p. 19 | Religious Liberty Notes

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

Religious Liberty Notes

An opinion from the attorney-general’s office of the State of Kansas is to the effect that those whose religious belief does not permit them to “accept the Sunday as the seventh day of the week are exempt from the Sunday-labor law.”

The W. C. T. U. of Webb City, Mo., has engaged an attorney to go thoroughly into the matter of prosecuting infractions of the Sunday-closing law. The course adopted in that section of Missouri is likely to influence considerably the remainder of the State.

Friends in Canada send us copies of a number of articles on a variety of topics bearing on present truth which they have recently succeeded in getting into the public press of the Dominion. This is good work. They report that by this means some have become deeply interested.

Brother E. W. Webster, of Ormond, Fla., has an excellent article in the Jacksonville Times Union of Sunday, December 5, on the history of Sunday sanctification. Doubtless good work of this sort could be done all over the country if our people would wake up thoroughly and prepare the matter.

Recently a convention was held in Minneapolis for the purpose of organizing a branch of the Lord’s Day Alliance. It was presided over by the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, and numbered among its delegates President Northrup of the State University. All discussion proceeded on the two false suppositions that the Sabbath of the Bible was Jewish, and as such had passed away forever, and that all the present dispensation required was simply the observance of one day in seven. The rest feature of the sabbath (Sunday) was almost exclusively dwelt upon, and nothing much was said of its spiritual phases. A State organization was formed.

The December Homiletic Review sees a possibility of getting proper legislation through the New York Assembly to close the “Raines Law hotels” of the State on Sunday, provided the legislators do not listen too subserviently to the catch-penny economists who, when the matter was up in the last legislature, tacked on the provision that these places, for an extra heavy money consideration, might remain open on Sunday for ten specified hours. The Review gives warning that not till a bill is brought in which is for straight, strict closing on the first day of the week,—all day,—will there be any show for its avoiding the tooth-and-nail opposition of the clergy and church people. It is hard to divest one’s self of the conviction that if these same clergy and church people would work as hard to close the saloons every day of the week as they do on the first day only, the doom of that iniquitous institution would soon be sealed.

California is now holding a goodly number of religious liberty institutes. Elder J. O. Corliss, the religious liberty secretary of the Pacific Union Conference, invites all communities in that conference wishing such gatherings to correspond with him in regard to the matter, and make proper arrangements.