We Are Sure the Advocate is Mistaken.
The Christian Advocate, in speaking of Sunday laws and the persistent opposition of Dr. A. H. Lewis, Seventh-day Baptist, thereto, remarks concerning the Sunday “Blue Laws:”— Nobody wishes to re-enact them, and there are without doubt some laws the letter of which, if enforced, would be an infraction upon liberty; but the general principle is right. The embodiment of it in law is a matter for discussion. Dr. Lewis would think so and argue for it, if the case were reversed, and nearly the whole population of the United States favored the seventh day, and a few individuals were continually contending that the first day of the week was the one. Now we do not know an instance where laws enforcing the observance of the Sabbath have ever been asked. We do not know as they have ever been desired by a Christian Sabbath-keeper. He believes that God is able to care for His own without the aid of human law. And that is true on the part of every Biblical duty men owe to God. What true Christian ever thought of enforcing baptism or the Lord’s supper? The editor of the Advocate admits the need of no law in the following: “We agree with him that ‘the whole question of Sabbath observance as a ‘strictly religious right should be left to individual ‘conscience without any interference on the part of ‘the civil law.” But that is what the Sabbath is—pre-eminently and only religious. Men who do not thus keep it, do not keep it at all. Men who do thus keep it, need no aid of human law.