National Reform Ideas of Religion.
The Moral and Scientific Companion, published at Florence, Arizona, prints the following items of “Religious Ideas of the Nineteenth Century.” They are well stated, but they are not peculiar to the nineteenth century, but date from the days of Constantine. We wish to caution our readers, however, against imagining that the AMERICAN SENTINEL subscribes to any of these ideas. We repudiate them entirely. They are championed in this country only by the National Reform Association and the American Sabbath Union:— “A man may keep the Sabbath by merely being idle! “A man (irrespective of his belief) can keep the day holy if forced by law to remain idle! “A man, even though an infidel, keeps the Sabbath holy when forced to rest, not on the seventh day, but on Sunday, the day after the Sabbath of the Bible! “The United States,—infidels, heathens, and all,—will be a ‘Christian Nation’ when compelled to remain idle on the first day of the week [now called ‘the American Sabbath’], even though they break the whole ten commandments during the week! “A religious party may count one man’s signature as 7,000,000 when it comes to petitioning for a law enforcing their pet beliefs! “The minority are atheists and should not be tolerated—the majority are infallible, provided they preach National Reformism or Sunday compulsory observance! “The Lord [according to their premises] is not powerful enough to struggle against the ‘wicked minority’ without the assistance of national religious laws! That is, they propose to do what the Almighty can’t! “A national Sunday law is not a religious one; to the saloon keeper and workingmen it is merely a ‘sanitary measure,’ to keep them from overwork; to the prohibitionist it is solely a ‘temperance measure;’ to the religious people it is entirely a ‘Christian measure.’ “Laws enforcing the beliefs of the ‘Christian church’ (heathens, Mormons, Quakers, unbelievers, Jews, Seventh-day Baptists, Sabbatarians, etc., excluded) will not be a union of Church and State, nor will they be religious laws, but merely ‘civil protections’! “‘Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to [salvation], and many there be which go in thereat.’”