Religious Liberty Notes by W. A. Colcord

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 23, 1909

Religious Liberty Notes

By W. A. Colcord

UNDER the heading, “Mr. Taft’s Crime,” the London Daily Express of Sept. 1, 1909, publishes the following: “Mr. Taft is pilloried in the New York Times for sending for a barber to cut his hair last Sunday, at Beverley, Maine [Massachusetts], where he is spending his holiday. Under the State sabbatarian laws he is liable to a £1 [$5] fine.”

An editorial in the Portland (Vt.) Herald of August 19 reproduces liberal extracts from No. 2 of our Religious Liberty Leaflets, on “Sunday Laws; Their Origin, Nature, and Object,” adding, “We shall find, on the most casual examination, that the history of the legal sabbath, or Sunday, is interwoven with the beginning of that diabolical wedlock of church and state which the Reformation dissolved.”

The New York State Sabbath Association has adopted resolutions of censure against judicial rulings unfavorable to what they are pleased to call “the spirit of the law regulating Sabbath observance;” and these resolutions urge churches to refrain from inviting to their pulpits and platforms any judge or magistrate who has been guilty of rendering such decisions, or “publicly held up to ridicule the advocates of law-enforcement and the maintenance of the Christian sabbath.” Turkey threatens her enemies with a “holy war;” the American church intimidates hers with the “holy boycott.” W. A. COLCORD.