THE “SIGNS OF THE TIMES” AND THE PROHIBITION PARTY.
By Editor
THIS paper has from its very inception to the present time been an advocate of the prohibition of the liquor traffic; and knowing this, some of our friends are unable to understand why we do not support the Prohibition party, some even going so far as to deny that we are in favor of prohibition at all because we do not co-operate in all things with those who have taken that name. We wish now to state our position so plainly that none can fail to understand it. There are two reasons why we cannot and do not support the Prohibition party though we advocate prohibition. The first of these reasons is, the Signs of the Times is not a political nor a party paper. We advocate only principles; the support of men and measures we, from the very nature of the case, leave to papers published for that purpose. In this we do not differ materially from the majority of religious papers. Our second reason for not supporting the Prohibition party is that, whereas it advocates prohibition, in which we believe, it also advocates some things in which we do not believe. A single plank from the platform recently adopted by some six hundred delegates of the party assembled in convention in Pittsburg, Pa., will serve as an illustration. The plank is as follows:— “Third—The Sabbath must be preserved by the due enforcement of existing laws and the speedy enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary to insure its due observance.” We cannot conscientiously give our support, nor even our tacit consent to this plank. The Sabbath is a religious institution, and its observance is an act of worship; its legal enforcement is, therefore, the legal enforcement of religion, and that is foreign alike to the real spirit of Christianity and to our free institutions. In all matters of religion man is responsible alone to his God, and when the State attempts to interfere in any way in such matters it usurps the place and prerogatives of God. The tendency of Sunday laws is to destroy that sense of personal responsibility to God which is the basis of all true religion, and in the very nature of the case, under them, men learn to look not to God to know their duty towards him, but to the State. Again, Sabbath laws are unjust. All do not regard the same day as sacred, nor do all agree upon the degree of sacredness which attaches to any particular day. It is manifestly unjust to compel the man who has kept Saturday, as many do, to keep Sunday also. To say the very least, the fourth commandment gives permission to all to labor six days, and certainly the man who has observed the seventh day according to the plain letter of that commandment has a divine right to work on the other six days, and not only so but he has a right to do any sort of work or to follow any sort of business which it would be right and proper for a Christian to do or follow upon any other day, always remembering the golden rule, to do as he would be done by. We should always be considerate of the rights and feelings of others, but this is just as obligatory upon one as upon another. But obedience to the golden rule would defeat all Sunday laws unless it might be a useless provision requiring those to rest upon that day who want to do so. Certainly it is not doing to others as we would have them do to us, to require them to observe religious institutions in which they have no faith. If Christians because they happen to be in the majority have a right to require unbelievers to act one day in the week as though they believed, it follows that were the majority on the other side the unbelievers would have the right to require Christians to act, at least occasionally, as though they were infidels. But God has never given any such authority to anybody. The words of our Saviour, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” have forever separated civil and religious duties and left the State without the vestige of an excuse for interfering in matters of religion. The Sunday law of Pennsylvania is particularly objectionable because that under it conscientious Christian men have been, and may still be, fined and imprisoned for doing ordinary labor on the first day of the week after having religiously kept the seventh day. But the Prohibition party in that State, not only favors the strict enforcement of that law but demands the passage of still more stringent laws. Such a demand is neither Christian nor patriotic, and we certainly cannot join in it nor give it our sanction in any way. But even if the law did exempt from its provisions those who observe the day specified in the fourth commandment, we could not indorse it nor assent that it was right. It is a question which the State has no right to touch, nor can it do so without establishing a precedent most dangerous to religious liberty and to freedom of conscience. We have no quarrel with the Prohibition party so long as it confines itself to its legitimate work, and we stand aloof from that party not that we love prohibition less, but that we love God and freedom to worship him according to the dictates of our own consciences more. C. P. B.