In the Christian Statesman of April 11, Mrs. J. C. Bateham writes an article headed, “The Seventh-day Adventists and the Sabbath.” We propose to examine it in connection with another article written by her, on the same page, entitled, “Sabbath Rest and How to Maintain It.” In the first-mentioned article she says:—
“The Seventh-day Adventists are circulating in many of the States petitions to Congress against any legislation in favor of a day of rest. They say the ultimate intent of Blair’s Sunday-Rest bill is to compel people to attend church; that it is to help the Catholics; that a union of Church and State will be the result, and various other things, all of which are of course false.”
Yes, some of the Adventists are circulating that protest, and scores of other people, of all classes, are doing the same thing. Whether it is the intent of the Sunday-law advocates to get people to church, we shall see further on. Although many of the Catholics do not favor the Sunday-Rest bill, yet it is in the direct line of the fundamental principles of their church. That was the first church that ever asked a civil government to enforce an article of church discipline by the passage of a Sunday-Rest law. That law was the first step in a union of Church and State, which logically culminated in the tribunals of the Inquisition. That law was passed on the principle that the State has a right to define and protect religion, and that protection means compulsion.
“The proper object of government is to protect all persons in the enjoyment of their religious as well as civil rights, and not to determine for any whether they shall esteem one day above the other, or esteem all days alike holy.” “Let the National Legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge to the fairest portions of the Old World.” “All religious despotism commences by combination and influence, and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.” “Among all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for the violation of what government denominated the law of God.”—U. S. Senate Report, 1829.
Mrs. Bateham says, “all” of these statements of the Adventists “are of course false.” What an easy matter it is for her to do away with the arguments of an opponent. “Of course.” That is all she needs to say, and the thing is settled. “Of course.” Isn’t that conclusive reasoning? What more could be asked for? Is she not a prominent official of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union? and are not their decisions authoritative when they speak ex cathedra? She has traveled enough, and surely she ought to know whether a thing is so or not. But if she feels so assured that everybody will take it as a matter “of course” that “all” the statements made by the Adventists on this subject are “false,” why does she waste her precious time and the valuable space of the Statesman by noticing them at all? We apprehend she has met arguments backed up by evidence which she cannot refute, and that is why she asks the people to accept her statements as a matter “of course,” without any effort at reasoning or production of proof. She says further:—
“The bill is designed to save our State Sabbath laws from destruction as the result of the National Government having allowed postal and other work and interstate commerce on Sunday, and to secure a weekly day of rest to the laborers who are among the largest class of petitioners.”
Doctor Crafts also says in the same paper, that “the national law is needed to make the State laws complete and effective.”
This shows that when the national law is secured we shall stand in an entirely different relation to the State laws than we do at the present time. Many of the State laws are now practically useless, for reasons given above, hence they ask for a national law to make the State laws “effective.” Now listen to this:—
“If made into a law it will no more compel church-going than do our own State laws, and will have no more tendency to bring about a union of Church and State than these State laws under which we have lived since States were formed.”
That is to say, that when the State laws become “complete and effective” they will produce no different results than are seen at the present time, while they are incomplete and ineffective. In other words, because the horrors which attend a union of Church and State are not experienced while the union is ineffective, therefore there is nothing to be feared when it becomes effective. Still air never blows anybody away, therefore how can a cyclone be dangerous?
Mrs. Bateham says further, in her last-mentioned article:—
“Senator Blair’s Sunday-Rest bill, prepared at the request of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and in response to the first two millions of petitions, is in the main entirely satisfactory to us.”
She must, then, regard it as a law that will do some good, else it would not be “entirely satisfactory” to her. Now, how must Sunday be kept in order to be beneficial according to the experienced judgment of Mrs. Bateham? She says:—
“I have spent many months in the countries of Europe and in the West Indies, and have traveled over a large portion of this country and of England, and have everywhere made a careful study of the Sabbath as affecting the people in their home life and national life, their mind and their bodies, their morals and their religion, and I everywhere find that the more carefully the day is kept as a day for rest and