WHAT A SUNDAY LAW MEANS.
By Editor
IN the Pacific Christian’s Sunday-law symposium, Mrs. A. C. Smithers falls into a very common error, which we wish to notice. While she denounces as a “fallacy” the claim that a Sunday law “would be an interference with religious liberty, and thus would be unconstitutional,” she declares that, “in harmony with the spirit of the Constitution, it is the imperative duty of the state to protect every individual in the exercise of his religious freedom, and how can this be done more effectually than for the state to enact such measures as shall require every one to so deport himself as not to interfere with those who wish to make it a day of worship?” Our sister falls into the common error of those who do not know for what purposes human governments are ordained, of thinking that a law which protects a day, or an institution, protects men. Never was there a greater fallacy. A law to protect the sanctity of the Roman Catholic “Host” is not a law “to protect every individual in the exercise of his religious freedom.” A law to protect baptism, the Lord’s supper, a certain attitude in worship, a certain shrine of a saint, or a creed of a church, is not a law to protect men in his religious rights. The matter of preventing interference in others’ worship is not what Sunday-law people demand. Such laws exist in every state, applicable and sufficient for Sunday and all days alike. If a man disturbs that worship he is as liable to arrest in California, where no Sunday law exists, as in other states where Sunday laws do exist. If it is necessary to have a Sunday law to protect the rights of those who wish to make Sunday a day of worship, justice demands that there shall be a Sabbath law to protect the rights4of the Sabbath-keeping Christian and Jew, who wish to make the seventh day a day of worship. But this is not what Sunday-law people want, nor would they for a moment consent to it. They wish to use the seventh day in business, and would not vote away their rights to thus use it if they so elect. So it is with the Jew or the Sabbatarian. Numbers are of no account where human rights are at stake. The fact is that Sunday-law people desire a Sunday law, not to protect men, but an institution. And such a law, according to the invincible logic of facts, has always resulted in discrimination and persecution of one class and the exaltation of another.