The “Sabbath Observance” Campaign
By Editor
MUCH interest in the Sabbath question has been developed in Washington as the result of the publication in the Washington Post of the open letter to the clergy of this city, which is printed in this issue of the REVIEW. The Bishop of Washington made a reply to this letter which was printed in the Post of Dec. 31, 1904. On Sunday, January 1, quite a number of the ministers of Washington preached upon some phase of the question of “Sabbath Observance,” according to the plan agreed upon two or three weeks ago. In the Post of Monday, January 2, there appeared no less than six letters, one of them from Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, the head of the International Reform Bureau, dealing with some of the issues raised by this campaign. Feeling confident that our readers have a special interest in this matter, we reprint two of these letters:— THE DANGER OF INTOLERANCE EDITOR POST: I have read with interest the editorial in your issue of December 28 under the title “Sabbath and Sunday.” Although I am not able to agree with all the positions taken in it, yet it does credit both to your research and to your candor. With your permission, I will call attention to a lesson from history, suggested by your closing statements, which are as follows: “The only danger is that those who observe it [Sunday] will become intolerant of those who regard it more as a holiday than a holy day. Against this intolerance those who appreciate the real value of Sunday must ever be upon their guard.” The steps taken in the fourth and fifth centuries to secure the better observance of Sunday led directly to the intolerance of the Dark Ages. These steps, and the reasons given for them, are briefly these: “The Emperor Constantine, as Sozomen relates, enacted a law [A. D. 314] that on Friday, as on Sunday, there should be a suspension of business at the courts and in other civil offices, so that the day might be devoted with less interruption to the purposes of devotion. This was followed in A. D. 321 by Constantine’s celebrated Sunday law, which runs thus: “On the venerable day of the sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits, because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain sowing or for vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.” The custom of consecrating Sunday “in a special manner to religious employments and of abstaining from all worldly business was established by a synodal law, the twenty-ninth canon of the council of Laodicea [A. D. 364], yet with this restriction, that all Christians should abstain from their worldly business if they were able.” “By a law of the year 386 those older changes effected by the Emperor Constantine were more rigorously enforced, and, in general, civil transactions of every kind on Sunday were strictly forbidden. Whoever transgressed was to be considered, in fact, as guilty of sacrilege.” These various enactments in favor of a stricter observance of Sunday were all passed so that it might be easy for the people to attend the religious services on that day. But note the actual result. “Owing to the prevailing passion at that time, especially in the large cities, to run after the various public shows, it so happened that when these spectacles fell on the same days which had been consecrated by the church to some religious festival, they proved a great hindrance to the devotion of Christians, though chiefly, it must be allowed, to those whose Christianity was the least an affair of the life and of the heart. . . . The theater was vastly more frequented than the church. . . . Moreover, by the civil relations of those times many were obliged, on account of their particular place among the citizens, to take part in the arrangements necessary for the support of the public shows, and so to be interrupted in their devotions, against their will. [They were compelled by the government to work on Sunday!] Hence, the North African Church resolved, at an ecclesiastical convention held at Carthage in 401, to petition the emperor that the public shows might be transferred from Christian Sunday and from feast days to some other days of the week. Owing to the prevailing passion for the shows, this petition could not be granted, perhaps, without considerable difficulty. First, in the year 425 the exhibition of spectacles on Sunday and on the principal feast days of the Christians was forbidden, in order that the devotion of the faithful might be free from all disturbance. In this way the church received help from the state for the furtherance of her ends, which could not be obtained in the preceding period.” But still the people cared more for amusement than for religion. They regarded Sunday, in the words of your editorial, “more as a holiday than a holy day.” This did not satisfy the religious teachers, and St. Augustine then propounded his celebrated theory of compelling people to attend to religious matters, in the following statements: “It is, indeed, better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment or by pain. But because the former means are better, the latter must not therefore be neglected.” “It was by Augustine, then, that a theory was proposed and founded which . . . contained the germ of that whole system of that spiritual despotism, of intolerance and persecution, which ended in the tribunals of the Inquisition.” [All the quotations in this communication, except Constantine’s Sunday law and the translation of Augustine’s theory of compulsion, are taken verbatim from Neander’s Church History, an acknowledged authority.] The imperial decrees in favor of Sunday observance and the petition of the church that the government should not compel its members to work on Sunday, in order that the day might be more religiously observed, led logically to intolerance and persecution in order to compel people to be religious who were inclined to regard Sunday “more as a holiday than a holy day.” Is not the lesson plain? The clergy and people of Washington ought to consider this history before they enter upon any campaign “aimed at the [alleged] governmental practise of making certain employees work on Sunday.” Furthermore, there are now before Congress two bills, with penalties of fines and imprisonment attached, designed to compel certain classes of people in the District of Columbia to regard Sunday as a holy day. The “danger” which you suggest as a possible one is even now a real one—the danger of intolerance. In the interest of a pure Christianity, I urge that the church should not attempt to secure governmental action in favor of Sunday, and that each one be left free to follow the dictates of his own conscience. W. W. PRESCOTT.