What They Want by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 5, 1882

What They Want.

By Editor

THE East Oakland Vidette is one of the best of the secular papers that come to our table. Its make-up is good, and it is not given to the scandalous personalities so common to political papers of both parties. It aims to be the exponent of the moral sentiment of the community, and therefore its utterances on the Sunday question are significant. The following paragraph shows that we have not been wild in our statement that what the people want, and are bound to have, is a Sunday Law that will be rigid and uncompromising, and will make no exceptions in favor of anybody. Further comment is unnecessary; the article speaks for itself:—

"It may be the result of education, or, perhaps, of hereditary faith, but we do not like to work on Sunday. We therefore want a Sunday Law which will be so plainly worded that evasion of it will be impossible. A law which will make violaters of it punishable with such heavy fine and imprisonment that no one will dare to do otherwise than observe it. We want a law which will insure to the laborer his needed one day's rest in seven; a law which will give one day to the poor and dependent, of the enjoyment of which no capital or power can deprive them; a law which will recognize the civilizing and Christianizing influences of the American Sunday, either as a day of recreation or religious worship; a law which will compel every saloon, and other business house, to close its doors and do no business one day out of seven. In short, we want a Sunday Law; not one like the present, but one which can and will be enforced—and the more stringent it is, the better we shall be suited."