Note and Comment by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 7, 1907

Note and Comment

By Editor

THE cause of Sunday observance in France is said to be making a singularly rapid advance. Notwithstanding considerable opposition the reports indicate that more places of business are being closed in Paris. The Missionary Review remarks, “As just now there is a strenuous movement to separate church and state, the law must be enacted and enforced on the ground of absolute need of such a day of rest.” We may logically infer, then, that the editor of the Missionary Review understands that if the Sunday law was enacted and enforced on any other ground than that of the absolute need of rest, such law would constitute a union of church and state. And it would. We are glad that the editor of that religious journal sees the matter in its true light upon this point. Some of the advocates of Sunday-law enforcement, seeing the logic of the situation, are advocating a compulsory civil rest day, which shall always be Sunday. By thus compelling all to rest on a certain day because they need rest, they expect to accomplish their real purpose of compelling a universal recognition of the sacredness of the day—compulsory acknowledgment of the imaginary sacredness of a human institution. They attempt to purloin the blessing of Jehovah from the true Sabbath, and place it with their own hands upon the first day of the week—as if the blessing of God and the establishment of divine institutions were things that could be manipulated by human hands.