PLEDGED TO SUNDAY LAW by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Nov 21, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 45.

PLEDGED TO SUNDAY LAW.

By Editor

ALL the candidates for the Legislature from Fresno County, Cal., were pledged during the campaign to support a Sunday law at the next session of the Legislature. So says Dr. Thomas Boyd of the Presbyterian Church of Fresno City. This is one point, and in this connection we have another statement made during the same discourse:

'I was present at Mount Hermon, just above Santa Cruz, this summer at a large and representative conference of laymen and clergymen from all parts of the state, when this matter of a Sunday law or rest-day came up for consideration. After a very lengthy consideration of the subject, a large and influential committee was appointed to bring the question before the churches of the state.'

If this is not in the line of church and state union, where would one expect to find it? This is also an acknowledgment that the Sunday-sabbath institution is dependent on state law for its foundation. It reveals the advocates of the man-made 'sabbath' leaning on the arm of flesh that their institution may be sustained. This they would not feel compelled to do were they not conscious that they have no backing in the Word of God. A religious institution must have some basis, and if not sustained by divine authority, it must press the human pretext all the more. Politicians are not wise in allowing themselves to be thus coerced by the influences of religious intolerance. By such precedents they place themselves at the mercy of this growing political power, and will eventually find themselves in toils that they now deem impossible.

There is another point worthy of their attention. The tendency of those politicians who are involved in politics of a questionable character is to make a cloak of reform, even of religious reform. And the most convenient pretense is an advocacy of Sunday-lawism as an antidote for all kinds of evil. Advocating the Sunday law by men known to be morally and politically corrupt has been conspicuous even in the national halls of legislation. It is coming to that point that the conspicuous advocacy of some such religious measure by a politician of no religious character naturally gives occasion for the query, What species of corruption is he desirous of covering? The more corrupt a candidate, the more he will feel the necessity of doing something that he is assured by the political preachers will secure the support of their flocks.