L. A. S by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 30, 1905

L. A. S

By L. A. S.

THE United Presbyterian says, in a plea for Sunday laws:—

An open Sabbath means a demoralized nation. It means a debauched citizenship. It means that religion must go down before the mailed hand of greed. Destroy the religious conviction of any people, or that upon which conviction rests, or by which it is promoted, and you undermine the foundations of civil liberty. The blessings of the highest civilization can not be maintained without the Sabbath. It is better that the law be made stronger than to weaken it by legislation.

A great deal that is true could be uttered along this line, but the essential point as regards “Sabbath” legislation, which the Presbyterian overlooks, is the fact that the demoralization of a nation begins and proceeds wholly independently of any power residing in the civil government. The integrity or the demoralization of a nation is a matter of individual self-government on the part of its people. Legislation can, and should, leave the way clear for the free exercise of individual rights and for the fullest degree of individual self-development, but it can do nothing further to maintain national integrity. When the demoralizing process has set in, legislation can not stop it. Only that can stop it which can reform the individual; and unless the majority of the individual components of a nation can be set right, the down-hill course of that nation must go on. The abounding crime and lawlessness of the present time are an evidence of the existing demoralization, but are not the cause of it. They are the symptoms, but are not the disease itself. The Presbyterian and other papers which advocate legislation to stop irreligion, take a superficial view of the situation, and the remedies they advocate are calculated only to increase the trouble. The gospel is the only cure for moral degeneracy. The world is dying to-day because it will not apply this remedy.