Your ShelfYour Projects

Untitled article

11%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 16, 1893

FromAmerican Sentinel, Vol. 8, No. 7

Read the full edition

A Candid Statement from the “Political Dissenter.”

By Editor

IN its issue of February 1, the Political Dissenter says this, editorially:—
The opponents of the act of Congress making the closing of the World's Fair on the Sabbath a condition of the national appropriation for its support, appeal to the Constitution of the United States against that enactment. And this appeal is likely to prove the most effectual method of defeating the operation of that law.
It is altogether probable, as we have noted elsewhere, that the Illinois legislature will put itself in direct opposition to Congress by enacting a bill authorizing the keeping of the Fair open on the Sabbath. The general ground for such a State enactment in antagonism to the act of Congress will be that by the very nature of our national Constitution Congress is forbidden to legislate on any subject touching religion. The fathers, it is maintained, framed for the Nation a fundamental law putting all religions on a level, so far as national action is concerned, and leaving the matter of religion entirely to the States. The act of Congress closing the World's Fair on the Sabbath will therefore be held to be unconstitutional, in that it legislates on a matter of religion at all, and specially in that it legislates on such a subject in respect to a Fair to be held within the territory of the State of Illinois.
This will at least afford opportunity for the legislature of Illinois to pass its own act authorizing the opening of the Fair on the Sabbath. The directors of the Fair will not be slow to avail themselves of such State authority, in the face of any national opposition. By shrewd legal tactics the Fair will be kept open every day of the week to the end; and whatever may be the final verdict in the courts, the State and the directors of the Fair will thus have won a complete victory over Congress and the American Nation.
Such a course is possible; and being possible, it is hardly to be doubted that it will be followed out. And for our own part, we believe that the Commonwealth of Illinois would be able to make out a strong case in its interpretation of the national Constitution, and of the powers of Congress under it. Congressional legislation on behalf of the Christian Sabbath, or any other Christian institution in the life of our Nation, has no adequate legal basis in our written Constitution. And sooner or later practical questions of this very nature will and must be raised as to its correct interpretation. The case in which the Supreme Court of the United States declared, as an obiter dictum, that this is a Christian Nation, did not raise this practical question as to the Constitution at all. But a case such as the Illinois legislature now has the opportunity to bring to an issue would touch this vital point.
And even suppose that the State legislature might be defeated in the end; it nevertheless has the power to win a present practical victory. And this arises from the religious defect of the Constitution. If the written Constitution of the United States contained to-day such an acknowledgment of Christ and his law for nations as would furnish an undeniable legal basis for the recent enactment of Congress closing the World's Fair on the Sabbath, the legislature of Illinois would never dream of setting itself in opposition to congressional action so indisputably constitutional as this Sabbath-closing law would in that case be. And this is just the practical value of the proposed amendment. Is not this present argument for it conclusive?
We shall still hope that if Illinois raises this issue, the Supreme Court of the Nation may decide that this is a Christian Nation, with an unwritten, vital, historical and providential Constitution that is distinctively and undeniably Christian, although much in our national life is out of harmony with it. Even in that case, the argument will remain in full force, that what is in the historical, vital, and unwritten Constitution, should be formulated in the written organic law.
This is a very shrewd forecast of the possible outcome of the Sunday closing contest as it relates to the World's Fair. It is also a candid statement of the unquestionable unconstitutionality of the Sunday closing proviso and all other legislation in behalf of religious institutions or ceremonies. At the same time it is an unhesitating plea for a union of Church and State. If the Dissenter should retain the freedom and candor of expression which marks this editorial it will openly acknowledge very soon, the moment it perceives its wishes certain of being realized in either form, that what had all along been sought was the dominance of the State by the Church, and therefore a union of Church and State.