HOW ABOUT SUNDAY LAWS?
By Mrs. E. M. Peebles
THE above query is suggested to my mind by the present agitation on the matter of Sunday closing, and I proceed directly to the proposition, namely, Sunday legislation is at once both unamerican and unchristian. It is unamerican because this country has been the cradle of liberty, and a refuge for the oppressed from every land and clime; and its flag has been the symbol of liberty and freedom to all people of whatever nationality, color, or religious belief. It is unamerican, because the first amendment to the Constitution is to the effect that “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” and because the founders of this great republic fought, bled, and died to secure the boon of liberty to themselves and their posterity. They held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;” and that they have a right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. It is unchristian because the great Founder and Originator of the true Sabbath, who calls Himself its Lord, has said, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Matt. 22:21. The Sabbath, in its true sense, is strictly a religious institution, and can only be rendered to God. It can not be affected by legislation. Sunday legislation is unchristian because it forces upon the people a day which, like the penny shown to our Saviour when He uttered the above principle, bears only the image and superscription of the government, and not that of Him who established the Sabbath; and State legislation can never change its character or make it holy. State legislation upon matters of conscience is subversive of every principle of religious liberty. It is not the power of the State that is needed, but the transforming power of the Gospel, preached in its purity, changing the heart and life, and making men new creatures in Christ Jesus. Then they will need no Sabbath law except the one written by Jehovah, and the Spirit of God moving upon an enlightened conscience. The Sunday-closing laws will place as a substitute for God’s holy Sabbath (see Gen. 2:1-3; Ex. 20:8-11) the Sunday-Sabbath, that “wild solar holiday of all pagan times;” and it seems to me that the public conscience is becoming terribly and almost hopelessly mixed, and not able to discern between the sacred and the common. We read of a time when this would be the case: “Her priests have violated My law, and have profaned Mine holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and profane [or common], . . . and have hid their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.” Eze. 22:26. Why, I ask, in this twentieth century, should these self-styled national reformers seek to “place all religious laws and usages upon an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of our land”? Are they tired of liberty of conscience and of a free country? I am fully persuaded that many of these people do not see whither the undercurrent is tending. I am inclined to look charitably upon them. They do not see that these are steps backward to the old days of Church and State union, when majorities ruled in matters of conscience, and trampled upon the rights of the few.