Some Sunday Sophistry by B.

International Religious Liberty Association · Chicago · Jun 21, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 24.

Some Sunday Sophistry.

By B.

“The Sunday League of America (Incorporated)” publishes at Columbus, Ohio, “Sunday Reform Leaflets,” “issued quarterly or oftener.” This is rather indefinite in view of the fact that the publication is regularly “entered as second class matter;” and the law specifies that any publication to be entitled to such entry must be “issued at stated intervals.”

The number before us purports to have been issued in April of the present year, and the first article in it is entitled “The Sunday Movement.” “All over the civilized world,” says the writer (which presumably is Dr. Edward Tompson), “there is increasing interest in this matter. It is found that one day of rest and thought is a necessity for the welfare of man.”

Doubtless what is said is true as to the increasing “interest in this matter.” This must almost necessarily follow from the untiring agitation of the question by the various Sunday leagues, of which the Columbus association is only one. But the statement “that one day of rest and thought in seven is a necessity for the welfare of man,” is not quite so clear.

If our memory serves us, it used to be found that one day of “rest” was “necessary” not only for man but for inanimate things even. But nothing was said about “thought.” But since it has been pointed out that so far as the merely animal nature is concerned, the theater is the peer of the church; the concert equal to the sermon; the excursion as good as the trip to meeting and return; the picnic as profitable as the regulation Sunday dinner; the advocates of the “civil Sabbath” have been compelled to revise their arguments slightly, and they now couple “thought” with “rest.” This is as it should be, and we hope that the subjects of this enforced “rest and thought” will occupy at least a portion of the time in thinking about the rights which belong to every man in virtue of his being a human being; one of which rights is to do as he likes, provided always he does not interfere with the equal rights of some other person.

The plea so persistently put forth that “a regularly recurring seventh day of rest is a physical necessity” is fallacious. The history of the race has demonstrated quite the contrary. What country or what age ever produced a better physical or mental type of men than Greece and Rome, before idleness, luxury, and vice rendered their people effeminate? And yet they had no Sabbath; only the “wild solar holiday of all pagan times,” which was none other than the “continental Sunday” of modern Europe, only with less restrictions, less beer, and more liberty in every other way.

That a weekly Sabbath properly used is a good thing in every way, morally, mentally, and physically, we have no wish to deny. But physical rest is not, and never was, the primary object of the Sabbath. First of all the Sabbath is memorial in its history, spiritual in significance, and religious in character. It can be no more properly enforced upon anybody than can baptism or the Lord’s Supper.

Moreover, as before stated, not only is it incapable of demonstration that a weekly day of rest is a physical necessity, but the facts of history are all against the idea. Several years since, the Christian Statesman published the following item relative to the Jews, many of whom observe no regular weekly rest; doing business on the Sabbath of their fathers and devoting Sunday either to business or to pleasure-seeking. The Statesman said:

“Attention is being called to the comparative longevity of the Jews. Thus, it is said that in Polish Russia, in a population of ten thousand, three Christians die for every two Jews, and that in Austria the proportion is about the same. In Saxony, one Jew in fifty-one and one Christian in thirty-three expresses the comparative death rate. At Frankfort, fifty-four per cent of the Jews reach their seventieth year, against thirty-eight per cent of the Christians. In Hungary, the chances of life among the Croats is put at twenty years, the Germans at twenty-seven, and the Jews at forty-six.”

Even if this item did not disprove the statement so confidently made that a regular weekly rest is necessary to the physical well-being of man, it would utterly and forever negative the assertion that “the liberty of rest for one is dependent on a law of rest for all.” For so far as these Jews observe a day of rest at all, in the manner insisted upon as essential, they observe it upon Saturday, when all the world is busy around them. The same is true of at least sixty thousand Christian Sabbatarians in this country alone, who find no difficulty in resting, nor even in worshiping, while other men are working and transacting business in close proximity to them.

Another fact that ought to give pause to the zeal of those who parrot-like are repeating the false statement that regular weekly rest has been found to be a physical necessity, was stated by Bishop Andrews of the Methodist Episcopal Church, March 11, 1890, in a public meeting in New York City, at which the writer was present. The Bishop had but recently returned from a missionary tour, and speaking of China said, “In that country they have no Sabbath; yet laboring men live to be very old.” The Bishop added that he did not understand it, but that it was nevertheless a fact.

This statement was made by Bishop Andrews in a meeting held under the auspices of the American Sabbath Union, but with no intention of discrediting the physical-necessity argument. But facts have always been unkind to falsehood, and so the blow was no less deadly because given by a friendly hand.

The truth is that “physical necessity” is only used to obscure the real principle involved. Religious legislation has no standing in constitutional law in this country, therefore it must be made to appear that Sunday laws are not religious in their design, but intended only to meet certain “civil” ends.

But this leaflet which we are examining reveals its true character even more plainly in other things. On page three we find this: “Blackstone says, ‘A corruption of morals usually follows a profaning of the Sabbath.’”

And this is just exactly what Sunday laws are for, namely to guard “morals,” which is only another way of saying that they are enacted and enforced in the interests of religion. The very first definition of the word “moral” is: “Of or pertaining to the practice, conduct, and spirit of men toward God, themselves, and their fellowmen, with reference to right and wrong and to obligation to duty.”—Standard.

Notice, morals have to do with one’s relations to God, and with right and wrong, not with rights and wrongs. It is no wonder that Blackstone treats of “Sabbath-breaking” (by which he means treating Sunday as a common day) under the heading of “offenses against God and Religion.” That is all that Blackstone saw in it; and that is just what the Sunday laws of his day were designed to punish; and their purpose is just the same to-day. The leopard of religious legislation has not changed its spots. B.