SUNDAY ENFORCEMENT BY THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Some persons say that the Sunday (mark of the beast) never will be enforced by law under the existing state of government, as the Constitution forbids any religious interference. Therefore how can it be done? G. T. To answer in one sentence, it can be done by construing the Constitution. To illustrate: In 1797 a treaty between the United States and Tripoli, signed by President Washington, declared that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.” This was the construction placed upon the Constitution in the lifetime of those who framed it. But in 1892 the Supreme Court, reasoning from premises founded in conditions existing in the Old World two to three hundred years before the framing of the Constitution, handed down the opinion that “this is a Christian nation.” In evidence that we have already had “religious interference” by the government, we cite the instance of the federal law closing the gates of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago. This action was taken just after the foregoing action of the Supreme Court, and its alleged legitimacy was predicated upon that opinion. This law included the declaration by the government that Sunday is the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. The law made the appropriation for the fair conditional on its being closed on Sunday. The provision was evaded by the directors; but that did not alter the position of the government, and it stands officially committed to a change of the law of God. And this action of Congress was largely influenced by threats of “reformers” that members who refused to vote for it could not be re-elected. A leading one of these “reformers” afterward boasted that twenty men writing letters from a certain State had made the representatives from that State believe that the whole State was in favor of the measure. Thus we see how it is possible to establish principles directly contrary to the Constitution as it was understood and intended by those who framed it, and by those who administered it for almost a century. Following up this precedent, the last Congress, urged on by the same “reformers,” made an appropriation of $5,000,000 for the Louisiana Exposition, to be held in St. Louis in 1903. Then the condition is attached that if the gates of the exposition are opened on Sunday, the appropriation is to be void. This is virtually imposing a fine of $5,000,000 for opening the exposition on Sunday. But back of this particular construction of the Constitution by the U. S. Supreme Court, we have Federal indorsement of State action involving the same principle. The constitution of the State of Tennessee provides that “no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and that no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.” But Tennessee has a law giving preference to Sunday observance (which is a religious establishment), and giving that preference to the extent of making it a crime not to formally observe the day. And the Supreme Court of that State has so construed the constitution as to make that law constitutional. In 1899 a man named R. M. King, who observed the Sabbath of the Lord (the seventh day), was convicted in Obion County of the crime of doing farm labor on Sunday. His case was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the judgment of the lower court was affirmed. Then an appeal was taken to the United States Circuit Court, and the judge of this Federal Court sustained the State Sunday law, which is a violation of both the State and the United States Constitution. He went so far as to say that “if one ostentatiously labors for the purpose of emphasizing his distaste for, or his disbelief in, the custom, he may be made to suffer for his defiance by persecutions, if you call them so, on the part of the great majority, who will compel him to rest when they rest.” And in order to make a show of reason for this extraordinary statement, this judge of a Federal Court was obliged to assume, and did assume, that this defendant and “his sect” labored “ostentatiously” for the purpose of emphasizing their “distaste” for the custom of Sunday observance. And this assumption was without any semblance of fact. Furthermore he asserted that “Sunday observance is so essentially a part of the religion of Jesus Christ that it is impossible to rid our laws of it.” Now put this opinion alongside of the U. S. Supreme Court’s dictum that “this is a Christian nation,” and see where it logically leads. The judge himself saw where it would lead, but was not deterred from it even then. He deliberately stated that “the logic of this position may lead to a union of Church and State, undoubtedly; but it is not essential nor always useful, indeed often otherwise, to go to the end of one’s logic.” Thus, with his eyes open to the logic of his position, the judge of a United States Court upholds the principle of Church and State union without the contemplation of any formal change in the Constitution. The State of Georgia has a Sunday law that is unique in that it is possible for a conscientious observer of any other day to suffer the death penalty. He may be imprisoned for laboring on Sunday, and while in prison if he should persist in declining to work on the day which he believes to be the true Sabbath, he could be legally put to death for insubordination. Of course this latter feature is not a part of the Sunday law itself, but it is a possibility of the result of conscientious non-observance of such a law. According to the Federal judge whom we have been quoting, “civil or religious freedom may stop short of its logic in this matter of Sunday observance.” And in a case where a railroad company appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court from a decision of the State Court, this Georgia Sunday law was held to be constitutional. From the foregoing facts, and more that might be adduced, it is not difficult to see how Sunday observance can be enforced by national law “under the existing state of government.” It is already being done, and is being indorsed in the States by the general government. The “image of the beast” of Revelation 13 is the union of Church and State in the United States Government. And in relation to this “Christian nation” opinion of the Supreme Court, and the subsequent legislation by Congress, we quote from a work entitled “Rights of the People,” by Alonzo T. Jones:— What more could be done to create the very image of the Papacy in this nation, in the principle of the thing, than is done in this decision? In principle we say; not in its positive workings, of course, because the decision in itself on this point does not bear the force of a statute that can be made at once obligatory upon all by the executive power of the nation. But it does sanction and justify beforehand any and every encroachment that the religious power may make upon the civil, and every piece of legislation that Congress might enact on the subject of religion or religious observances; so that by it the national door is opened wide for the religious element to enter and take possession in whatever way it chooses or can make effective. And there stands at the door, ready and determined to enter and take possession, the strongest religio-political combination that could be formed in the land. Therefore we say that, altho life is not by this given to this image that it should of itself speak and act (Rev. 13:15), yet so far as the making of the evil thing, and the establishment of the principle of it are concerned, it is certainly done. As to the “mark of the beast,” it is an undisputed fact that the Papacy holds up the Sunday institution as the special “mark” of the authority of “the church,” and the United States Government has set its seal to the rejection of the seventh day in the Lord’s Sabbath commandment and the insertion of the first day in its stead. But the actual issuing of the decree that men should worship the image of the beast or be put to death, or be deprived of the right to do business unless they receive the “mark,” is yet to be accomplished. But the progress of the whole process has been so marked in the past twenty years, and especially in the past decade, that the full consummation can not be far in the future. This may seem sudden and impossible to those who have not been noting the signs of the times; but, shocking as the thought may be, there is nothing involved in the process that has not been predicted and threatened by the very “reformers” who are moving every possible lever to have the government committed to their peculiar style of religion.