SUNDAY LAW IN SAVANNAH by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Oct 18, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 42.

SUNDAY LAW IN SAVANNAH

By Editor

Sir Walter Pierce, agent general for Natal in London, recently said: "The attitude of the Orange Free State means its inevitable acquisition by Great Britain. Peace in South Africa can only be accomplished by war. In order to make pacification effective Great Britain must assume absolute control over the whole of South Africa." Thus some of the public men in England are ready to speak out what they have in mind. Great Britain's policy is colonial, and a colonial policy means conquest. And so long as there is just one great power in the world like England that has a colonial policy, it will be impossible to have absolute peace; for such a nation will always see something that she thinks will help her to extend her empire; and thus wars will be constant. But the United States is now a colonial power, and she too will find, as at the present time, that it may be necessary for her to keep up some fighting in order to hold her conquests. And then France, Germany, and even Russia seem to have some notion of extending their dominions in various parts of the world. While nations thirst for empire, there will be wars. It is the philosophy of all history, and every one who takes the time to think about it knows that it is so. Then where is the chance for a universal peace? Such a thing is a moral impossibility in the present condition of the world.

SUNDAY LAW IN SAVANNAH.

Savannah, Ga., a town notorious, a correspondent tells us, for its wide-open dens of infamy, has a spasm of moral virtue and demands that these disreputable places shall be closed—on Sunday. The Savannah Press of September 25 says:—

"The Bryan Street clothing and shoe dealers, and even the Greek and Italian fruit venders, observed the sacred character of the day. . . . God-fearing and respecting people have rights, and if reverence for the day does not inspire some people to observe the Sabbath, then the law should see, as it did yesterday, and compel a consistent observance of the day."

All of which shows the utter lack of discrimination between things that differ, always manifest in connection with Sunday laws. All who observe the "sacred character" of the Sabbath will keep the very day God has enjoined,—the seventh; they will keep it in the way He has enjoined,—holy; and they will therefore do it, not because of civil law, but because God has commanded it. No law can compel a consistent observance of a single command of God unless that law is written in the heart; and then it will compel only the one in whose heart it is written. "God is Spirit." His "law is spiritual." Its only "consistent observance" is spiritual, and this no civil law can enforce. Why can not ministers and religious people see the difference between divine and human, between spiritual and temporal, between moral and civil?

THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE.

It has been thought by many Protestants, and intimated by some Catholics, that the "temporal power of the pope" is no longer desired. Of course any one knowing the teaching of that church knew to the contrary. Others need assurance from time to time from Rome herself. This is what a Jesuit father has to say upon the question, in an August issue of the London Daily Telegraph, as quoted in the Catholic Mirror of September 16. After discussing the strength and vitality of the Papacy, the success achieved in England, France, and Germany, the writer says:—

"But, anxious as Leo XIII. has ever shown himself to cultivate peace and amity with foreign sovereigns, there is one tremendous exception. With the kingdom of Italy, as such, he will have no friendship. There his attitude is sternly uncompromising. There he utters an unfaltering non possumus. The pope demands, and in conscience must demand, such a position as shall subject him to no power which can trammel his action, and shall leave him in possession of true and real freedom for the due governance of the church. In the first year of his pontificate the pope set down his foot with unmistakable decision, and never for a moment has he withdrawn it. In the first place, that we may assert to the best of our power the rights and liberty of this holy see, we shall never cease to contend for the obedience due to our authority, for the removal of the obstacles which hinder the full liberty of our ministry, and for our restoration to that condition in which the counsels of the Divine Wisdom first placed the Roman bishops. We are not moved to demand this restoration by ambition or the desire of dominion, but by our office and by the religious oaths which bind us, and because this principality is necessary to preserve the full liberty of the spiritual power, and because it is clear that the cause of the public good and the safety of society are involved. Hence we can not omit—because of our office, by which we are bound to defend the rights of holy church—to renew and confirm by these our letters all the declarations and protests which Pius IX. published and reiterated against occupation of his civil principality and against the violation of the rights of the Roman Church."

And thus he closes:—

"For Italy to persevere in her hostility to the holy see means certain ruin. With a disunited people on one side and bankruptcy on the other, she can hardly last long. But the remedy is in her own hands, and both justice and expediency are clamoring for its application,—the restoration of the pope to his temporal power."