p. 181 | Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · June 5, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 23

Sunday-Law Campaign in California.

WE have mentioned the political campaign which the Sunday-law advocates are carrying on to secure representatives pledged to enact Sunday laws. It is the same old trickery put in new dress. The following statement of The Dial gives a good view of the way they are doing it:—

The very beneficent Sunday-law devotees have mapped out an importunate campaign for the present season in California. Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts and Mrs. Bateham, both of national reputation in the line of Sunday fanaticism, have come from the East to assist poor California in the herculean task of extricating herself from Sunday desecration. In addition to this, the local co-adjutors, male and female, are training for a fight to the finish.

Dr. Thompson, the State satellite of the American Sabbath Union, a few weeks ago laid out the plan of operations before the pastors of San Diego, which, in brief, comprised the following programme: First, to labor to secure recognition by one or both of the great political parties by Sunday-law planks in their State platforms; second, failing to effect the point in this way, the next step will be to work upon individual candidates for the Legislature. Faithful friends of the measure in each district will interview the candidate of one party and if possible procure his private pledge to support a Sunday law. They can say to him, “Your party is not committed either way, you are at perfect liberty to do as you please; your position need not be known during the campaign;

just privately pledge yourself to us and we will throw our weight in the balance in your favor.”

The point will be to assure the candidate that all the church people are united on this question, and will all vote for any one who is pledged to support a Sunday law. If he fail to see it in that light, he is to understand that he will be tabooed by the good people, and their support will be given to the other man. In this campaign everything political in the power of the sacred circle is to be bartered for a Sunday law.

There are in the plans for this campaign, although in the name of religion, the elements of the most deceptive political schemes ever brought to light in the State. This State movement is part and parcel of the game for a national Sunday law, which in turn is a link in the National Reform Constitutional Amendment plot; and their principal hope, all the way through, is based on the verdancy or the cupidity of politicians. They would loudly denounce the same principle of operations if brought to bear against their pet project. The line upon which the Sunday-law politicians are working, was laid out at a National Reform Convention, held in Pittsburg, in 1874, when Dr. Robert Audley Browne gave vent to the following sentiment:—

There is no more persistent man alive than the typical representative American office-seeker. Of that class, the most of those who have not yet found whether they are for Christ or not, or who are openly decrying this movement, are ready to be its firm friends as soon as they acquire wisdom to discern the signs of the times, and are assured of its speedy success. They may pull back now at the hind axle, or scotch the wheels of the car of progress; but when they see it move, they will quickly jump in to get front seats, and avow “they always thought it was a good thing.” When our Master comes into his kingdom in our beloved land, they will be candidates for the foremost positions, and scramble with the mother of Zebedee’s children for the right or left hand places in the kingdom.

This shows the character of the weapons they propose to use, and the programme proposed for the California campaign shows the deceptive manner in which the weapons are to be secured. Verily “the end justifies the means” from a Sunday-law standpoint. When a professedly Christian people begin to work in a secret manner with such candidates as can be secretly induced to barter principle for votes, it is time for honest people to look with suspicion upon the object sought by such means.

Not only is there deception proposed in regard to the manipulation of candidates, but there is equally as rank deception in regard to the character of the “Sabbath” which it is designed to bind upon the people of the State. The leaders of this movement have two propositions before the people: To the church people the very solemn plea is made that the sacred Sabbath is being desecrated by the ungodly use of the day; while to the general public the call is for a merely “civil Sabbath,” in order that the poor workingman may have a day of rest and recreation. The Oakland apostle of this religio-political movement, Rev. N. R. Johnston, even goes so far as to blandly plead for the saloon-keepers’ opportunity to go to the picnic on Sunday: while on the other hand the wickedness of the Sunday picnic has been held up as the grand reason why we should have a Sunday law. In his call for a convention at San Jose on the twentieth and twenty-first of this month, he shows the religious character of the civil Sabbath that his party is working for in the following language:—

The great importance of the divine institution, the steady growth of opposition to it as a sacred day of rest, the alarming prevalence of Sabbath desecration, and the danger that a Continental Sunday may displace our true American Sabbath, all call for combined wisdom and united efforts to promote Sabbath sanctification, and to secure a righteous civil law in our State that will tend to prevent the contemptuous disregard of our sacred day of rest.

And all this in the face of the public representations, not only of Mr. Johnston himself, but of Mr. Crafts, Mr. Thompson, and the whole flock of prominent leaders, that all that is wanted is a civil day of rest, a legal holiday in the interests of overworked humanity. Let the people beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.