Sunday Agitation in Washington by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 20, 1906

Sunday Agitation in Washington

By C. M. S.

At a meeting of the Woman’s Interdenominational Missionary Union held in Washington, D. C., on Monday morning, December 10, some declarations were made by two of the leading speakers which seem to have been quite out of harmony with the purpose of that organization and the sentiments of those who are at its head. The meeting was held in the interests of better Sunday observance, and the speakers were expected to encourage religious legislation to that end.

Bishop Henry Y. Satterlee, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the diocese of Washington, spoke upon the need of a lay movement for Sunday reform. In the course of his remarks, the bishop said:—

I do not believe in coercion and legislation. I do not believe that even if we had a law, it would be wise to appeal to the law. I think that we need to work among Christians, among earnest Christians, and see if we can not gather together and form a bond about ourselves for the protection and preservation of the Lord’s day. I am not speaking in a vague way. What I say may seem vague and indefinite and confused to you. I wish I could put it in words. But we do not want more Christians at the present time; we want better Christians.

We want to have these Christians recognize the fact that they must draw a line in their own thought between that which is loyal service to Christ and that which is merely worldliness in regard to Christianity. It seems to me, then, that we can combine all our efforts to influencing the family life, and that this will have greater effect than if we were to attempt coercive methods.

Certainly these are right principles, and they come from one high in authority; but they are not the principles that are actuating the great movement throughout the world for the enforced sacredness of Sunday. They are not the principles which the National Reform Association is seeking so strenuously to have adopted in this government. No one can deny to parents the right to teach to their children the sacredness of the day which they firmly believe to be sacred. Coercive measures can not teach sacredness nor inculcate heartfelt respect for the thing whose supposed sacredness is thus enforced. The family influence and the family teaching can do both. We are glad to see the bishop take the position which he does in reference to coercion in religious matters. It is impossible for a man to carry out the principles of Christianity while taking any other position in reference to that matter.

Rev. S. H. Green, while expressing his “very hearty sympathy with this movement” and his “readiness to co-operate with the brethren and sisters in every line that may be feasible for the protection of the Sabbath,” also sounded a note of warning in reference to the matter of religious legislation. He said:—

The drift in America to-day is toward the Continental sabbath, toward a day that shall take away all that has been sacred to you and to me, and to our fathers and grandfathers before us. What can be done? I have very little confidence in legislation. Religious legislation is always attended by very grave danger.

He, too, laid the blame for the lack of reverence for Sunday largely upon the home training of the children. He urged that the pulpit and the Christian motherhood of the country unite to “care for the sacredness of God’s day.”

On the other hand, Mrs. Margaret Dye Ellis, president of the legislative department of the W. C. T. U., was very emphatic in her demand that laws for the protection of the sacredness of Sunday should be enacted and rigidly enforced. She did not hesitate to express her disappointment at the position taken by Bishop Satterlee and Dr. Green, and hoped that a Sunday law would be passed at the present session of Congress.

Rev. Wallace Radcliffe (Presbyterian), in the course of his remarks upon the matter in question, said:—

I am not so sure that I deprecate all legislation. It is not the first thing, but it is one of the things certainly by which a Christian nation should represent itself to its own institutions and to the world.

This remark of the Presbyterian minister’s reminds us very much of the declaration of that Catholic saint, Augustine, which reads as follows:—

It is indeed better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment, or by pain. But because the former means are better, the latter must not, therefore, be neglected. Many must often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attain to the highest grade of religious development.—Schaff’s Church History, Vol. II, sec. 27.

The same principle is involved in both these quotations—compulsion in religious matters. The persecutions which that principle of Augustine’s brought upon true Christians through the long night of papal supremacy will be enacted here when the image to that thing is established in the United States. It is refreshing to see, from time to time, such expressions as those of Bishop Satterlee’s and Dr. Green’s, when the great trend of a worldly church is toward a renunciation of the principles of religious liberty.

C. M. S.