Mr. Tufts and His Criticisms
By Editor
JULY 9 we received the following letter, accompanied by an article, from Dr. G. L. Tufts, secretary of the California branch of the Lord's Day Alliance: "Will you kindly publish the enclosed article in an early issue of the Signs of the Times, and send me a marked copy? Please accept my thanks for the courtesy. Yours sincerely, G. L. Tufts." We wrote Mr. Tufts that we would print his article, and asked for a copy of his bill, which he later sent us. Mr. Tufts's article, "A Weekly Rest Day Law," appears on page 10. As he refers in this article to Mr. Corliss, his article was shown to Mr. Corliss, and the latter's reply also appears in this issue. In printing Mr. Tufts's article, we are departing from a usual custom, and have extended to him an unusual courtesy. Our expressed desire to hear from our readers either for or against, did not imply that we would be under any obligations to print whatever letters we might receive, nor does the principle which we hold regarding "free speech" and a "free press" demand that we should furnish agency and advertising to give Mr. Tufts's views publicity. He has the same right to publish as we; he should ask no more. What we publish, therefore, is a matter of courtesy wholly. Will Mr. Tufts find one journal advocating Sunday laws, like the California Christian Advocate, for instance, which will publish both sides of the question? We do not believe it possible. But he who has the truth can afford to be more than fair, and therefore we print Mr. Tufts's article. Mr. Corliss has written freely, touching upon such things in Mr. Tufts's article as he deems best, without reference to anything that we may write, and we also treat the criticisms by Mr. Tufts independently of what Mr. Corliss has said. We note the following points in Mr. Tufts's article: Mr. Tufts denies that Sunday laws are religious legislation, and then he refers to church taxation and laws protecting public worship, and asks why we do not oppose these. Briefly, we can say that as to church taxation, when the law was passed we did protest against it. If our files were intact, and the memoranda which our recent fire took from us were in hand, we could cite what was said and done at that time. We did not believe it the right principle, and we so stated. As to laws protecting public worship, these are based not on any religious right, but on a purely human right. All churches have a right to worship, all men have a right to meet together against worship if they so desire; and the law will protect them in their right of assembly. The Catholic or the Protestant, the Jew or the Mohammedan, the Christian or the infidel, the Mormon or the Christian Scientist, has a right to meet with his kind for worship, and the law protects each and all of these in this worship, not because they are Catholics or Protestants, Jew or Christian, but simply and solely because they are men. It is not the institution which the law is protecting, but it is the human being in his right. No belief is established, no tenet is enforced. The civil law simply demands that men who believe other than these who meet together shall act civilly toward them. Right here comes the wrong conception of those who are demanding religious legislation. The true object of law is not to protect institutions, is not to foster religious tenets or views, but to protect men. The whole question turns as between institutions or men. If it were the rights of men which were guarded, there never would be a law for the promotion or protection of a religious institution. This is shown in the fact that our Sunday-law men are not working to secure the right of a working man to rest one day in seven, irrespective of the day, but the object is to protect the one day, the religious day. That Sunday laws are in the category of religious legislation is shown, first in the fact that the Sabbath is a religious institution, in its origin and in its history. This is true likewise of Sunday; even in its ancient pagan surroundings it was a religious institution, dedicated to the sun, and the very first law on record for its observance is by a heathen emperor in honor of the sun. Secondly, those who are pushing the Sunday law at the present time, and always throughout Christendom, are religious men and women, those who believe in the sacredness of the first day of the week. Thirdly, the exemptions have a religious basis, and the prohibitions are against secular work or business. We know that Mr. Tufts is not calling it a religious law. He tells us that the first law in California, which had a decidedly religious title, had a very "unfortunate" title. Mr. Tufts and his fellows are seeking the same thing under another name. This is also shown by the fact that Mr. Tufts, in his "Twenty Reasons for a Sunday Law," declares that "California holds the unenviable distinction of being the only commonwealth among all Christian nations without such a law. In this particular, California is pagan and a byword." Mr. Tufts brings no reproach upon the other states which have Sunday