Principles, Not Men by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 6, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 30.

Principles, Not Men

By Editor

Under date of July 13 Dr. George L. Tufts writes us as follows:

"I regret that it has been necessary for us to speak before the public in a critical manner against those of your number who have opposed our weekly rest day movement. We wish it distinctly understood that we are not opposing you as a church, upon religious grounds, or for ecclesiastical reasons. We simply take the defensive on religious matters, but not as a part of our civil legislation movement. Whenever your workers cease to oppose this undertaking to secure a civil law for the protection of human rights, we shall have nothing to say about Seventh-day Adventists. I especially regret that your ministers have entered saloons to secure signatures on your petitions against this humane measure. He who taught that we should come out from among them and touch no unclean thing, will hardly say that the end justifies the means in this instance. May the Holy Spirit direct us aright.

"Yours for the betterment of mankind."

We are sorry that Mr. Tufts looks upon the Sunday-law question as he does. We can freely say that we have no enmity against a single soul who is connected with the Sunday-law agitation, nor with any one else, so far as that goes, however much they may oppose us. We are not opposing Mr. Tufts nor the church to which he belongs. We are opposing the principles which he is advocating. We would save him from them. We believe that the whole Sunday legislation, as demonstrated in all its history, is evil, and only evil, and it is the principle of the thing which we are opposing. "We war with principles, not with men," and while we regret, of course, to have Mr. Tufts and his fellow workers speak against us, we shall not undertake to secure freedom from his criticism by yielding of principle. Legislation for a Sunday law is religious legislation, and against the rights of men.

Regarding the regret that Mr. Tufts has as to our ministers entering saloons to secure signatures, this has been absolutely and flatly denied, and denied under oath on the part of one of our ministers who was so charged,—Mr. Morrison, of Sacramento. Mr. Tufts, when he makes such serious charges as these, ought to be specific. We do not believe that any minister belonging to the church of Seventh-day Adventists ever entered saloons for the purpose of securing petitions. We believe in liberty, however, for the man, whoever he may be, and we ask it for him simply and solely because he is a human being. We do not believe in the saloon business in any way. The Seventh-day Adventists everywhere are decided prohibitionists, but Mr. Tufts tells us in his "Twenty Reasons for a Sunday Law" that "liquor dealers favor Sunday closing," and his eighth reason is "because leaders among the liquor men of the country are advocating Sunday closing."

No one of our many reasons against Sunday laws is because the liquor men are against them, or any other class are against them; it is simply and solely because of the principle of the law itself. There is no other place where the Christian can stand. And as between the rights of men, the saloon-keeper's rights as a man are as sacred as those of the prohibitionist, the rights of the Jew as sacred as those of the Christian. We plead simply for equality before the law, that equality that is declared in the Declaration of Independence and vouchsafed in the fundamental laws of nation and state.