ANOTHER SETBACK TO CHURCH AND STATE RULE IN CALIFORNIA.
By W. N. Glenn
THE board of supervisors of Alameda County, Cal., have wisely decided that it is not within the province of that body to ordain how the people shall or shall not spend their Sundays. They were petitioned by a number of ministers, representing the California Sabbath Association, to prohibit the usual Sunday sports, and the petition was backed by a number of addresses. But the members of the board took a decided, manly stand, and unanimously voted to deny the petition. This action of the Sabbath Association was in harmony with its policy to secure enforced Sunday observance throughout the state by means of county and municipal Sunday ordinances of one kind or another. Its efforts have been successful in several counties, and in a number of municipalities; and its officials and sympathizers have, for several years, been trying to draw the city of Oakland and the county of Alameda into the scheme. They seem to consider this city and county a kind of key to the situation. The plan was begun in the south, and has been worked northward, but seemingly struck a snag when it reached San Francisco Bay. The friends of the movement have entertained the idea that if this obstacle could be overcome, the wave northward would receive a new impetus, sufficiently strong to secure, in the near future, a state Sunday law. For the past decade strenuous efforts have been made to have reënacted the state law that was repealed by the Legislature of 1883. The repeal had been a leading issue in the campaign that preceded that session, and the electors favored the repeal by a majority of 17,000. For a few years the matter was allowed to rest, until the American Sabbath Union, which was organized in New York for the purpose of securing a national Sunday law, conceived the idea that it would be a great help to that end if it could be shown that all the states had Sunday laws, whose enforcement was impeded by the lack of a national law. California being at that time the only state without such a law, the Sabbath Union deemed it highly important that one should be secured. So Mr. Crafts, at that time field secretary of the Union, came on, with a great flourish of trumpets, and attempted to carry out the design. His effort failed, and he was followed by Dr. Edward Thomson, who reorganized the Sunday law forces and began a three years' educational campaign, being quite sanguine that at the end of such a course the coveted law could be secured. This scheme also failed, when the doctor and his friends conceived the idea of plastering the state with county ordinances, where such could be secured, or, in case of failure with the supervisors, to capture such cities and towns as could be gathered in. The plan was to "take what we can get." That is, if general Sunday-closing could not be secured, then ask for something easier, for instance, the closing of saloons on Sunday, or a general closing part of the day,—whatever the people would stand. It was anything for an entering wedge, anything that could be called a Sunday ordinance. A San Diego minister advised that "we do not ask too much at first; do not ask for more than the sentiment of the people will stand, and when they have become better educated, then we can demand more." Dr. Thomson remained until this scheme was well inaugurated, and then left the field, and the California Sabbath Association is carrying on the work to the best of its ability. As most people know the saloons to be an evil, they are apt to be caught with the bait that to close them one day in seven, or even a part of the day, is a great good. Unless their attention is called to the matter, they are likely not to discern the hidden design behind the Sunday-closing screen, namely, a general state law, entailing the enforcement of a religious institution upon all the people. So with the race-tracks, pleasure resorts, and many of the games. A great many people are prejudiced against these institutions, for there are many evils connected with them, and are easily led to believe that they are worse on Sunday than on any other day. So they readily fall in with the move to forbid them on Sunday; never dreaming that it is only a screen to hide a deeper purpose to bind the consciences of the entire populace in the matter of Sunday observance. If these things are evil, how can Christians consistently endorse them six days in the week; for this they logically do by simply decrying them one day in the week. This action shows that those who petition against evil doing on Sunday are not actuated by enmity toward the evil, but by a desire to see Sunday observance enforced. This is further demonstrated by the fact that these Sunday-law advocates openly declare their design to secure a state law prohibiting all classes of business—honest as well as disreputable—on that day. In order that the people may not be deceived by these local demands in the name of temperance, morality, sanitation, the welfare of the working men, etc., etc., Seventh-day Adventists have not been slow to expose the hidden hand and hidden purpose as opportunity presents itself. For this reason they are continually maligned and purposely misrepresented. They are charged with being saloon sympathizers, by professed Christians—ministers, journalists, and others—who well know that there is no truth in the charge. Every person who knows anything about their faith or practice knows that there is not a more radical temperance people in all Christendom. And now, because a single Adventist addressed the Alameda board of supervisors in a manner to show the unpatriotic character and sinister tendency of all religious legislation, it is charged that the Adventists are advocates of evil resorts. Well, Seventh-day Adventists can stand all such charges. They have had to bear misrepresentation through all their history as a people, and expect they will have to do so unto the end. Our Saviour said to his disciples: "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household." And it was the professed church of God that misrepresented him in every possible way because he exposed their hypocrisies. It was the professed church that deceived their followers even to demanding that he be crucified. And he was the world's greatest champion of religious liberty, of freedom of conscience, having handed down to us this statement of principle: "If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world." Those who follow in his footsteps and heed his word will not be found seeking the aid of civil law to enforce their ideas of Sabbath observance, or any other religious dogma. If legislative bodies have the right to enforce one religious rite upon the people, they have an equal right to enforce the observance of all others.