Religious Liberty Notes
By K. C. RUSSELL
BROTHER J. S. WIGHTMAN, religious liberty secretary of the New York Conference, is organizing the Religious Liberty Department in that State for thorough and aggressive work. Let the good work go on. The organ of the New England Sabbath Protective League, the Defender, contains the following inquiry in its October number: “Have you interviewed your candidate for the House or Senate? If not, will you do so, and see how he stands on temperance and Sabbath observance?” An editorial in the October number of the Christian Statesman, setting forth the need of introducing religious instruction into the public school, says, “We welcome the assistance of our Roman Catholic fellow citizens in urging their ideas on the attention of the people.” Elder F. M. Wilcox, in Echoes from the Field, the Colorado Conference paper, under date of October 4, presents the Colorado and New Mexico laws as compiled by a Boulder, Colo., attorney, and adds that “no exemption whatever exists in the New Mexico law, while the only exemption provided by the Colorado statute for the observer of the seventh day is the one relating to jury or witness duty.” The Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin of October 6 states that the city attorney has issued a notice to the citizens of Norwich, Conn., that all secular business and labor should cease on Sunday. The Druggists’ Association of the city have decided not to open at all on Sunday; for they claim that it would not pay to open to fill prescriptions. The paper further adds that “people who believe that Saturday ought to be observed as the Sabbath and do not work on that day, can work Sunday, providing they do not disturb people attending public worship.” Elder H. F. Phelps has contributed an article to the Minneapolis Journal under date of September 21, setting forth in a clear way what is involved in the Sunday closing question. He shows that the American people have given the rum traffic an air of respectability in recognizing it as a legitimate business every day but Sunday, and further prescribes a remedy for the liquor traffic: “Let the American people disrobe it of the garment of legal respectability with which they have covered its shame, and let it appear in all its naked deformity, and deal with it according to its merits. Truly the power that can close the saloon one day in the week can close it every day.” The World To-day says, “The mutual fear of Socialism is the power which is drawing them (Germany and the Vatican) together.” It further states: “The great iron-manufacturing city of Essen (Germany), the seat of the Krupp gunworks, where the emperor had made a bitter attack upon the Socialist party, rolled up a vote of 22,405 against one of 4,400 in 1898. In the face of returns like these, is it any wonder that the German government and the Catholic Church have struck hands and forgotten their old grievances? The repeal of the anti-Jesuit law of 1872, in December of last year, is a signal proof of this co-operation.” K. C. RUSSELL.