p. 8 | SUNDAY-CLOSING LAWS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 15, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 27.

SUNDAY-CLOSING LAWS.

By Editor

REV. DR. READ, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church, in a prelude to his sermon last evening, expressed his opinion in regard to the proposed Sunday-closing laws. He said: "Are they according to the Bible? One of the great movements of this day is that which passes under the name of 'Good Citizenship.' The great Endeavor Convention to be held this week at San Francisco will devote one whole day to a discussion of ways and means for promoting 'good citizenship.' Every true Christian and patriot should do all in his power to promote so worthy an object as this. But under the sacred name and the tender associations of this movement for good citizenship, it is proposed to commit these enthusiastic young Christians to the side issue of 'Sunday-closing laws.' Against this I desire to lift my voice in vigorous protest and solemn warning.

"First, this movement is contrary to the plain teachings of the Bible. In Luke 20:25 our Lord said, 'Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar's, and unto God the things which be God's.' This divine law is our warrant for a complete separation of Church and State. Jesus himself would not allow the sword to be used in his defense.

"Religious duties should be enforced only by religious motives and moral means. The observance of the Lord's day is a religious duty, and hence should not be enforced by civil penalties. All that the State should be asked to do for Christians in anything pertaining to religion is to afford them protection in the exercise of their natural and inalienable rights.

"And it is self-evident that in this respect all persons have equal rights. The Jew has as good a right to worship on the seventh-day Sabbath as the Christian has to worship on the first day, the Christian sabbath, and any civil statute which imposes any disability upon the Jew or upon any Sabbatarian is obviously wrong.

"It is claimed by the advocates of this movement of Sunday laws that it is wholly as a rest day, and not as a religious day, that they ask the State to require the observance of the Lord's day. But I ask these men if they would consent to have the State pass a law requiring all business to be suspended on Wednesday instead of Sunday? Having conscientiously observed the first day, the Lord's day, would they be willing to lay aside their business for another day and so forego all the profits of their business for one-sixth part of their secular time? But this is precisely what they propose to compel every conscientious Jew and Seventh-day Adventist and Seventh-day Baptist to do. Thus this proposed law interferes not only with religious obligation, but also with one's duty to support his family by honest toil. When the citizen shall rest, how he shall rest, or where, is a question with which the State has nothing to do, any more than it has with the ways and times of his activity. If the State may prescribe when the citizen shall rest and how long, on the ground that such rest promotes health and morality, then it should go farther and prescribe what church he shall attend and what forms of religious worship he shall observe.

"Again, this proposed Sunday-closing law is in direct conflict with the first amendment to the Constitution

of the United States, which guarantees religious liberty to all citizens.

"And yet again this proposed law is in direct opposition to all our Baptist principles and our splendid history in the past. From the beginning we have been the champions of freedom, and we shall be to the end. During the last two years in our own beloved land, under the Stars and Stripes of our beautiful flag, there have been more than one hundred cases of relentless persecution in Tennessee and Maryland. Godly men have been fined, put in prison, and even in the chain-gang with the worst of criminals—all, and only, because they did not observe the first day of the week as their day of rest and worship.

"And, last, I believe that all such efforts to promote religion and morality are not merely failures, but are worse, they are criminal blunders, inasmuch as they do most certainly exasperate and disgust many citizens who are not Christians, and turn them away from the churches, and from the Bible, and make it very much more difficult to bring them under the influence of our holy religion. Moreover, such a resort to force in efforts to secure the proper observance of the Lord's day is a virtual confession of the inadequacy of moral motives and moral suasion. And let it be known that any observance of the Lord's day which is not the free choice of the soul itself is not pleasing to God and will not receive his blessing.

"As Christians let us be faithful in testimony for the truth and for duty, and live right lives, and then leave every man with his God and his own conscience; let us ask protection and only protection from the State, rendering to Cæsar the things which be Cæsar's and to God the things which be God's."—Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1897.

Closing Saloons, etc.—In discussing the question, "What shall the Christian Endeavor Convention expect of us?" the Rev. H. H. Russell, of Washington, in a union meeting in San Francisco, June 29, said: "In the line of hospitality let me suggest that in cleaning up the streets and making ready the city an effort be made to close the grocery stores, business places, and saloons on convention Sunday, the 11th of July. These eastern people are not accustomed to seeing such places open on the sabbath. Don't you think, in deference to them, then, these places should be closed?" Evidently Mr. Russell is not acquainted with eastern cities. We have seen as much Sunday drunkenness, Sunday labor, and Sunday selling in eastern cities as in California. Now and then there is a little season of zeal in enforcing Sunday laws in the east, but the laws are generally honored in the breach. We shall hear more and more of these lower motives which Mr. Russell presents laid before Californians. Do it out of deference to the Endeavorers, out of deference to visitors, out of deference to churches! It is a purely politic plea, having no principle in it, unworthy of religion. If Sunday had back of it the Word of God, we should hear no such plea. The saloon is no worse on Sunday than on Monday, and drunkenness is no worse one day than another. As to groceries, if it is right to vend them on Monday, it is to vend them on Sunday. Let it be understood that God has made sacred only one day—the seventh—but seventh-day Sabbath sacredness is in no way dependent on civil law or deference to human opinion. It can not be enforced by the one or observed out of deference to the other. It is wholly a matter between God and the human agent.