laws, some of which are of the most decidedly religious character, and many of them without exemptions. For instance, Arkansas, section 2,030, has the side-head title of "Sabbath-breaking," and declares that certain things "shall not be liable to the penalties enacted against Sabbath-breaking, provided no store or saloon shall be kept open, or business carried on there on the Christian sabbath." In its act of January 12, 1853, "Every person who shall on the Christian sabbath, or Sunday, be engaged in any game of brag," etc. January 19, 1855, section 2,038, we find the term "shooting for amusement on the sabbath day," and so elsewhere in the same law. The law of Colorado names "the sabbath, or Lord's day." The Connecticut Sunday law forbids any "secular" business. The Sunday law of Delaware names only "the sabbath day," and forbids business on "the sabbath day," traveling upon "the sabbath day," selling on "the sabbath," fishing or hunting game on "the sabbath," playing or dancing on "the sabbath," etc. The Georgia Sunday law is after the same order—"prohibition against violating the sabbath day." And so we might continue with state after state, showing that the real sentiment and purpose behind all these various Sunday laws are for the protection of a sacred religious day, and to prohibit secular work upon that day, denominating that day "the sabbath," or "the Lord's day." We may call it what we will, and our friends may call it what they will, but they know, and all know who have ever given the subject any study or thought, that behind all Sunday laws is the religious sentiment that if the day were not a religious day there would be no demand for the Sunday law. The function of civil law is not to make men moral; it is to suppress incivility. The great moral code is the Decalogue. The scope of that Decalogue includes man's motives. In the interpretation given of it by the Scriptures, he who hates his brother is guilty of murder, and he who "looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Clearly, it must be manifest to all that these things can not be suppressed, or taken away, by civil law, or by anything else short of the hearty coöperation of man with the creative power of the Spirit of God. But the outward act can be suppressed, and incivility can be punished, and that is the purpose of civil law. Neither is civil law designed to protect the majority or its religious belief. Its object is to protect the minority, the weak, those who are unable to protect themselves. It is an utterly wrong conception of the use of civil law to foster the opinions of a majority regardless of the minority. III—The Value of Court Decisions
Regarding the reference to the decision of Judge Terry, of the California Supreme Court, Mr. Corliss has dealt with it sufficiently. We wish to state right here, however, that decisions and opinions can be found on both sides of the question from equally able men. He who reads history knows also that judges are likely to be prejudiced by religious opinions and predilections as well as other men, and through their bias or predilection are likely to make wrong decisions. The history of the past witnesses to judges who have interpreted law according to religious bias, and consigned men to stake or dungeon for opinion's sake. They have frequently been on the wrong side of the question, as history has demonstrated; and judicial opinions have been so unsatisfactory to the mass of the people in these6present days that there is a loud cry throughout the United States, supported by eminent men, for the recall of judges. We are not arguing either for or against it, we are simply noting the fact that a judge's decision is not infallible. It does not require the position of a judge, or his official status, in order to determine whether a thing is in harmony with the equal rights of men and with the Constitution of the United States. Any man of ordinary common sense apart from religious bias can easily determine this of himself. Mr. Tufts finds fault because the Sunday has been declared to be "un-American" by the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, and he concludes that the SIGNS OF THE TIMES must be un-American, because so many Americans have regarded Sunday. It is not American regard of Sunday that has been criticized in the SIGNS at all. The whole question lies right here: The American principle is equality of men. It is absolute separation of church and state. Our state governments carried over from old colonial times, and the colonies from the medieval ages, certain religious laws and ordinances which never ought to have been placed upon the statute-books or in the fundamental law of the states, nor would they have been if the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Federal Government had obtained in the states. There are but two states in the Union at the present time which have had the courage and American spirit to do this. Preeminent of the two stands California, the other is Arizona. If we should go back to the origin of the thing, Sunday is not American, either as