SEVERAL notices have come to us of an article in the Saturday Evening Post of February 12 by Ex-governor Joseph W. Folk, of Missouri, entitled "The Limitations of Reform." This article has been spoken of as a splendid religious liberty article; but those who have thus designated it, it seems to us, have not read closely. He does say: "The right to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience, was fought for for years, and finally established in this country. We can not compel men by law to worship in any particular place, or any particular way, or to worship at all. We may go to church on Sunday and think that others should do likewise, but we can not compel others to do so, nor can others prohibit us." And that, of course, is good. We hear that from some of the strongest National Reformers.
THE GUGGENHEIMS, FATHER AND SONS
We recently listened to a sermon by a minister who contended that he believed in religious liberty, and he gave utterance to just such sentiments as this; but the religious liberty in which he believed was religious liberty for those who agreed with him. Mr. Folk does not say that he does not believe in Sunday laws, but he expresses it in this form: "As to whether a thing should be prohibited on Sunday, is from the standpoint of government a question of public morals and good government, not of religion." "The law can not compel such observance on religious grounds."
The danger line in Mr. Folk's argument lies in the admission that a thing may be prohibited on Sunday as "a question of public morals and good government, not of religion"—an utterly impossible thing. If a thing should be prohibited on Sunday because it is against public morals, it should be prohibited on every day of the week for the same reason. The same just principle which would prohibit it on Sunday, would prohibit it on Monday also. Just as soon as a discrimination is made between the two days, it is done simply and solely from a religious view-point. The Senate of the United States endeavored to escape that in the Johnston Sunday bill a short time ago. The bill was a religious bill. Religious marks stood out all over it. Every clause nearly spoke of religion. But the gentlemen of the Senate felt that it would not be right to legislate a religious measure into law, and therefore they began amending the bill, and thought that they had amended all the religion out of it; but when the measure passed the Senate, all their efforts had failed, for it prohibited "secular" labor on Sunday, and secular is the opposite of religious. The very fact of the prohibition of secular work, indicated that the law was designed as a religious measure.
Further, when this religious measure has been formulated into law and placed upon the statute-books, as this argument of Mr. Folk indicates that it may be, he declares, "No man has the right to insist that a law written in the statutes ought not to be enforced." Therefore persecution. That raises, too, another principle. Andrew Jackson thought that the men who enforced laws had a conscience in the matter as well as the men who made the laws, or the judge who declared what the law was, and he plainly said so in the case of the proposed United States bank. His conscience as executive was as sacred as was the conscience of John Marshall as judge.
Of course, it is true, as Mr. Folk intimates, that the law ought to be considered before it is placed on the statute-books; but nine tenths of all the Sunday laws that were ever placed on statute-books have not been considered. They have been passed because it has been supposed that good men were behind them. But when on the statute-books, they have always been weapons in the hands of bigots for the oppression of conscientious men and women, much more often than they have ever touched enemies to the commonwealth.
Mr. Folk, too, seems deceived by the play of words in an old fallacy, and thus repeats it:
"The limitation for the making of laws should be that where the right of one man begins, the right of another man ends."
That may be true as regards real estate, but not as regards principles. Certain rights are God-given, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and these rights can never justly be sold or bartered, taken by law or violence or trampled upon. They are equal and parallel; they begin with one man when they do the other, and they end in the same way. Nor does it belong to civil government to limit or differentiate in these rights. The only object of civil government is to conserve these rights, or as the next sentence in Mr. Folk's article declares: "The laws should go no further than to protect each man in his rights." But then governments will never legislate in behalf of institutions, but of men.
If Mr. Folk and other good men like him could11see that the whole aim and object behind every Sunday law that is in existence or has ever been advocated is religious, he would not be willing to concede even seemingly that certain things legal and proper on other days could be prohibited on Sunday on the ground of public morals. Morality is not a question of a day in civil law. It inheres in the act, in the deed, apart from the day on which it is done. The question of the day with God is another matter; but that judgment rests with Him, not with men.
