday should join those who observe that day in forcing it upon those who have no religious regard for any day. But that would only be to violate the golden rule, for no man would wish to have another compel him to keep a day which he did not wish to observe and for which he had no feelings of reverence. The seventh-day observer who admits for a moment the propriety of a Sunday law with an exemption clause in his favor grants, though it may be unwittingly, the right of the State to legislate upon the subject, and in so admitting gives his case away, for it is as plain as the noonday sun that if the State has the right to coerce the unbeliever and compel him to keep Sunday, it has the same right to require the same thing of the Jew and the seventh-day Christian.