Sunday Law Urgency

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 25, 1913

Sunday Law Urgency

THERE is a growing determination to ingraft more and more Sunday legislation into all our state codes, as well as into the laws of the nation. Every time a state legislature meets, it is importuned with proposed laws in behalf of Sunday observance; and, likewise, every time the national Congress convenes, it is urged to pass one or more laws to enforce certain individual ideas of Sunday sacredness.

We have recently reported the efforts being made to have California pass a Sunday law during the sittings of its present legislative body. Last week we reported the bill that has been introduced into the Utah legislature; and word has just been sent us by Brother I. A. Crane, of Oklahoma City, that three Sunday bills are now before the Oklahoma legislature. One of the noticeable facts of this time is that whenever a legislature is in session you can count on its having one or more bills before it to regulate the observance of Sunday.

Photo by Paul Thompson
CINCINNATI WOMEN RUNNING BUSINESS FOR THEMSELVES — Photo by Paul Thompson CINCINNATI WOMEN RUNNING BUSINESS FOR THEMSELVES

At first, these proposed Sunday bills called for the observance of the day because it was sacred. They wanted it observed because they claimed it was a sin against God not to have it properly regarded. But it was pointed out that it was contrary to the spirit of the American institutions and principles to make laws that favored any religious doctrine or belief. Furthermore, it was also pointed out that Sunday observance was not enjoined in the Bible anyway, and requiring rest from labor on that day was not in harmony with Bible doctrine, even if it were right to legislate on religious questions.

The Bible being absolutely silent on the subject of Sunday sacredness, and the United States government in its constitution and elsewhere having expressed itself against any religious legislation, it seemed that all Sunday laws were logically shut out. But those who are working for such laws, are now changing front, and calling for laws requiring rest on one day of the week, on “humanitarian” grounds. They claim that there is no religious idea in their measures at all. They simply want to give the “downtrodden laboring man a chance for rest, and to spend one day in the week with his family.”

This all sounds well when you do not know what is back of it. We have been telling the world for nearly half a century what this thing means, and how it will finally come out. Sunday observance will yet be universally demanded, not because God says so, but because the church says so. And this demand will be made in open defiance of what God Himself says upon the subject. It has been affirmed by the world at large, that we have passed the time when we will have any more religious bigotry that will result in religious persecution. But keep watch of the events that are passing, and also of the events that are most manifestly approaching. The world is yet to see the establishment of the greatest religious despotism that has ever defaced the pages of history; and compulsory Sunday observance will be one of the main planks in the platform of the universal ecclesiastical confederacy. The prophecies of the Bible make this matter clear. We have been telling it to the world for years; and unmistakable doings of this time make it clear that the time for the realization of these prophetic utterances can not be long delayed. That great climax of a world-wide religious confederacy will mark the very last act in the closing history of this world of sin and rebellion against the righteous principles of Jehovah.