a pagan worship day or a Christian worship day. In its religious aspect in America it came from the Puritans in England. We do not have to go back many centuries to find that there was no particular sacredness attached to the day at all. It was simply regarded as a church day. In its origin it is not in any wise an American institution. It might, as well be contended that the sprinkling of converts was an American institution, or it could be paralleled with a half-dozen other religious observances received, as the Sunday has been received, from the past. That it has been the weekly rest day of most Americans is granted. That does not necessarily constitute it an American institution, however. The closing of public institutions, banks, and government offices on that day is out of regard to the custom of the men in the institutions. The day is legally a non dies, or no day. Therefore when we say that a Sunday law is un-American we refer to the principles upon which the Federal Government of America has been based, absolute separation of church and state and the equality of all men before the law. Viewed from this point it is decidedly un-American. V—The Wholesomeness of the Law
We are told that it is for the health of the laboring man that he should rest one day in seven, and therefore we compel him to rest by forbidding him to work. But if a government is so to concern itself with the health of its subjects, or those who live within its jurisdiction, where would such laws stop? It is decidedly an unhealthy practise to use tobacco. It is the cause of various and incurable diseases. Some of the best physicians in the world have condemned it. Shall the law therefore step in and forbid men smoking, chewing, or snuffing tobacco? The eating of candy is an unhealthful practise, especially where eaten in excessive quantities, as it is generally throughout America. Shall the law forbid it? There are certain food combinations which, according to our enlightened health reformers, are very bad, and which make Americans a nation of dyspeptics. Shall these combinations be forbidden by law? The wearing of high-heeled shoes and corsets is condemned by some of our most enlightened physicians and women. Why should not the law step in and prohibit these? And yet the Sunday law which our friend is promoting permits men to loaf and smoke and drink, if they can get the whisky, and eat candy and indulge in various things which are injurious to health, but it prohibits labor, labor which to some would be promotive of health and profit in every way. "In the editorial columns of June 25, the astounding statement is made that our proposed weekly rest day law will make 'loyalty to God a crime,' by making Sunday labor on the part of Seventh-day Adventists and conscientious Jews a penal offense. Again it is stated that 'you, through that Sunday law, demand that your seventh-day neighbor shall give up one whole day in the week of precious time—one sixth of all his income, sixteen and two thirds per cent of his earnings.' Has not the editor been reading the articles he has published in recent issues of his own paper from the pen of Mr. Corliss in which the fact is mentioned that the proposed law would allow the Seventh-day Adventists to work on Sunday? Or does he publicly criticize a proposed measure and its author without informing himself upon the contents of said measure? We can not think that he intentionally misrepresented the facts to prejudice the minds of his readers. But for the information of all concerned permit me to say that the proposed law declares that its prohibitions against Sunday labor and business do not apply: 'To any person who is a member of a religious society which observes some other day than Sunday as its day of worship and who actually keeps his place of business, or of his ordinary calling closed, and does not work for gain at his ordinary calling or at common labor on said day of worship.' So the law will not prohibit an Adventist from working or attending to his regular business on Sundays. This surely protects you in your civil rights of working six days of the week. Any member of the Adventist Church who refrains from doing business on Saturday may conduct his business on Sunday as freely as on Monday. What more could you ask?" Now we are aware that there is an exemption clause in the proposed Sunday law, but in the first place the exemption clause is worth little, a mere temporary thing perhaps, and in the second place, it is not as liberal as Mr. Tufts seems to think. We freely grant that he meant that it should be, but it is not. Were we justified in our remarks? Let us see: 1. The power which has the right and authority to grant an exemption has the same right and authority to remove it. This goes without saying. The exemption is not provided in the law in the nature of a concession, as a right, but the granting of a privilege, a dispensation to disobey, an indulgence for a price. And it is not a difficult thing to believe that if opposition to the principle of the law will continue in those exempted, the proponents of the law would, to punish them for stubbornness and contumacy, withdraw the "privilege" and "favor." Arkansas repealed her exemption, and seventh-day people were prosecuted and persecuted under the law. It is not for exemptions or indulgence for ourselves that we plead, but for equal rights for all, an impossible thing under a Sunday law. The only true way to consider a Sunday law is apart from its exemptions. 