Religious Liberty Notes
By K. C. RUSSELL
We are glad to place the Indiana Conference on the list of conferences which have organized religious liberty departments. Brother J. F. Steel, of Eaton, Ind., has been elected secretary of this department. The religious liberty secretary of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, Brother George W. Spies, purposes to organize the work in his territory for a more aggressive campaign, and plans to hold a religious liberty convention in Harrisburg, Pa., the State capital, December 7-10. The Washington Times of November 2, in referring editorially to the recent trouble in Russia, says that “the power of the people to block government by inaction will lead to a general disarmament among the nations is hardly to be expected. As a great English authority suggests, the nations will keep their powder dry and their rifles ready till the world in general has secured more firmly the principles of civil and religious liberty.” “I do not desire to make a political speech on Sunday night.” These were the opening words of an address given by W. R. Hearst, one of the candidates for the mayoralty of New York City, Sunday evening, November 5, in Madison Square Garden, at the greatest political mass-meeting ever held in that city. It is interesting to observe the high regard in which Sunday is held by politicians. Mr. Hearst is more careful in this respect than some ministers we read of in these days. Last Tuesday’s election in Maryland scored a signal victory for equal rights in the crushing defeat of the Poe Amendment bill to disfranchise the negro voters. The immortal words contained in the Declaration of Independence should never be forgotten: “We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” “Away down in Maine” the commissioners of inland fisheries and game, through their chairman, L. T. Carlton, have issued a notice to their wardens to rigidly enforce the law against the Sunday shooting of birds and game. The purpose of this notice certainly could not have been because the shooting would disturb the inhabitants away back in the woods of Maine, and certainly the killing of innocent birds would be no worse on Sunday than on any other day, therefore the only reason that could be assigned for this order of the commissioners is because of the supposed religious character of the day. It is remarkable to observe how universally Sunday laws can be applied in every department of human life.