Religious Liberty Notes by K. C. R.

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

Religious Liberty Notes

By K. C. R.

There is an epidemic of Sunday-closing crusades now prevailing in New England, especially in the cities of Boston, Mass., and Hartford, Conn. The opportunities that these agitations afford for presenting true principles of liberty should be improved by the friends of religious liberty.

The Daily Picayune of New Orleans, La., bearing date of Dec. 31, 1906, contains a report of a sermon delivered by Elder S. B. Horton on the outlook for the coming year concerning the question of church and state. The sermon contains many important suggestions regarding the vital issues which confront the world.

The Pacific Union Recorder, bearing date of Dec. 13, 1906, says: “Elder J. O. Corliss, religious liberty secretary for the Pacific Union Conference, made a trip to Sacramento last week to study the outlook for and against the religious liberty campaign now being waged throughout the State of California. Petitions and other literature bearing upon this subject have been prepared, and are now being sent out to our churches and isolated members throughout the State. It is hoped that an earnest, telling work will be done by all who are able to help.”

The Congregationalist, the organ of the Congregational Church, says: “We believe the desire is well-nigh universal to protect Sunday from the invasion of the daily routine of work. That further legislation will do this is doubtful. Sunday laws may restrain; they do not inspire. Without a community of persons who find in the day they make a sabbath a spiritual inspiration which is peculiar to that day, public sentiment will not long continue to make Sunday a rest day. Sunday depends for its distinctive atmosphere and vitality on Christians, not on legislators.”

From a column editorial article which appeared in the Washington Sunday Post, bearing date of January 6, we glean the following statements: “Any institution that is upheld or regulation that is followed purely on compulsion, while it may be a regulative force, can not be regarded as entering into national life. No one should be coerced into any special method of observance of it or criticized for the use to which he puts it.” The article states that there has been no transfer of the Sabbath to the first day of the week, and cites the following in support of the statement: “This view is supported by Melanchthon, Grotius, Archbishop Whately, Jeremy Taylor, John Milton, and other high authorities. The Lutheran Review, published in Washington, said some time since: ‘The seventh day, and the seventh day only, is of divine institution. No other day has been divinely instituted in its place. Hence, we must regard ourselves entirely free with respect to the religious observance of any fixed day.’”

Orders are coming in encouragingly from our State conferences to have yearly subscriptions of Liberty sent to each of their State legislators. We trust that all conferences that have not yet supplied their State legislators with a subscription to Liberty will do so at once. By so doing they will place in the hands of the lawmakers a statement of the principles which should govern them in their action upon proposed laws that would abridge the rights of conscience in this country.

The Wisconsin Church Federation Convention shows that there has been no mistake in what has been outlined as their real object, for the burden of the speakers was in the interests of Sunday legislation. Here are a few of the statements made: “Man and society can never be saved unless they keep this day” (Sunday). “There is a Sunday law, and that law can be executed; and the thing to do is to keep the law, and see to it that others keep it.” “Some of the best things that have come to us have come from the American sabbath.” This is the line Church Federationists are working on. K. C. R.