The Sunday-Law Movement in California
By T.
We are informed by the "Weekly Rest Day League" that they secured a total of only 8,610 signatures to their petitions favoring the initiation of a weekly rest-day law here in California, to be voted on at the election in November. To many of our readers it may be interesting to get the report in detail, which is in the next paragraph: "The following is the number of petitions certified to by the different county clerks and forwarded to the secretary of state: Kern County, 17; Colusa, 22; Amador, 24; Nevada, 42; Marin, 52; San Luis Obispo, 54; Sutter, 55; San Francisco, 59; Butte, 61; Napa, 73; Humboldt, 79; Yuba, 79; Solano, 80; Santa Cruz, 81; Orange, 84; Mendocino, 86; Lake, 89; Merced, 101; Sacramento, 107; Kings, 108; Sonoma, 113; San Benito, 125; Tulare, 149; Santa Barbara, 155; Stanislaus, 172; Imperial, 174; San Joaquin, 208; Contra Costa, 261; San Diego, 306; Fresno, 322; San Bernardino, 368; Riverside, 518; Santa Clara, 603; Alameda, 1,475; Los Angeles, 2,307. Total, 8,610."
On the face of it the showing is that there is not very much enthusiasm in California in favor of a general Sunday law. The charge has often been made that California would have had a strict Sunday law long ago had it not been for the opposition of the Seventh-day Adventists. The Seventh-day Adventists in this particular case had no definite information that an attempt was being made to initiate a Sunday law to be voted on at the next election. They heard many persistent rumors to that effect, but it was only when just a few days were left for securing petitions that they learned that efforts were being made to get a Sunday law on the ballot. We noticed the proposed law quite fully a few weeks ago. Here was a case in which we had scarcely any opportunity to oppose the proposed measure, and still it has very signally failed. This failure can not be laid at our doors, unless it should be said that our educative work in the past in regard to the meaning of Sunday laws in general may be responsible for it. But it might be well to take this occasion to affirm again that the Sunday-law movement will ultimately become successful in so far as securing a general law is concerned. For more than fifty years the people who are back of this paper have been affirming this fact from the prophecy. The conditions into which the world is ripening will bring on one of the greatest religious controversies that has ever arisen. It will be sharp and strong, but it will be very short, because the second coming of Christ will prevent it from being prolonged. The conditions of the time are freighted with social and political problems that are making the best of men tremble. One legislative expedient after another is being tried. But the last and culminating effort will be to unite all the religious world to correct the evils by sheer force of numbers. And where the multitude of professedly religious men, instead of the power of God, is depended upon to work moral reforms, the end is religious despotism. The very intensity and excitability of this time will make that struggle the most bitter of anything that has ever yet appeared. The time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel, is still before this world. These are times when men should be close and honest thinkers, and reverent students and teachers of God's Word, rather than determined agitators in any line. The days are ominously freighted with mighty and dangerous issues. God has taken a hand in the controversy. There is safety only on His side, and we can not tell when we are on His side except by a prayerful and unprejudiced study of His divine Book. T.