THE “Washington Post” of Aug. 19, 1909, contained the following: an account of an employee of the Y. M. C. A. of St. Louis being discharged for being down at the river and rescuing three men from drowning in the Mississippi River on Sunday, August 15; a report of the efforts of representatives of the Lord’s Day Alliance in New Jersey to close things up on Sunday in Atlantic City, and the refusal of Governor Fort to “call out the militia” to enforce the law, as he had previously said he would do should it be necessary; an editorial commenting on this matter, stating that the effort of these “reformers,” “law-enforcers,” and believers in “blue Sundays” to “invoke the law” “smacks of the ‘blue-law’ spirit;” and also an editorial intended evidently as a comment on the recent trial of a number of conscientious observers of the seventh day at Greenville, S. C., for picking strawberries on Sunday. All this in one paper! which shows how the persecuting, Sunday-enforcement spirit is rising throughout the country.
Magistrate Samuel Stradley
The editorial last referred to reads as follows:
A Matter of Conscience
“A few days ago a thoroly orthodox Christian in one of the Southern States found five members of the Adventist faith working in the field a Sunday. Deeply imbued with the gloomy faith of a John Balfour of Burley, this excellent and exemplary man, just from the sanctuary, where he worshiped in the name of Him who sat at meat with publicans and sinners and plucked green corn a Sunday—this child of orthodoxy and cruelty swore out a warrant and had the five arrested for breaking the Sabbath.
“The jury was composed of enlightened men, and the accused were acquitted on the plea that they kept one day of the week holy—a Saturday. And such is orthodoxy, that argues by the stake, the fagot, and the torch. This paper is not a sectarian, tho it is a Christian, and as an observer of men, things, and events it is ready to say that as few criminals, male and female, are recruited from the Adventists as from any other sect, numbers computed.
“They work Sundays, but they keep Saturdays, and that fulfils the law of God as it should of man. These folk are earnest, sincere, Christian men, women, and children. They may be wrong in faith, desperately wrong. That is a matter of conscience; but their consciences are about as likely to be right as yours or ours.
“‘Leave thought unfettered every creed to scan.’
“And take care of your own conscience. That will keep you busy without meddling with the consciences of other people.”
This is the third testimonial of this kind the “Washington Post” has given concerning this same people within the past eighteen months. In its issue of Feb. 11, 1908, in an editorial commenting on their “Memorial to Congress,” and headed “A Reasonable Petition,” this paper said:
“As for the Adventists—no other sect can show a better citizenship. They are industrious, frugal, and peaceable. If all other men were no more prone to evil than they, the grand jury would have little to do, and courts, civil as well as criminal, could take a vacation of at least six days in the week and have little to do the seventh.”
May 27, 1909, learning of the arrest of a member of this faith in Tennessee for chopping a few sticks of wood on Sunday, this paper, under the caption “A Tyranny,” spoke again as follows:
“It is a fact that nobody who knows them will attempt to controvert that the members of the religious sect that is designated as Seventh-day Adventists make up a good citizenship. Their cardinal idea is to harm no man, and as a class they are honest, sober, diligent, and frugal.
“It requires a skilful polemic to confound their faith, a religion that savors more of the pastoral than any other. As their teachers preach it we find that their doctrine is that good is immortal and bad is doomed to perish, and where will one find a better faith? When Cain slew his brother the war between truth and evil began, and in the end truth must survive and evil die.
“The persecution of the Adventist people in one of the Southern States, Tennessee, is a reminder of barbaric ages, when fanaticism ruled in councils of state and set up the gibbet and the stake at every crossroad to vindicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ, through tyranny, pain, malice, and murder, and all approved with a text.
“It is the law of Tennessee that the day known as Sunday is the Sabbath and that only Sunday shall be observed as the Sabbath by any citizen of that state. Even Sir John Falstaff would not give a reason on compulsion, the reasons were as plenty as blackberries. And does the best thought of Tennessee suppose men can be made virtuous and religious by law? And this is the twentieth century, too!
“The worst man you can have in the community is the zealot, who would regulate your morals and religion by his narrow standard of right and wrong.
“Orthodoxy is well enough till it goes on the war-path.”
These unsolicited testimonials from a leading newspaper published at the capital of the nation, and more widely quoted, perhaps, than any other paper in the country, are indeed noteworthy. Rising above all sectarian prejudice, creedal distinctions, and narrow reasonings, they must have been inspired by a love of right principles, a high sense of justice, and an abhorrence of all persecution and oppression. It is a pity that all men and all newspapers are not thus broad-minded and unprejudiced.
Moreover, if these testimonials speak the truth, they bear favorable witness to the practical value of a faith which is summed up in the keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. W. A. COLCORD.
