Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 23, 1911

THE secretary of the general Religious Liberty Association spoke in Baltimore, Sabbath, February 4, on the subject of religious liberty.

THE Atlantic Religious Liberty Association is preparing a campaign of education in religious liberty matters in the Atlantic Union Conference, and will be assisted by the General Conference Religious Liberty Department. The campaign will begin about March 10.

THE Columbus (Ohio) Union, bearing date of Jan. 27, 1911, contains an interesting report of a meeting of the State board of health, at which a lively discussion was engaged in on the question of Sunday baseball. Some of the speakers maintained that Sunday baseball games were in the interests of health, and ought not, therefore, to be prohibited.

ASSEMBLYMAN LEVY, of New York City, has introduced in the New York Legislature a measure amending the Sunday legislation of New York State so as to exempt from the provisions of the law any who observe as a rest day another day of the week than Sunday, provided that affidavit to this effect is filed with the proper officer of the government. Bills designed to foster Sunday observance by civil law have also been submitted to the legislature of New York.

DURING the recent executive meeting of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, held in this city, the committee called upon, and presented a written address to, President W. H. Taft. Reporting this incident, the Washington Herald, of Jan. 26, 1911, said: “He explained that the phrase in the Constitution that prohibited an established religion had in reality given to the churches in this country ‘an independence, a strength, and a power and force, that are exceeded in no country in which there is an established church.’”

THE following editorial appeared in the Independent of Feb. 2, 1911: “Among the things not easy to understand is this, why some of our religious teachers who are so much pleased that in this country church and state are separated, should grieve when separation is decreed on the Continent of Europe. Thus the Catholic World, in its December issue, describing very fairly the changes in Portugal, says: ‘Other measures are proposed which in no way deserve the name of reforms: Church and state are to be separated,’ etc. We would like to be told why what is so much valued here would not be a reform there.”

THE New England Lord’s Day League held its annual meeting in Providence, R. I., January 22, and resolved to carry on an active campaign in behalf of better Sunday observance through the machinery of civil law. Bishop Mallelieu, of Boston, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was the principal speaker, and advised the people to be “a little Puritanical” in their Sunday observance. Another speaker said, “We have a strict sabbath law, which has come down from Puritanical times, which can be enforced by the weight of public opinion.” The “Puritanical times” provoked a “public opinion” which resulted in laying the foundation of this mighty nation of freemen. Will American citizenship permit a return to the days of Puritanism by an indifferent attitude to such demands for enforced Sunday observance?