To know just how far civil rulers may extend their authority is a question that has perplexed the minds of statesmen and politicians for ages in the past. All the religious wars, the persecutions, and innocent blood that has been shed over questions of religion, have been on account of civil rulers invading the realm of the sacred and defining the religious duties of their subjects.
Therefore, to understand the limits of civil government is to know what are those inalienable rights over which civil law can have no jurisdiction.
We do not think it necessary to enter into a lengthy disquisition upon this question. The grouping together of a few plain facts which all can understand will enable the reader to grasp the distinction between the civil and the divine government, and hence the limits of human legislation, more readily than a more intricate and lengthy argument would do.
1. All agree to the truth, as set forth in the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States, that there are certain rights retained by or reserved to the people, over which the state can have no jurisdiction.
2. That, prominent among the rights reserved to the people, is the right to each individual to choose his religion and the manner of expressing it, provided he leaves every other person free to make the same choice, or, as it is expressed in the Declaration of Rights drawn up by the House of Burgesses of Virginia on June 12, 1776, that “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.”
3. That religion, or a man’s personal relation of faith and obedience to God, “can not be transferred to another.”
4. All the power possessed by civil rulers is delegated to them by the people, or, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
5. Therefore, as the state can not exercise any authority not delegated to it by the people, and as the people can not transfer their religion to the state, it is plain to all that the state can have nothing to do with religion. “But,” says our Sunday-law advocate, “while we agree with you that the state can have nothing to do with religion, yet we do not agree with you that the state can not enforce a day of the week as the Sabbath, for we do not believe that this is religious legislation.”
We submit that upon this point turns the whole question; and, further, we believe that the settlement of this question is destined to convulse the world as no other question that has ever been submitted to the people. It is more widespread in its nature and consequences than any other church dogma that was ever forced upon the attention of the public, and it is time that every citizen, not only of this government, but of every other government, should know whether the enforcement of a weekly day of rest comes within the purview of civil legislation. To show that it does not, we submit the following facts and considerations.
All agree that the seventh-day Sabbath is enjoined by express command of God; that the Lord calls it “my holy day,” and commands us “to keep it holy.” Isa. 58 : 13; Ex. 20 : 8–11. Is not an institution commanded of God to be kept holy a religious institution?—It surely is.
Now, suppose the state should see fit to compel the people to keep the seventh day, or Saturday, as a civil institution, would it not outwardly compel obedience to a religious ordinance? Would not every Catholic and Sunday-keeping Protestant so regard it?—Indeed they would. “But,” says the secular advocate, “Sunday, or the first day of the week, is not based upon any command of God; therefore, if the state should compel its observance as a civil day, it would not be enforcing a religious institution, as that which has no command of God can not be religious.” We freely admit that Sunday-keeping is not based upon any command of God; nevertheless is it not religious? There are false religions as well as the true.
To illustrate: Suppose the state in response to a demand by the followers of “the prophet” should pass a law compelling the observance of Friday as a weekly rest day, would not every person who kept that day outwardly observe the sign of the religion of Mohammed?
Again, would not every observer of the first day rise up in opposition to the state authorities and say, “You are compelling us to acknowledge Mohammed as the prophet of God by compelling us to observe his sign”?—We know they would. Carrying out the same line of reasoning, if the state compel the observance of Sunday, the sign of the religion of both Pagan and Papal Rome, would it not be to compel (so far as outward action could show) the recognition of the religion of Rome?—Every candid person must admit that it would.
Then, as the observance of a weekly Sabbath is a religious act, and the keeping or not keeping of it is to be left to the decision of the individual conscience, it follows that for civil government to legislate upon the observance of a Sabbath, is overstepping the limits of its power, and can not be obeyed by those who feel that they “must obey God rather than man.”
