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Religious Liberty Notes

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 18, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 7.

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Religious Liberty Notes

A HEARING on the Johnston District Sunday bill was appointed to be held on Monday, February 15.
On February 2 Mr. Heflin, of Alabama, reintroduced his “Sabbath day” bill for the District of Columbia.
A Sunday bill has been introduced in the legislature of South Carolina, one in Maine, one in Iowa, one in Indiana (of a repealing character), one and a constitutional amendment in California, five in Nebraska (to modify the present State Sunday law), and fourteen in New York.
The Congressional Record of January 15 states that Senator Gallinger “presented a petition of the Christian Endeavor Union, of the District of Columbia, praying for the enactment of legislation making the first day of the week a day of rest in the District of Columbia, which was ordered to lie on the table.” Thus are the young people’s societies of the country being gathered into the ranks of the advocates of compulsory Sunday observance.
A recent newspaper clipping gives us the following information: “The Lord’s Day Alliance of New Jersey has sent out myriad printed appeals to churches to support the Sunday laws of the State. The appeals, in part, set forth that the ‘enemy is storming the legislature at Trenton,’ and that they ‘would destroy the fourth commandment in the name of liberty and charity.’ The churches all over the State have been asked to take a standing vote to-morrow [a Sunday] on the question of preserving the blue-laws, and to telegraph the result to the assemblymen and senators on Monday.”
Mr. Earl Townsend, of Stoughton, Wis., was recently arrested for employing a number of men on the ice on Sunday. Commenting on this, the Stoughton Hub says: “The warrant was sworn out in Justice Gilbert’s court by Rev. J. J. Lee, of Our Saviour’s church. We do not know the motives of Rev. Lee in instituting this suit, but while we doubt not his sincerity, we question the wisdom of the step. In fact, the Hub deplores such attempts at resurrecting this phase of an extinct Puritanism by invoking the aid of musty and dead-letter laws. The work, as far as we know, did not really disturb any one, so there could have been no grievance in this respect.”