p. 371 | Untitled article by C. P. B.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · December 1, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 47

The Only Proper Sunday Law.

By C. P. B.

LAST week we published an article from the Christian Patriot in which it was asserted that—

Sunday laws are not at all religious. They have two objects: first to secure everyone his right to a weekly day of rest; and, secondly, to prevent the disturbance by worldly noise and business of those who rest on Sunday.

It seems strange that men will deny the religious character of Sunday laws, especially in the face of scores of judicial decisions to the contrary. Two weeks ago we published an article giving a number of these decisions, and many more might have been given. In his excellent work, “Law of Sunday,” Hon. James T. Ringgold, of the Law Department of Johns Hopkins University, quotes numerous decisions sustaining five propositions, as follows:—

Sunday is a holy day.
The holiness of Sunday is to be recognized by remaining idle on that day; and not to so remain is to be immoral.
Sunday idleness is enforced as a religious duty in the individual.
There is a divine command that men shall be idle on Sunday; and this command is an element of Christianity.
This divine command is a part of American constitutional law.

These propositions are not a statement of Mr. Ringgold’s convictions of truth, but are simply statements of what the courts have decided to be the law on the subject. Of course there are also decisions that Sunday is a civil institution; but that is true in a certain sense of any institution established by civil law. Any other religious institution might be made civil in exactly the same sense by simply entrenching it in the civil law. It is vain to deny the religious character of Sunday laws.

Another point in the Patriot’s article which demands further notice is its proposition that—

those who conscientiously and really observe any other day as a Sabbath should be exempted from the law, provided they do their Sunday work in such a way and at such a place as not to disturb the Sabbath quiet of the first day of the week.

This very thing marks Sunday laws as religious. The proposition is to exempt from their provisions “conscientious” observers of another day. Why not simply observers of another day? Evidently because the purpose of the law is to secure a religious observance. Were this not the case a law requiring every man to rest one day each week, and compelling employers to give their employees one day off each week, would fully meet the demands of nature for a day of rest. But it is a religious service which the law is intended to secure, hence only those who yield this on another day are exempted from observing, at least outwardly, the day required by the civil law.

The only proper Sunday law would be one exempting from its provisions the entire population of the country together with transient visitors of all descriptions.

C. P. B.