Sunday Laws and Religious Liberty

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 17, 1907

Sunday Laws and Religious Liberty

The Literary Digest, referring to the passage of the Canadian Sunday law, makes the following comment:—

It was opposed by the great railway corporations, the Jews, and the Seventh-day Adventists, the two latter factions opposing the measure on the ground that the proper rest day was the seventh and not the first.

The Seventh-day Adventists of Canada differ in no way from the Seventh-day Adventists of any other part of the world in their opposition to religious legislation of any class. The ground of their opposition to Sunday laws is not “that the proper day of rest is the seventh and not the first;” but rather that the civil power has no legitimate jurisdiction in religious matters; that religion and religious observances are matters solely between man and his God. The Seventh-day Adventists of Canada, as also the Seventh-day Adventists of the United States, would oppose a human law compelling the observance of the seventh day just as energetically as they do the enactment of laws compelling the observance of the first day. They would do it upon the ground that no human power has a right to lay its hand upon the law of God, to alter, to repeal, or to enforce.

The Catholic Mirror has found the solution of the labor problem. The editor of that journal, in its issue of October 5, says:—

Is it too much to say that the labor question will find its solution in the teachings and doctrines of the Catholic Church? Perhaps it is—now. But the time is coming—the time is coming. Every evil the world is heir to, at least every political, social, economic evil, is a more or less direct outgrowth of the primal conflict between the two great forces, labor and capital. . . .

There is only one solution to these difficulties, and that is one that will bring about a friendly relation between the two. . . . The organization of the church itself is the greatest human exponent of how all men may work together for the common good, in a practical and productive way. And the organization of the church is built upon nothing but its own teachings and rules of human conduct. Sooner or later (sooner, indeed, we believe) mankind will come to realize that the church, through the gift of God, has grasped the great secret of all progress, and that this secret, which is really no secret at all, is, through her teachings and example, within the reach of every employer, and of every man who works.

This is in perfect harmony with the claim that church has always made, that she is the arbiter of human destinies, the ultimate authority in all things temporal and spiritual.