GOOD BUT DEFECTIVE by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 37.

"GOOD BUT DEFECTIVE."

By Editor

OUR friend, N. R. Johnston, in the California Prohibitionist of the 29th ultimo, calls the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) prohibition platform "good but defective." The second plank in that platform is as follows:—

"Second—We are in favor of a more conscientious and scriptural observance of the Sabbath, as absolutely essential to the welfare of society, and the preservation of the State."

Upon this, friend Johnston remarks:—

The second is defective. It should have declared in favor of better legislation, as well as of better Sabbath observance.

Yes, it is defective. Pennsylvania is one of the States which has been cursed with a stringent Sunday law, which came down from the relics of the Dark Ages. And it has been largely a dead letter, except in the case of seventh-day keepers. We have traveled miles in Northern Pennsylvania on Sunday, and have found people at work everywhere in the country, and doing much worse in the towns. We do not believe California to be worse. But it is only a few years since, that Seventh-day Baptists, a Mr. Waldo and hired man, were arrested, convicted, and fined, for doing work on Sunday which could disturb no one.

The resolution per se is good. "Conscientious and scriptural observance" would be the keeping of the seventh day—the only scriptural Sabbath. And we do not know but we could say Amen to friend Johnston's comments on this Sabbath plank, but perhaps not in the direction designed by the writer. But the legislation, concerning Sabbath observance, that is needed in the old Keystone State, to be truly "better," and not "defective," should sweep forever from the statute books all Sunday or Sabbath laws. There is no other way.

There is another defect in the platform; the Sabbath observance plank has no business there whatever, or in any other political party platform. It would do for the church conference or presbytery resolution, but it is out of place in politics.