Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York City · June 11, 1896

A CORRESPONDENT asks us to state “why idleness cannot be enforced on a certain day on purely civil grounds.” We reply, simply because no civil reason exists for such prohibition.

Joseph Cook says:—

The experience of centuries shows that you will in vain endeavor to preserve Sunday as a day of rest, unless you preserve it as a day of worship.

Again, in reply to the question: “Could not this weekly rest-day be secured without reference to religion?” the answer given by Mr. Crafts, the then Field Secretary of the American Sabbath Union, was:—

A weekly day of rest has never been permanently secured in any land except on the basis of religious obligation. Take the religion out and you take the rest out.

The fact is, as these men state, that the observance of a weekly day of rest is wholly dependent on religion.

Even admitting for the sake of the argument that a weekly day of rest is a physical necessity and therefore justified by civil reasons, there is absolutely nothing to show that all should rest at the same time. The very utmost that could be justified even then would be a law providing a weekly rest-day for each individual, allowing employer and employed to arrange the matter between them according to their convenience. But nobody wants such a law. The demand for a civil rest-day is altogether in the interests of Sunday “sacredness.”