Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 2, 1893

In its issue of the 15th inst., the Christian Patriot has the following, under the heading, “Sunday laws”:—

The question suggested above, the connection of divine and human legislation, is a very live one. For the Seventh-day Adventists, who are quite numerous, maintain an association and a press to urge the repeal of our Sunday laws, the law forbidding worldly work on the Christian Sabbath, because (as they say) they are religious legislation and opposed to the genius of our American institutions and to the word of God. They are alone in this contention. The Seventh-day Baptists and the Jews do not join in their agitation. But what they lack in numbers they make up in zeal.

The Adventists not only say that Sunday laws are religious legislation, but they prove it by the most indubitable evidence. Nor are they alone in their opposition to a State-bolstered religious dogma. While a considerable number of Seventh-day Baptists seem to take but little interest in the question, caring nothing for the wrongs of others so long as they are themselves protected by a clause exempting them, others in that communion are alive to the issue and are one with the Adventists in protesting against all Sunday legislation, as wrong in principle and mischievous in practice.

The Sabbath Outlook, a Seventh-day Baptist monthly, published at Alfred Center, this State, is very outspoken in its opposition to Sunday legislation. We have often quoted from it in the SENTINEL. But this is not a question of numbers but of rights. Sunday laws would be no better than they now are if there was but one person in all the world to protest against them. It would still be true that they are wrong in principle.