Religious Liberty Notes
By K. C. Russell
FRIDAY, the 24th ult., a Sunday bill was defeated in the Missouri State Legislature. This defeat undoubtedly was due to the earnest efforts put forth by our brethren there in the distribution of religious liberty literature, and in interviewing the legislators. A president of a conference writes as follows: “I am glad to see so much interest manifested in the religious liberty cause throughout the field. I am sure that this work will meet with a still more hearty response as we proceed. It takes time to get it started again. Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” Another president writes: “While we have been asleep, people have been educated to look with much more favor upon Sunday laws than ever before, and had we slumbered on much longer, but few petitions would have been signed. Now I hope we shall not go to sleep, since the bill has passed by.” Here is what another president says: “I have been watching the progress of the religious liberty work a long time with very great interest. The work of getting petitions was, I think, quite successful. Nearly all, if not every one, of our brethren who wrote special letters to senators and members of the house received encouraging replies to their communications.” A minister in a Southern State reports: “I find that it is not so easy to get signatures here as in New England. There I secured several hundred signatures from the leading men in the city of —. Here there is quite a sentiment in favor of strict Sunday observance, and if it was put to a vote, I believe that ninety-five per cent of the people would vote for it. The people must be educated on this question.” Another brother writes concerning the religious liberty work as follows: “I am so glad it is being revived, as I used to take part in the religious liberty work; and when the Sentinel was dropped, and no active work was being done, I was heart sick; but now you are located in Washington, where you can see how the enemy is seeking to curtail the liberty of God’s people by the enactment of Sunday laws, it will fill you with greater enthusiasm and energy to push forward the work.” A president of a union conference writes with reference to the agitation now in progress here concerning the question of religious teaching in the public schools: “I have no thought that we shall have any rest from this time on in such movements, nor do I suppose the time will be long delayed when we shall witness the execution of some of the plans that are in the minds of these men. I find that throughout the country a great many of the leading people sympathize with these movements. The only thing I see before us is to continue to labor and pray; and when the time comes for the establishment of the work of the National Reformers, we can have the consciousness of having done what we could.” A brother who circulated a petition in California writes: “Several liberal-minded Catholics have signed: one of them, who is a prominent Republican politician, volunteered to speak personally to Senator — in regard to the pending bills, and to solicit his aid in the preservation of religious liberty.” A brother in Oregon writes concerning his experience in circulating a petition: “I had no success in my effort to get men holding any public office to sign it. I went to a lawyer who defended twenty-two business men and saloon men in a noted Sunday-law trial which took place here some time ago, and since then has been elected mayor. He refused. This work has opened the way for individual missionary work, to present the message for to-day as never before in my experience. But many of our people are asleep, unconscious of a God-given opportunity.” Here is another encouraging word from a Western conference president: “I do not believe that there is anything that has been tried that will create more interest in present truth than to distribute this literature, and secure petitions against religious legislation.”