SUNDAY LAWS AND PROHIBITION.
By C. P. Bollman
As MIGHT be expected, both from the very nature of the case and from the testimony of the word of God, the Sunday-law agitation is by no means confined to this country, and from Europe comes the news that "a law prohibiting Sunday work has been passed in Vienna, and is so rigorously enforced that no morning paper can appear on Monday, as the printers are not allowed to work Sunday." Commenting upon this fact, the San Francisco Chronicle says:— "The report of a stringent Sunday law at Vienna, which compels the suspension of publication of newspapers on Monday morning, will be read with amazement by Americans. The Continental Sunday has always been a synonym for exceeding freedom from any restraint, and if this movement continues, we may expect to hear of the prohibition of beer drinking in Germany." While such things may amaze those who look at them from a merely human standpoint, the intelligent student of prophecy will recognize in them the fulfillment of God's word. For while the Bible nowhere teaches that Sunday is the Sabbath, it does teach that it will be rigidly enforced as such. But even aside from the teaching of the Scriptures, it is not easy to see why anybody should be surprised at the strict enforcement of the first day of the week in Roman Catholic countries; when even in "Protestant America" conscientious Sabbatarians are fined and imprisoned for doing ordinary labor upon Sunday, after having "rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." The Sunday festival is the child of Rome by adoption; it is the badge of her power to ordain festivals of precept (see Catholic catechisms) and "to command men under sin," and it is little wonder that "the church" protects her own. But it is strange that professed Protestants exhibit so much zeal for an institution which is confessedly without scriptural authority. There is, however, every prospect that the movement will continue, not only in Europe, but in America as well. Nevertheless, it does not follow that we shall hear of the prohibition of beer-drinking in Germany, or anywhere else. It would be a good thing if we could not only hear of prohibition in other countries, but if we could see it in our own borders. But even though Sunday laws were rigidly enforced everywhere, the cause of temperance would not necessarily be materially advanced thereby; for there really is no connection between the two. There are thousands of good temperance people who do not believe in Sunday; and, on the other hand, there are very many Sunday people who are not prohibitionists. Roman Catholics favor Sunday to a man—though many of them do not keep it very strictly—but very few of them are prohibitionists. And in every city there are hundreds and even thousands of Protestant church members who habitually use liquors. Such people may be very zealous for the Sunday, but they will naturally be rather lukewarm in the cause of temperance reform. But "in union there is strength," and so it is not strange that the advocates of Sunday laws are showing the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and other temperance organizations the most obsequious attentions;69nor is it strange, in view of the efforts which are being made to unite these two questions, that they should appear to many as a common cause, though in truth one rests only upon the tradition of men, while the other is founded in the very principles of the law of God.
C. P. BOLLMAN.