Frightened at Shadows by W. A. C.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 10, 1910

“Frightened at Shadows”

By W. A. C.

A MEMBER of Congress to whom the leaflet “Do You Wish Congress to Prescribe Your Religion?” had recently been sent, writes us as follows:—

“I fail to see how the Johnston Sunday bill or any similar bill will bring about a union of church and state. I have read some of the enclosures, and think that whoever wrote them is frightened at shadows. I am an ultraconservative, and yet fail to see anything dangerous in setting aside one day as a day of rest.”

This evidently is not only an honest expression of opinion on the part of this man, but doubtless reflects the view of many others both in and out of Congress. They do not see how Sunday legislation will bring about a union of church and state. They see nothing dangerous in a law setting aside a weekly day of rest.

The author of the “famous Sunday Mail Reports,” adopted by Congress eighty years ago, saw the danger in such legislation. He said:—

“The proper object of government is to protect all persons in the enjoyment of their religious as well as their civil rights, and not to determine for any whether they shall esteem one day above another, or esteem all days alike holy.”

“Should Congress in legislative capacity adopt the sentiment, it should establish the principle that the legislature is a proper tribunal to determine what are the laws of God. It would involve a legislative decision on a religious controversy, and on a point in which good citizens may honestly differ in opinion, without disturbing the peace of society or endangering its liberties. If this principle is once introduced, it will be impossible to define its bounds.”

“If the principle is once established that religion, or religious observances, shall be interwoven with our legislative acts, we must pursue it to its ultimatum. We shall, if consistent, provide for the erection of edifices for worship of the Creator, and for the support of Christian ministers, if we believe such measures will promote the interests of Christianity.”

“Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge of the fairest portions of the Old World.”

“The catastrophe of other nations furnished the framers of the Constitution a beacon of awful warning, and they have evinced the greatest possible care in guarding against the same evil.”

Many years ago we predicted and published to the world that the movement in this country for the enforcement of Sunday observance by law would result in persecution and oppression to conscientious observers of the seventh day. Like the member of Congress already quoted, the National Reformers, who were behind this movement, saw no danger, and assured us that no such harm could come from such laws and such enforcement. They said:—

“From the beginning of the National Reform movement, they [Seventh-day Adventists] have regarded it as the first step toward the persecution which they, as keepers of the seventh day, will endure when our Sabbath laws are revived and enforced. One can but smile at their apprehension of the success of a movement which would not harm a hair of their heads; but their fears were sincere enough, for all that.”—Christian Statesman, March, 1874.

The events of only a few years later amply demonstrated that our fears were not only sincere, but well-grounded. In eleven years, from 1885 to 1896, under the revival and enforcement of Sunday laws which then took place, over one hundred conscientious, God-fearing Seventh-day Adventists in the United States, besides some thirty in foreign countries, were prosecuted for doing quiet work on Sunday, resulting in fines and costs amounting to $2,269.69, and imprisonments totaling 1,438 days, and 45 days served in the chain-gang.

Under this crusade an uncle of the writer’s, a minister, was imprisoned for thirty days in a Tennessee jail for hoeing a little in his garden on Sunday, and the writer’s only brother imprisoned for twenty-one days for carrying a few boards on that day.

Since this many similar prosecutions have taken place under the Sunday laws of this and foreign countries.

In the face of these facts we think we have something more than “shadows” to be frightened at, and good grounds for disbelieving the assurances of those who tell us that the success of this Sunday-law movement will not harm a hair of our heads. Prosecutions, fines, imprisonments, and chain-gangs can hardly be called “shadows.”

We know the spirit that is behind this movement and that will be manifested as the movement develops. God’s Word has clearly portrayed it. Its professions are lamb-like, mild, and apparently Christian, but when it speaks, it will reveal the spirit of the dragon. Rev. 13:11.

If the men now having to do with these first mild, harmless-looking national Sunday-law measures could be assured that they would end in a decree to slay from one hundred to one hundred fifty thousand God-fearing, commandment-keeping people, they would doubtless let them alone. But as Pilate failed to see the consequences of his act of turning Christ over to his enemies to be crucified, even after his wife, in harmony with her dream, had warned him, saying, “Have thou nothing to do with that just man,” so men to-day do not see the wickedness involved in this Sunday-law movement. Only a mind illuminated by an intelligent understanding of the Word of God through the Spirit of God can see or understand it.

W. A. C.