2. That our Sunday-law friends are not averse to laws having no exemption is clearly evident. We have yet to see or hear one protest or sentence of condemnation from a single Sunday-law advocate regarding the prosecutions in Arkansas, Tennessee, Maryland, or Georgia. Lawyers and legislators, judges and juries, and many secular papers have condemned the law and justified its victims; but where was the pulpit or religious periodical which blazed indignant protest? Surely if these men believed in equal rights for all, it was then a time to speak. 3. But this law exempts only those who are members "of a religious society, which observes some other day than Sunday as its day of worship." This would exempt Jews and members of the Seventh-day Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, but there are devoted seventh-day Christians who do not belong to these bodies, or to any other that keep the seventh day. The editor has a very dear friend, learned and scientific, who observes the seventh day. He is a member of the Methodist Church. The law would not exempt him for loyalty to God, for doing just what Jesus Christ did, working six days and resting the seventh, that seventh the very day of the weekly cycle on which Christ rested. And for that condemned by the law as a criminal! Loyalty to God a crime! And he is only one of many such who have not identified themselves with any body of seventh-day observers. These, too, under the law, would be taxed sixteen and two thirds per cent of their income in deference to the religious conviction of the Sunday-law man. That is to say, after a man had observed one day as conscience dictated, as his Lord did, the law demands that he must then observe the next day, solely because his stronger neighbor so believes and has so decided. In this the Sunday law exacts one sixth of his time that it does not require of the first-day man. Is such a law just, and are Christians in conscience before God willing to support it? Further than this, the various voting districts of the state may sweep away all exemptions and multiply restrictions. Every man has his right to rest, it is true. Every man has the equal right to labor. The law has no right to enforce either labor or rest. The oft quoted saying of Sunday-law people, "The right of one to rest demands a law of rest for all," is utter nonsense. There is no involuntary slavery in America. If a man is a slave, he is willingly so. Let him assert his liberty and walk forth a free man. If he wishes to rest on Sunday he has that privilege. "He may lose his place," you say. What of it? Thousands have lost their places for principle. God has some better thing for them. Men who would thus act from principle would find7place somewhere, and develop character of worth. How much better it would be if men were taught such principles, rather than to make them believe that they were slaves, and could only be freed by a Sunday law! Dr. Grannis, the secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance, has done much in laboring to secure rest for men, or "slaves," as he terms them. In New York he pleaded for a six-day work and one-day rest law, without regard to the day. In Pennsylvania he secured relief for the iron-workers without any law. Now here are some questions for our Sunday-law agitators which we ask again: 1. If a Sunday law will secure to men the right to rest, as Dr. Grannis and Dr. Tufts claim, why did not Pennsylvania's stringent Sunday law secure relief for the thousands of "slaves" in the iron industries around Pittsburg? 2. In helping these workers, why did not Dr. Grannis appeal to the state Sunday law, instead of resorting to moral suasion and personal influence in securing relief for the toilers? Pennsylvania is the headquarters of the National Reform Association, and Pittsburg is the headquarters in that state of that association, and the National Reform Association is the very mother of the Sunday-law agitation. 3. If a Sunday law did not secure to men the right to rest in Pennsylvania, what hope is there that it would do just the opposite in California? 4. If the six-day work and one-day rest law which Dr. Grannis contended for in New York is, or would be, sufficient to protect men in their right to rest, why is not a similar law now on the statute-books of California sufficient? 5. But why did Dr. Grannis contend for another law in New York, when there is already a strict Sunday law on the statute-books of that state? 6. How many subsequent enactments does it take to make the first effective? 7. If the first-day sabbath is of Christ, why can our friends not trust His all-power to impress it upon the hearts of the people?