It makes us sad at heart to see the enthusiastic, bright-minded youth composing the Christian Endeavorers of California turning their energies, or allowing their energies to be turned, into a decidedly downward, retrogressive movement. This movement is in favor of a Sunday law for California. The poison of lying words has led them to believe that California is disgraced because she has no Sunday law; and they are turning their energy and enthusiasm in the “National Reform” channel to wash out the “disgrace.” Would to God that they might see the deception. Such a work is neither Christian endeavor or American endeavor, as Americanism was understood by its founders. The motto on the Great Seal of the United States, Novus Ordo Seclorum, stood indeed for a “new order of things,” different from governments of the past, in which Church and State, religion and politics, could each pursue its legitimate way alone and in peace, free from all the bitterness, broils, battles, and bloodshed, which for ages had cursed the world. Below is a call by the State secretary of the California Endeavorers, taken from the Pacific Coast Endeavorer, of February 6:— “Probably no more important step has ever been taken by the California Union than that embodied in a motion carried at the recent State Executive Committee meeting. The decision to compete for the banner to be given at the ‘97 convention to the State reporting the greatest amount of work accomplished along the lines of sabbath observance means much more than a simple effort to carry off a trophy. It means the inauguration of a new movement among California Endeavorers. It means that the 40,000 or more Endeavorers in the State are to be enlisted in a definite campaign, lasting for years if necessary, and having for its object the education of the people required to secure sabbath reform. It means that this is to be the rallying point around which all Christian people shall gather. It is to be the nucleus of the Good Citizenship movement already so strong in our societies and Christian communities. It means the securing and enforcing of sabbath legislation. It means a definite, enthusiastic, untiring, enlightened, overwhelming movement to maintain the proper observance of God’s holy day. Its rallying cry will be, ‘Victory—and no quarter!’ Its motto, ‘We propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer’. “Such is the movement now supported by the California Union: the next thing is for every society in the State, including the Intermediates and Juniors, to come to our assistance with a rush. The time for work before the convention is very short. So enthusiastic has been the reception of the idea of this campaign, that a number of societies have not waited for invitation or instruction, but have organized their committees already and are clamoring to be set to work. Let every society do the same. We want 1,000 ‘Lord’s Day Committees’ formed within the next month. Organize with five (or three) members, and report the name and address of your chairman to me at once, with the name of your church. In selecting committee get workers. Suggestions as to work to be done will be sent as soon as the State is organized and ready for action. The badge adopted by the Reform Bureau of Washington, D. C., and sabbath reform literature, will be sent free to the chairman of each Lord’s Day Committee. “Now, to the work. California has an unenviable reputation for excessive sabbath desecration. Let us remove the stigma in the presence of our visitors next July by carrying off in triumph the sabbath observance banner.” “Gen. Sec. Cal. C. E. Union.
“Oakland, Feb. 1, 1897.” Let them work for the Sunday, the Lord’s day, or the Sabbath, in the Lord’s way; but His day needs no human legislation. Its observance can not be enforced by law. Men may be forced to observe a form; God only can give the kernel, the life. Let the friends of liberty awake.