Religious Liberty Notes by W. A. C.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Aug 8, 1907

Religious Liberty Notes

By W. A. C.

WE are glad to learn that our people appreciate Liberty. Elder C. F. McVagh, the president of the West Pennsylvania Conference, writes, “Every number of Liberty gets better.”

A brother in Colorado writes: “I pray God’s richest blessing upon Liberty. I feel that it fills a place no other of our papers can fill.”

One of our new Sabbath-keepers in Washington sold thirty copies of the last number of Liberty in the city in one day.

The July number of the Christian Statesman reports the death of Dr. David McAllister, who, for the past forty years, has stood as one of the foremost advocates and exponents of the National Reform Association.

Speaking in defense of the enforcement of the Pennsylvania law, the Potter County Journal, of Coudersport, Pa., under date of July 24, 1907, says: “Many people make the mistake of considering the observance of Sunday a religious question to be decided by each individual conscience.” No greater mistake can be made than to consider “the observance of Sunday” anything else than “a religious question to be decided by each individual conscience,” for that is what it is, and that only, when reduced to its final analysis. Any other view will inevitably lead to religious persecution.

Writing concerning the recent agitation for Sunday enforcement at Coudersport, Pa., started by four of the leading ministers of the place, Elder C. F. McVagh says: “Our people are awake to the opportunity, and have used a goodly number of Liberty, and other literature. I am also permitted to use the papers, and my sermon of last night will be printed. We seem at the present to have materially weakened the influence of the movement. The town has been all astir, and the only apparent result so far is that an M. E. evangelist has taken his stand for the Sabbath. He attended our quarterly meeting Sabbath, and listened to the sermon last night, and declared that if he never preached in a Methodist pulpit again, he would keep the Sabbath of the Lord.” This is the way our people everywhere should meet these movements for Sunday enforcement.

In connection with or just preceding the Interdenominational Bible Conference, held annually at Winona Lake, Ind., the National Reform Association for a number of years past has held institutes and conferences in the interests of “Christian Citizenship.” This year it is to hold another institute and conference of this kind at this place, August 12-17. W. C. Wylie, C. F. Scovel, W. I. Wishart, and other National Reformers are to be present and give studies and addresses on “The Limits of Personal Liberty,” “The Nation a Moral Personality,” “Moral Legislation,” “The enforcement of Moral Legislation,” “The Chief Ends of Government,” “The Need in Our Country of a National Confession of Faith,” “The Christian Amendment and the Liquor Traffic,” and other National Reform subjects.

In company with his wife, Mr. W. F. Crafts, of Washington, D. C., is making a tour of the world for the purpose of “enlisting the co-operation of Japan and China in a proposed world treaty of the great civilized powers of America, Europe, and Asia, for the prohibition of the sale of intoxicants and opium to savages in the South Seas and in Africa, in the interests of market and morals,” and “to aid, by public speech and private counsel, those who, in Japan and China, are fighting intemperance, impurity, Sabbath-breaking, and gambling.” He is also seeking to have introduced into the public schools of these Oriental countries the use of the Lord’s prayer, and the daily reading of the ten commandments, “with or without harmonious moral precepts of like universal and fundamental character from the teachings of Confucius and Buddha.” He has already visited Japan, and expects to spend some time in the Philippines, Australia, and Great Britain.

W. A. C.