The Latest Sunday Alliance.
By Editor
THE Sunday law question is springing up almost everywhere. We have reported the movement in California, and in the South. But like movements are going on in both the East and the middle West, only that there the question is on enforcing the laws already on the statute books, while in California it is to get a strict penal statute that may be enforced. In Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and other cities in the East, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and other cities in the West, the laws are being enforced. In Boston and some places in the West it is by the liquor dealers. In Philadelphia, it is by the "Law and Order League" and the "Sabbath Association;" in Reading, Pa., and Worcester, Mass., it is by the barbers' association of the Knights of Labor. In La Crosse, Wis., it is by the Norwegian population. In New York City it is by the Central Labor Union, "a radically Socialistic organization." The Christian Union reports a like movement going on in Great Britain; this also represented by the Labor Unions. Likewise in Germany and in France. Says the Union: "A strong and apparently hopeful attempt is being made to secure the enforcement by law" of Sunday observance, "not on religious but on Socialistic grounds." And then the Union most meaningly says:— "It is very clear that if our Sabbath [Sunday, of course] is to be preserved at all—and we are sanguine of its preservation—the non-religious sentiment of the country must be brought in to re-inforce the religious demand for Sabbath [Sunday] rest, and it is increasingly evident that this is entirely practicable. And, curiously, what renders this practicable is that horrid 'Socialism' which keeps some good people lying awake o' nights in fear and trembling. One of the Sabbath Committee in Philadelphia is, indeed, represented as relying 'upon the law of the Sabbath as promulgated by the Creator.' But the majority of Americans, including a large proportion of those who are most desirous of preserving the Sabbath, will never consent to see a purely religious obligation enforced by civil penalties. On the other hand, pure individualism affords an entirely adequate legal basis for anything like adequate Sabbath legislation. . . . Modern, and, if our readers please so to regard it, Socialistic political economy . . . holds that the community has a right to act as a unit; . . . it has a right to fix upon a legal holiday or an eight-hour standard for the normal labor day—if it judge this best. In short, no eight-hour man can consistently deny the right of society to maintain a Sabbath by legal provisions; and . . . no advocate of Sabbath laws, unless he maintains the right of the State to establish a purely religious observance, can consistently deny the right of the community to fix a normal labor day. . . . And Christian Socialism finds a place for both." In this extract is clearly marked out the course which the Sunday cause will pursue. The religious sentiment and demand will be re-enforced by the non-religious. So-called Christianity will ally itself with Socialism to get the support of the Socialists in preserving the so-called Christian Sabbath. And by such shameful alliances as these the wicked scheme of a National Sunday law will surely succeed and persecution under it will surely follow. For when a religious element to compass its ends has to ally itself with the non-religious element, then the whole body becomes most basely corrupt and pure religion is persecuted to the death. How much more surely will this be so when, as in this impending evil, the alliance is formed with the very basest element of human society—the Socialistic. And to make the thing the more attractive to this element, the shamefully abused term "Christian" is blended with the terrible title "Socialism," and so there is introduced to the world the new phrase, "Christian Socialism," which is just as congruous as is the phrase "Holy Inquisition," and no more so. And we are very sure that the outcome will yet demonstrate that the real meanings that underlie the two incongruous phrases are very nearly identical. When a religious element to preserve its religion is forced to ally itself with the non-religious, then such religion is not worth preserving. And when a professed Christianity becomes so lost to all the vital power of real Christianity that it becomes essential to its preservation that it shall ally itself with Socialism, this of itself is proof that such Christianity is no better than such Socialism, and the sooner it should perish the better would it be for the world. As Christianity is the greatest blessing the world has ever known, so such perversion of Christianity becomes the worst bane the human race can know. Thus has it ever been. Thus only can it ever be. J.