p. 22 | Religious Liberty Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 12, 1907

Religious Liberty Notes

The president of one of our local conferences writes us as follows: “Our conference wants to do its part in spreading the third angel’s message. We try to have a part in every good work that comes along. We are lovers of liberty, and believe the good magazine Liberty will do much good if placed in the proper channel for usefulness. For this reason, as a conference we stand ready to pay for one hundred and fifty subscriptions to be mailed to leading citizens residing in our conference territory.”

On June 7 the Supreme Court of Minnesota rendered a decision which empowers the attorney-general of the State to close every saloon in every municipality on Sunday, if a complaint is filed. Commenting on this, Rev. Johnson, pastor of the Fifth Presbyterian church of Minneapolis, says: “The destruction of the saloon is coming fast.” Mr. Crafts, the noted and indefatigable Sunday law worker, knew better than this when he wrote the first edition of his “Sabbath for Man” (page 96), in which he said: “The only States which enforce Sunday closing are those which prohibit liquor selling on all days,—Maine, Kansas, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire,”—and added that “the only way that has ever been found permanently effectual” in closing the saloons is “by closing them altogether.” Sunday closing, therefore, does not necessarily mean the destruction of the saloon.

Señor E. F. Forga, who for some years has been an active worker in health and temperance and religious liberty work in Peru, writes us from Sanitarium, Cal., as follows: “I have just finished reading the Christian Endeavor number of your magazine [Liberty], and find it excellent. I will keep it with the idea of translating some of its articles into Spanish later on.” He enclosed two dollars, and asks us to send him as many copies of this number as we can for this amount, stating that he desires to send them to the brethren in charge of the different Spanish fields, English missionaries of Protestant churches in Spanish countries, and to other English friends. Having been engaged in religious liberty work in a priest-ridden land, Brother Forga knows how to appreciate literature of this kind. We fear that many of our people in this country will never fully appreciate it until their liberties begin to be taken from them; but that time, from present indications, is perhaps not very far away.

A cashier of a bank in Texas, chancing recently to receive and read a copy of the leaflet, “Religion in the Public Schools,” which we prepared and circulated in Washington, D. C., in our campaign two years ago against the movement for the introduction of religious instruction into the public schools of the District of Columbia, writes us as follows: “Permit me to say that I think the arguments in the pamphlet, ‘Religion in the Public Schools,’ are the best I have seen on this subject. They are, I think, incontrovertible.”

Elder A. J. Breed, writing further concerning the distribution of Liberty in Seattle, Wash., says: “Brother Beecraft has placed twenty-two hundred copies of Liberty among lawyers and other business men since the Christian Endeavor Convention. The rules of the New York block are such that no one is allowed to distribute anything in the building; but, not knowing this, Brother Beecraft went and distributed there as if he were doing legitimate business, and placed three hundred copies in the offices of the building. The next day another brother went there to canvass for ‘Heralds of the Morning,’ and was stopped at once. From this building, Brother Beecraft went to another building where the rules were similar, but the superintendent gave him permission to place Liberty wherever he desired. Brother Beecraft first gave the superintendent a number, and when he saw what it was, he freely gave his consent. This was Brother Beecraft’s experience wherever he went with Liberty, and he feels as if it ought to be used more for such work.”