p. 402 | IS IT CIVIL? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 7, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 26.

IS IT CIVIL?

By Editor

THE latest utterance of the chief worker in behalf of Sunday legislation is the following:

"Laws setting apart a weekly 'independence-day' are no more inconsistent with liberty and much more essential to it than the law of the annual Independence-day."

The man who expects that people are going to accept such a feeble comparison as that as sound argument for Sunday legislation, pays a poor compliment to their intelligence. There is no more likeness between the Sunday observance that is contemplated by the proposed laws and the observance of the Fourth of July, than there is between a Presbyterian synod and a college base-ball nine. When such a plea as that is made for Sunday laws, all you have to do is to ask if under the proposed Sunday laws it is designed to give people the same freedom of action that they have on the Fourth of July. Are we to believe that all the so-called American Sabbath Union is working for is for a law granting the people full liberty to take "a day off" every Sunday, to go on a picnic, let off fire-crackers, lounge around, and do as they please generally? Some less gauzy plea will have to be invented.