Your ShelfYour Projects

Is It of National Significance?

14%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 15, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 42.

Read the full edition

Is It of National Significance?

By W. A. C.

IN their opposition to such measures as the Johnston District Sunday bill and the circulation of petitions against these throughout the country, our people not infrequently meet with the objection that Congressional legislation for the District of Columbia does not concern the people in the States. At first thought, such a conclusion may seem quite natural and consistent; and it would doubtless be true, in large measure at least, with reference to Congressional legislation for the District respecting ordinary matters. But in this case it is not true. And the reason why it is not true is because there is a principle involved in this proposed legislation which concerns all the people of the United States,—the principle of religious legislation.
Congress has never yet passed a compulsory Sunday law. For it to do so will be a new thing for this country and for this nation.
While the Johnston Sunday bill relates only to the District of Columbia, the question whether Congress has a right to legislate upon religious matters concerns, and very vitally concerns, the whole people of this country, and every person in it. The principle is the same, whether Congress makes the law for the District of Columbia only, or for the whole country. If it can legislate upon religious matters for one section of the country, it can do so for all sections. If it can compel the people of the District of Columbia to keep Sunday, it can compel the people in all other parts of the country to keep it.
The Blair Sunday Rest bill, which ‘was before Congress in 1888 and 1889, was a measure for the compulsory observance of Sunday in every “territory, district, vessel, or place subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.” While this was still pending in Congress, Mr. W. F. Crafts, its chief advocate and exponent, said, “The national law is needed to make the State laws complete and effective. (Christian Statesman, April 11, 1889.) But this failing to pass, the advocates of Sunday legislation have ever since sought to get Congress committed to this sort of legislation through measures for compulsory Sunday observance in the District of Columbia. Such a measure is desired as a precedent, and is demanded with a view that it shall be the beginning, the entering wedge, for national legislation upon the subject of Sunday observance. A District Sunday bill therefore, is of concern to all the people of the country; and every lover of liberty, wherever he may reside in the United States, should oppose every movement of this kind, and see the danger in the camel’s getting his nose in the tent at all; for the first step involves the last.”
Moreover, the passing of a District Sunday law by Congress is of concern to more than the people of the United States; for the people of other nations are watching to see what the United States is going to do in this matter of Sunday legislation; and from the light that has been given us, we know that as America goes, other nations will follow. Let no one, therefore, be deceived in regard to this matter, or side-tracked in his opposition to national Sunday legislation in regard to this argument as that a Sunday law for the District of Columbia concerns only the people of the District of Columbia. It concerns all the people of the United States and all the world.
W. A. C.