GOOD AS FAR AS IT GOES.
By W. N. G.
Hon. J. G. Elliott, member of the Assembly from Merced County, Cal., was the recipient of a number of letters urging him to vote for a general Sunday law. A letter in reply to one of these gives his position as follows:— “SACRAMENTO, Feb. 17, 1897. “MR. ——: Dear Sir: Your favor urging me to vote for a Sunday law is at hand. As there are a great many thoroughly conscientious religious people in this State who observe Saturday as their Sabbath, I don’t see how I can conscientiously vote for a law that would compel them to observe another day also. From a theological point of view those people have as much right to ask the Legislature to enact a law prohibiting all unnecessary secular labor, etc., on Saturday, their Sabbath. In the event that that should be done you and I, who believe in a proper observance of our sabbath, would have to observe our Sunday from a conscientious duty and also Saturday from a civil duty and thereby lose one day’s labor in seven. Do you think that would be just legislation? In my official acts affecting the rights of others, I try to put myself in their place. You remember the words of our Saviour, ‘All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ “Would a Sunday law cause people to be better? Can you be forced to like a person you dislike? These are kindred questions arising in my mind in considering this question, and I submit them to you for an answer. Sincerely yours, This is good as far as it goes, but it does not quite reach the bottom of the principle involved. The true principle of religious liberty involves the rights of all classes, whether they observe the first day, the seventh day, or no day. The Legislature is a civil body; it has no right to enforce Sunday observance even upon people who want to observe it, any more than upon them who do not so desire. It has no right to enforce the religious observance of any day upon any person, any more than it has a right to enforce baptism or the communion or the confessional. If the Legislature may enact Sabbath observance at all, it may with the same propriety enact all the Sabbath traditions of the scribes and Pharisees, to the minutest detail. One thing that the advocates of Sunday laws, as well as many men who oppose them, never take into consideration is, that men have the right, as far as man is concerned, to ignore all religion and all religious observances. No one can observe the Golden Rule without recognizing this fact. Many legislators have opposed Sunday laws solely because of the hardship imposed upon the observers of the seventh day. This is a good reason, but it does not reach far enough; to be a full recognition of civil rights, it must consider the imposition upon all classes. When a legislative body refrains from enacting a Sunday law only for the reason that it infringes upon the rights of one class, it virtually assumes that it is proper to infringe upon the rights of all other classes. It virtually assumes that people who do not keep any day should be made to do so. The Lord never compelled men to serve him, and never authorized any man or set of men to so compel others. If men do not choose to obey his law, he himself will judge them in the day when the secrets of all hearts shall be made known. He has not authorized man to judge or to punish such offenses. The civil government is set to regulate the civil affairs of men; to judge, and to punish if need be, the infringement of human rights, but not to enact laws authorizing and compelling such infringement. W. N. G.