Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 18, 1906

THE action of the Canadian Parliament in passing the Lord’s Day act is characterized by Collier’s as “a curious piece of legerdemain in connection with Sunday observance.” It gives the credit (or the odium) of securing this legislation wholly to the Lord’s Day Alliance, whose object it declares to be “to force conformity to this [Sabbatarian] sentiment upon those who do not share it.” After referring to the “pressure” brought to bear upon the Laurier government to compel it to bring in the bill, and mentioning the stringent provisions of the proposed law, Collier’s says:—

But protests, especially in Quebec, arose in such volume that the government was alarmed, while at the same time the pressure of the Lord’s Day Alliance was too great to allow it to abandon the bill. Accordingly, it resorted to the safe old methods of the American statesman who was “in favor of the law, but agin its enforcement.” It retained most of the formidable phraseology demanded by the Lord’s Day Alliance, but put in two little clauses, one providing that nothing in the bill should interfere with any provincial law “now or hereafter in force,” and the other forbidding prosecutions under the new act without the leave of the attorney-general of the province in which the offense was alleged to have been committed, or after the expiration of sixty days from the time of the commission of the alleged offense. As the law is not to go into effect until the first of next March, the legislatures of the non-Sabbatarian provinces will have ample time to pass local measures superseding it, and even without such legislation its enforcement against small offenders in such provinces would be impossible.

Because of the introduction of these “two little clauses” Collier’s calls this Lord’s Day act “a faded blue-law.” If, however, the purpose of the Lord’s Day Alliance has been foiled this time, we may expect that it will increase its “pressure” until it secures what it apparently desires—a law enforcing the observance of the false sabbath. There is a master mind working through every available agency to exalt the rival Sabbath, and to bring contempt upon the Sabbath of the Lord. This will bring the climax in the great controversy between Christ and Satan.