Religious Liberty Notes
By K. C. RUSSELL
THE St. Louis Post-Dispatch says: “The Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio announces that he is in favor of a Christian sabbath.” The Seventh-day Adventist Conferences of South Dakota and Minnesota elected religious liberty secretaries at their recent annual conference sessions. Let other States do likewise. Elder J. P. Lorenz, of Bowie, Tex., writes that the clergy of that place are greatly aroused as the result of a series of tent-meetings which he is conducting, and have engaged the services of a champion National Reformer to check the desecration (?) of Sunday which they fear will be the result of the meetings. Brother Thomas Hege, of Winston, N. C., writes us, under date of July 24, that he is again in prison. A few days before he was imprisoned for keeping an open shop on Sunday, the town was given over to the firemen of the State. It is reported that drunkenness, profanity, and general carousing characterized the demonstrations. In one of the brawls a brick was thrown through a plate-glass window in Brother Hege’s store; it not only destroyed the glass, but smashed a three-hundred-dollar musical instrument. No account was taken of this, but when an innocent man dares to keep his store open on Sunday, he is quickly imprisoned. “Consistency, thou art a jewel.” Because an alderman in Asheville, N. C., favored a liberal Sunday which permitted the sale of soda-water, etc., on Sunday, the pastor of the Presbyterian church of which he was a deacon, invited him to resign, as is described in the Winston Republican of July 20, 1905: “Late in the afternoon Rev. R. F. Campbell, pastor of the Presbyterian church, requested Alderman B. Burnette, who voted for the ordinance, and who was a deacon in the First Presbyterian church, to resign as a deacon, stating that if such a course was not pursued, the session of the church would expel him. Alderman Burnette tendered his resignation as deacon, and also withdrew his membership from the church. Alderman Burnette said that he felt deeply in the matter; that while his leaving the church gave him pain, he felt that he had performed his duty to the people who had elected him to office and who had confidence in him, and that he would not shirk a public duty.” The Washington (D. C.) Sunday Star of July 23, 1905, states that in London a great movement in favor of Sunday observance has been started, and further says: “The non-conformist churches have been asked to join the movement. Though not expressly stated, it is understood that the resolutions in favor of a more strict observance of the Sabbath were adopted because of the emphatic protests recently made in the most public of ways by the representatives of the Hebrews, who object to observing Sunday instead of Saturday.” William T. Jerome, a prosecuting attorney in New York State, in a recent address in the West, in referring to the determination of Governor Folk of Missouri to enforce all laws on the statute-book, says: “I am sore myself with banging my head against unenforceable laws. But I had to. I have got to do it. It is my duty. But I know that I can not succeed, because the people do not believe those laws have a sound moral sanction.” He further states: “Sunday closing laws are sediments of Puritanism.”