PERTINENT PARAGRAPHS by John D. Bradley

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 13.

PERTINENT PARAGRAPHS.

By John D. Bradley

BY JOHN D. BRADLEY.

"Converting our Sunday into a Continental Sunday" may be very undesirable, but the prevention of it is no proper business of the Congress of the United States.

"The use of Sunday" is something that should no more be determined and controlled by legislation than should the use of Monday.

"The separation of one day in seven from the other six, and the keeping of it as a day of freedom from worldly pursuits," is a religious matter, and may concern religious people and religious organizations, but it is no proper concern of legislators and civil governments.

Congress has no more right to "provide that the universal sentiment that one day in seven shall be observed as a day of rest" shall be crystallized into law than it has to provide that the no less universal sentiment that people should profess religion and attend church shall be made a law. The observance of one day in seven is a religious custom, and the sentiment which insists upon the observance of that custom is a purely religious sentiment.

If the friends of Sunday legislation succeed in establishing the point that the provision of the national Constitution which excepts Sunday from the period of ten days allowed the President for signing bills affords a basis for national legislation in behalf of the religious Sunday, they will not have established the propriety of such legislation, but the utter impropriety of that provision of the Constitution. "Religion is not within the purview of the general government," truly wrote James Madison, and anything connected with the government, no matter what it is nor where it is found, which brings religion or any of its institutions and observances within the purview of the government, is itself altogether out of place, for it has no proper connection with the government. The principle of the Constitution is that Congress is absolutely prohibited from concerning itself with, and legislating upon, religious matters, and anything which may be found in the Constitution that is opposed to this principle is altogether out of place.

The iniquity of the sentiment that Congress should legislate in behalf of the conviction that Sunday is the sabbath, is displayed in the assumption that for Congress to do otherwise would be to "trample upon this religious conviction." This utterly unwarranted attitude identifies the Sunday-law cause with the cause of bigotry and intolerance in all ages. It has always been insisted by the disciples of intolerance that unless their religion was upheld and enforced by the state it was deprived of its just rights, and "trampled" upon. It is astonishing that anybody can be found holding such an attitude in the United States to-day; but we are given to understand that there are "millions" who do hold just this attitude, so far as the religious conviction with regard to Sunday observance is concerned. And a statesman of some prominence has declared that failure by Congress to legislate for the enforcement of this conviction when opportunity is offered, "would be an unnecessary and inexcusable outrage." We submit, and authority to establish it is not lacking, that rather is legislation by Congress in support of such a conviction "unnecessary and inexcusable."