Sunday Legislation and Temperance
regulator of others' consciences and acts. But this is popery pure and simple. But the question, that of legislation to prevent Sunday "desecration," is entering into everything. It creeps into city charters, municipal elections, general appropriation bills, county ordinances, temperance measures, party platforms, public schools, various exhibitions of industries, arts, and natural products, street-cars, ball games, etc., etc. He who seeks political preferment must run the gauntlet of a demand for a Sunday law. Sunday-closing is pressed forward as a "temperance" measure. There is no temperance about it. It closes the saloon one day, and makes it respectable the other six. It should not be interwoven with the liquor traffic any more than it should with laws against theft or murder. If the saloon ought to be closed one day, it ought to be closed seven days. If theft should be prohibited one day, it should seven days. No advocate of a one-day law against stealing would be considered as a determined enemy of theft. And what would be thought of a division officer who would say, "I will fight this rebellion one day in the week, and will count those as opponents and enemies to the Union who ask for six days' fighting"? or of a fireman who would say, "I propose to fight this fire for one minute, and lay off the other six; that is true fire-fighting, and you men who claim to be firemen should unite with me?" Yet this is precisely the position of the "temperance" men who would shut the saloon on one day of the week. The simple fact is that the effort is in behalf of Sunday, not of temperance. Again Mr. Rader says, after referring to the Sunday defeats in Oakland:— "In the Sunday question centers the problem of law enforcement and civic reform. The Sunday is the national sun, on the face of which every black spot is visible." This is what the new reformers are making it. The Sunday banner is the rallying center of the forces of National Reform; Christian Citizenship, Municipal Leagues, Law and Order Leagues, one-day-in-seven Prohibitionists, the political wing of the W. C. T. U., and many other organizations are wheeling into line. Earnest men are behind the movement, earnest, deceived men. They are putting Sunday in the place of the Sabbath of the Lord, and themselves in the place of the Lord of the Sabbath. They do not see that the inevitable outcome will be the utter ruin of Church and State, the persecution of Christ in the person of his saints, and their own slavery to a system which has cursed the world since the days of Babylonian and Egyptian sun-worship. Men who love liberty see dimly the evil in the principles, but think they will not prevail. Here lies the danger; one class is deceived in the principles themselves, another in their power and tenacity, while those who lift a faithful, warning voice are termed by the one anarchist and rebel, and by the other fanatic and alarmist. Yet we "cry aloud," and stay not. Sunday is the false light which lures to destruction those who follow it and turn from the Sun of Righteousness.