THE TESTIMONY OF A W. C. T. U. STATE PRESIDENT.
By W. N. G.
AMONG the measures which the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union will urge before the Legislature of California, is a day-of-rest law. This is what Mrs. Sturdevant Peet, president of the State Union, has to say about it:— “We wish to leave every one free to rest when convenient, but we want a law that will let the laborer have one day in seven to himself. By this a man working by the month can not be forced to labor those thirty days without rest days. These will be vouchsafed him by law. I do not think any confusion will result from such a law, as I once lived in a neighborhood where there was a large number of Seventh-day Adventists. Their factory bells and our church bells, and vice versa, would blend together very sweetly. While one part of the community worked the other prayed, and peace abode there.” Whatever may be thought of the law by the advocates of an out-and-out Sunday law, it is clear that Mrs. Peet throws a damper over their arguments that ordinary labor is a “desecration” of Sunday, and that Sunday labor is a “disturbance” to Sunday worship. Where the factory bells and church bells “blend together very sweetly,” there can not be any just complaint of disturbance. In behalf of Seventh-day Adventists, we can say that they make no complaint of disturbance of their public worship on the Sabbath (Saturday), albeit that is the busiest business day of the week with other people. Nor do they ask for any Sabbath law but the law given by the “Lord of the Sabbath,” who “blessed” and “sanctified” it at the close of the creation. Furthermore, we never have heard of the civil laws being invoked for the enforcement of any religious rite or institution backed by an ordinance of God. It is because of the lack of a “thus saith the Lord,” that human law is deemed necessary in support of Sunday and other supererogative religious institutions. We are glad Mrs. Peet, in her capacity as head of the California W. C. T. U., has given this testimony to a condition which is plainly subversive of a current false theory.