The Civil and Religious Sabbath
IN a recent article in the Union Signal, Mrs. J. C. Bateham says of the Blair Sunday-Rest bill: “All our arguments for the bill are based upon the civil Sabbath, not because we do not appreciate the religious aspect of the case, but because we think that it has nothing to do with a bill before Congress which must be sustained by other than religious considerations.” Commenting on this the Christian Statesman severely asks:— “Does the writer mean to say that the obligation of the fourth commandment is not binding on nations and governments as well as individuals? . . . In other words, have nations nothing to do with the Christ who is Lord of the Sabbath? One chief purpose of the Blair Sunday-Rest bill is to set the Government itself, in its Post-office Department and at other points, in a right attitude toward the Sabbath. Are there no religious considerations which bear on the question of the adoption or rejection of that measure?” We are surprised at the native simplicity of the Statesman. Of course all the arguments for the bill are from a civil standpoint simply and only because its friends know full well that the American people are afraid of religious legislation. But this policy makes it none the less true that the underlying motive is the exaltation of Sunday as a religious institution. The work of the American Sabbath Union and its various auxiliaries is identical with that of the National Reform Association, namely, as stated without challenge by Rev. W. D. Gray, secretary of the Missouri Sabbath Association, to change that feature of our fundamental law which accords with the Declaration of Independence when it declares that “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” To state the matter in the fewest possible words, Mr. Gray might have said: “The object of this movement is to destroy religious liberty in the United States.”