p. 7 | ANOTHER STEP FORWARD by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Aug 2, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 31.

ANOTHER STEP FORWARD.

By Editor

IN Nebraska, hereafter, Memorial Day (May 30), is to be regarded as on a par with Sunday. Horse-racing, baseball games, and other sports not permitted within the state, are not to be tolerated on Memorial Day. Fines and imprisonment are the penalties attached to the law. The Michigan Christian Advocate, in commending the law, says, "This country has well-nigh gone mad on the amusement idea, and our holy days have become mere holidays, and sport and fun their only use."

It is true that "this country has well-nigh gone mad on the amusement idea." And this is just what the prophecy says of many who profess godliness in the "last days"—they shall be "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God." But the "amusement idea" of people in general is not nearly so dangerous to the integrity of our institutions as is the prevalent idea that the state can make "holy days." This is putting the state in the place of God. This was the prominent feature of ancient Rome in its pagan days; all gods were subservient to the state, which was the object to be defied above every other power.

But when the state became nominally Christian, then, in time, the church became the dominant power, and everything else, state and all, were expected to cater to the ecclesiastical will. So when we concede that the state has power to make any day holy, we have only to add the National Reform idea that the state ought to be governed on a religious basis, and then we will have the principle of Rome in its so-called Christian phase—the church controlling the government. Then we should expect "holy days" in superabundance, as it was in "Christian" Rome, enforced by legal penalties.

This is not a mere stretch of imagination; the tendency is strongly in the direction of church control in the United States. And it is to be Roman Church control at that, unwittingly aided by the various professed Protestant elements composing the so-called National Reform effort to religiosize the government. As a straw showing the direction of the wind, we mention the reference of the Christian Statesman to the Nebraska Memorial-Day Law. It says: "With this we heartily agree, and add that the same protection ought to be thrown around our national Thanksgiving."

It is true that very few people observe Thanksgiving Day because they are thankful. And for this reason most of the modes of celebrating it are out of harmony with the thanksgiving idea. It is for the most part a day of gluttony and debauchery and "sport" of the ruder sort. In this fact is illustrated the folly of making thanksgiving a mere legal formality. Thanksgiving, to be genuine, to be of any value whatever, to gain any recognition at all in heaven, must be a voluntary act, and no civil law ever can accomplish such an end. A pretended or enforced thanksgiving is sheer hypocrisy, an abomination in the sight of God. For the state to assume the function of making such a day holy could not add to the spirit of thankfulness. We might as well call the Fourth of July a holy day, for in that we celebrate an act for which every one ought to be thankful. Indeed it is because of this fact that it is celebrated at all.

The people who do those things on Memorial Day that are not in keeping with its object will not be any more in sympathy with the sentiment of the occasion by the state's calling it a holy day. The genuine feeling of patriotism, or of respect for the dead soldiers, would be far more conspicuous, and have a far greater influence, if the whole affair were a voluntary, rather than a legal, celebration. Perfunctory services are always dry, dull, and lacking in inspiration. Nebraska's Memorial-Day Law is but one step forward in the march toward church-and-state union, the spirit of which is fast bringing about the formality.