THE enactment of a Sunday law by any civil government involves the decision of a religious controversy, the government thereby assuming dictatorship in religious matters. One class of religionists hold that the seventh day of the week, from sunset Friday evening till sunset Saturday evening, is the Sabbath of the Lord as enjoined by the law of God and observed by Jesus Christ. Another class hold that Sunday, the first day of the week, from Saturday night at twelve o'clock to Sunday night at twelve o'clock, is a holy day divinely enjoined. Now for a government to establish the Sabbath by10law in any sense for one class is in that respect to define God's law. Logic will demand that sooner or later it must define God's will in every respect where it is possible for government to act, and where sufficient difference arises to demand such definition and interpretation. This means that the government will be torn, divided, distracted by religious factions, or dominated by a tyrannous hierarchy. Of course we are told that a Sunday law is not a religious measure, but it is. As one Sunday bill expresses it, it is to "prevent open acts of Sabbath desecration." Nearly all the Sunday laws in the United States expressly name "the Lord's day"—a religious term. All exemptions that are granted are on religious grounds. The Lord's Day Alliance of Canada, allied with the Lord's Day Alliance which is by its secretary, Mr. G. L. Tufts, pushing the Sunday law in California, stands for a law enacted in Canada in 1906, which specifically uses the religious term "the Lord's day," and forbids persons to "be present at any performance or public meeting ELSEWHERE THAN IN A CHURCH, at which any fee is charged directly or indirectly."
Be not deceived. The law desired is religious. It is not we who declare it. In its genesis and promotion, its friends so declare it.
2. A Sunday law destroys the boasted EQUALITY of Americans. It will elevate the class which favors Sunday laws as friends of the Government, and place those who oppose it from principle in the attitude of enemies, inimical to the nation's best interests; and yet opposers of Sunday laws may be as good citizens, as pure patriots, as good neighbors, as conscientious Christians in every respect, as those who favor it. All the difference in standing before the law is created by the legislation and religious institution, with which government has no right to meddle.
Unjust
3. A Sunday law, when fully operative, works injustice. The first-day keeper has the right to observe Sunday, so far as man is concerned. The seventh-day keeper has equal right. Neither have numbers any weight, for religion is not a matter of numbers. The seventh-day man may keep his day, but he may not coerce his first-day neighbor. Has the Sunday keeper any right to coerce the seventh-day man? Yet he does if he secures a Sunday law. He need not say that the Saturday keeper may observe the seventh day if he wish; that the law will not prevent him. This is not the point. The Saturday keeper has the same rights before God, according to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights of California, to keep his day, as the Sunday keeper has to keep his day. Both stand equal in this respect. But the Sunday law now steps in and demands that the seventh-day keeper shall, after he has conscientiously observed one day, observe another, contrary not only to his conscience, but against his temporal interests. THE SUNDAY LAW THEREFORE DEMANDS ONE SIXTH OF THE SEVENTH-DAY OBSERVER'S TIME, OR SIXTEEN AND TWO THIRDS PER CENT OF HIS INCOME, WHICH IT DOES NOT DEMAND OF THE FIRST-DAY OBSERVER. And it demands this not because of any relation which he sustains to the State or his fellows, but solely because of his religion, or rather BECAUSE OF THE RELIGIOUS OPINION of the Sunday observer.
Exemptions
4. Exemption may be granted, as now in some cases, to those who keep the seventh day; but it will never be asked, for those who are opposed to religious legislation do not admit the right to legislate in any way upon religious matters. To ask and accept an exemption would be to acquiesce in the legislation, and therefore to endorse it; but this they can not do. The same principle which has led them to identify themselves with an unpopular truth, contrary to natural inclinations and business interests, will lead them to protest against the law, to declare what they believe to be the Word of God; and this consistent, persistent, and aggressive agitation, which with no religious legislation would result in no harm, will force the Government, when embarked on the perilous course, to take measures to silence them, even to confiscation of property and death itself.
Statutory enactment in behalf of religious institutions or doctrines, unless the law becomes a dead letter, inevitably results in making hypocrites of the vacillating and insincere and in the persecution of the brave and conscientious opposer. The Sunday law, of whatever form, is therefore certainly un-American, unjust, unchristian.