Untitled article by Editor

Untitled article

Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 2, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 39

WE have often said that the great underlying motive of the Sunday-law agitators is a desire to secure the co-operation of the State in making men religious. Mr. Crafts, the founder of the American Sabbath Union, denies this; but Rev. D. C. Knowles, D. D. says that that is the whole “problem in a nutshell.” In an article in the New York Christian Advocate, of September 4, Mr. Knowles says:—

This Nation needs to cultivate a profound respect for law by showing its true relations to individual and public good. This is especially applicable to Sunday legislation. Multitudes are indifferent to laws relating to secular business on Sunday, because they think men are not made good by law. They feel that moral agencies alone are to be trusted; but how can moral agencies have their fullest influence on the public conscience unless law shall lay its prohibitory hand on the whirring wheels of business, and command, “Peace, be still?” Human cupidity will destroy that Sabbath calm which is so peculiar to our American Sabbath unless we arrest its action by law. When that religious calm has departed, how can our moral agencies reach the masses? This is the problem we have before us. The soul needs quiet if it would apprehend God and duty, and this quiet is the product of law. Discard the law and the quiet goes with it, and ere long all forms of industry will be in full blast. It is our duty to have conditions most favorable to the saving influences of the Gospel, and this is the Sabbath problem in a nutshell.

This is a plain confession of just that which we have always asserted, namely, that Sunday laws are directly in the interests of religion, and that they are designed to be so.