p. 227 | FOR RELIGION'S SAKE by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 13, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 15.

FOR RELIGION'S SAKE.

By Editor

THE necessity for Sunday laws in the earlier career of the "American Sabbath Union" was ostensibly urged on the basis of "a sanitary measure," "a workingmen's day," "a physical necessity," etc., while the real reason was the fact that Sunday is a religious institution and the religious people demand that the day should be protected by law. And this the friends of such measures more freely admit now than in the first stages of the Sunday agitation. At that time, however, the Constitution of the United States and most of the States expressly forbade such legislation. At least the plain, explicit language in which these bills of rights were framed were so read and without "construction" so meant.

But latterly a change has come. In the language of the prophet, "judgment is turned away backward," and those in high places have given some petty Sunday enactment, born of the Dark Ages, the precedence of positive declarations of organic law. That is, the petty civil or penal law, or the decisions of inferior judges, have been made the standard, and the constitutions have been "construed" in harmony with these laws or utterances. Even the Supreme Court of the United States has fallen under this judicial religious blindness, and, on the strength of various utterances, official and non-official, private and public, from the days of the Inquisition to the present time, decided, February 29, 1892, that this government is a religious nation, and that its religion is "Christian." Not only have they decided this contrary to the letter and spirit of the First Amendment to the Constitution, but they have declared that the First Amendment is in perfect harmony with all of the various utterances upon which they have based their decision. They having decided, therefore, that this is a Christian nation, it follows that Christian institutions ought to be observed; and, Sunday being considered a Christian institution, therefore, again Sunday ought to be enforced by law because it is a Christian institution.

We, of course, do not admit for one moment that either this government or Sunday is Christian, but they are so considered by the Sunday-law people, and this is the argument they now put forth as to why Sunday ought to be legalized. Thus it is that this government has been launched upon the sea of what has wrecked nations and slain the people of God in the past, and we have no reason to believe that it will work otherwise in the United States.