Your ShelfYour Projects

The Sunday Question in France

10%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 30, 1907

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 84, No. 22.

Read the full edition

The Sunday Question in France

By J. C. BROWER

J. C. BROWER
LAWS for Sunday observance are not confined to the United States. Not only here, but in Canada, European countries, and even the far East, the question is being agitated. This movement is becoming world wide.
Recently, in France, where the struggle of the separation of church and state has been waged so fiercely since the Combes ministry of three years ago began the war against priestcraft, there has been set in action a course of events in the present Sunday law that will again unite church and state.
The “Sabbatarian law” which the French Parliament has just passed is being condemned by the people because it makes them eat stale bread. But some newspapers think that the question of stale bread will be of minor importance compared to other injuries which this law is bound to inflict.
This law, like the majority of Sunday laws, does not openly show its religious character, but comes out under the same old hackneyed pretense of being enacted for the sole purpose of protecting the laboring classes, giving them one day of rest.
That erudite, popular novelist and dramatist of France, Marcel Provost, sets forth some sound principles against the recently enacted law. He says, as quoted in the Literary Digest: “This new law interferes with the profits of the employer and the salary of the employed. It asserts and emphasizes the ancient heresy that labor is suffering. To all, except certain shirkers, labor is not only an economic necessity, but a delight. Idleness, on the other hand, is not happiness.” After citing certain employers who are thus forced to rest, he says, “A real vacation is nothing more than liberty, freedom from compulsion. Compulsory rest is not liberty any more than the leisure of a convict is liberty.”
No civil law nor mere outward confession can ever change a man's heart. Only God, by his Holy Spirit, can do that. Wherever and whenever civil law attempts to deal with religious questions,—for such are all Sunday laws, no matter what garb they wear,—it enters the terrible domain of the Inquisition.
No man can approach real greatness until he weaves most thoroughly into his own woof and texture the noble sentiment of the Saviour's declaration: “If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not.” John 12: 47, 48.
Arecibo, Porto Rico.