Untitled article by W. N. Glenn

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · January 15, 1891

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 6, No. 3

The Sunday Law in California.

By W. N. Glenn

EDITOR DAILY TIMES: I see by your issue of November 24, that the American Sabbath Union has been regaling the people of San Jose with the beauties of a proposed Sunday law for California. The Union’s representative seems to think that because a Sunday congress was held in Paris, and because attention was called to the subject in a labor congress in Germany, that we must needs have a Sunday law in this State. This line of reasoning is not surprising, coming as it does from a man who thinks we ought to have a reproduction of Julius Cæsar in this climate. The two ideas are about on a par; and if California and the United States should be so unfortunate as to secure the Sunday laws after the pattern designed by this Eastern jobbery house, we will no doubt have some Cæsarism duplicated before we get through.

The Sabbath Union is a New York institution whose chief aim is a national Sunday law; but during the recesses of Congress it skirmishes around the country in search of smaller jobs that are calculated to strengthen its position on the main issue. It has always maintained that a civil Sunday—not a religious Sabbath—is all that it aims to have legalized, but in all the speeches and writings of its representatives, the covert intent of a religious institution always crops out. According to the Times’ report, the San Jose effort was no exception.

The subject, “The Enemies of the Sabbath Movement,” was well calculated to let out the real motive of the movers. Where was the necessity of laboring to prove that this is a “Christian Nation,” as a reason for a Sunday law, if it be only a civil rest day that is wanted? For such a purpose, what is the difference whether the Nation is Christian or not? By the way, it is but two years ago that an extraordinary effort was made to get petitioners for a national Sunday law. Every Christian denomination (excepting two small seventh-day sects), men, women and

children, were counted as petitioners, many of them several times over as members of various associations, yet only about 14,000,000 could be mustered—less than one-fourth of the whole population. That does not look much as though this could be reckoned as a Christian Nation. And the Constitution was especially designed to ignore anything of the kind, leaving all religions on an absolute equality before the law.

Then in enumerating the enemies of the Sunday-law movement, the speaker is reported to have said: “First are the infidels who include a great number and variety of thought. They would strangle every effort that tended to the propagation of the gospel.” What has a mere civil rest-day to do with the propagation of the gospel?

Again he says: “There are the Seventh-day Adventists, who are very unreasonable in their opposition, for we make exceptions of those who for religious scruples would adopt another day as their day of worship.” Here is a further expose of the fact that a day of worship is contemplated, and only those are exempted who are religious on some other day (the petition which is being circulated says “regularly” religious). This exemption directly places a premium on religion, by granting Sunday indulgence to religious people.

That was quite a pertinent (or, was it impertinent?) allusion made by the speaker to Judge Terry; he was the only judge who had decided against the constitutionality of Sunday laws, and he was afterward shot. Surely no other judge will ever dare to follow his example in that kind of decision. The constitutionality question may be considered as settled! The speaker further said: “In the teeth of his (Judge Terry’s) adverse decision, the Legislature of this State passed a Sunday law which was upheld by the Supreme Court.”

Now why did not the Doctor go on and tell the rest of that bit of history. That the State Sunday law, which was passed “in the teeth” of Judge Terry’s decision, was allowed to be dormant on the statute book for nearly twenty years, and was forgotten by almost everybody. Finally about the years 1881-82 some zealous preachers discovered the hidden treasure, and determined to dig it up and have it enforced. Complaints, however, failed to convict more than a very few victims, hardly any of whom were of that class denominated “the greatest curse the country knows.”

And “in the teeth” of this spasmodic tirade, the people spoke in the most emphatic terms. They voted down the Sunday law by an overwhelming majority. The Legislature of 1883 promptly repealed it, and a subsequent Legislature as promptly squelched an effort to revive it. And moreover, the Sunday has been more deferentially observed without a law than it was with it, and even the most zealous Sabbath Unionist of them all (Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts) has acknowledged the fact in his book on Sunday observance.

I submit, then, what must be patent to all reasonable minds, that if the American Sabbath Union succeeds in foisting its scheme upon the people of California, it will have to induce the Legislature to violate the express will of a large majority of the people.—W. N. Glenn, in San Jose Daily Times, November 28, 1890.