A SUNDAY BILL.—The Sacramento "Evening Bee," of January 9, has the following:
By Editor
"The Church people of the State have signified their intention of trying to get a bill thru the present Legislature that will close every saloon in the State on Sunday and cause recreative amusements to be barred on that day. Not only will fun be curtailed, but any kind of unnecessary work will not be allowed. The bill will provide against Sunday street labor, renting of livery rigs, boats, automobiles, or balloons, and if you have a chug-car or bicycle of your own, you can not get in a repair shop to have it fixed in case you break down." The "Bee" further says: "Paradoxical as it may seem, a religious denomination is to take up arms with the sporting element and fight the measure," referring to Seventh-day Adventists. Let us say that the Seventh-day Adventist attitude in this matter is that of protest against all religious legislation. All history shows that religious legislation has ever been a curse to the church and a curse to the State. It makes one class persecutors, another hypocrites, another the persecuted. If Sunday is of God, it will stand of itself if its devotees are loyal. If it has no inherent strength or worth let it die. And this also of the Seventh-day Sabbath or any other religious institution. It is not in the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine what religion is true or what false. Our government is a civil and not a religious institution. Our Constitution recognizes in every person the right to choose his own religion, and to enjoy it freely without molestation. THE PROPER OBJECT OF GOVERNMENT IS to protect all persons in the enjoyment of their civil as well as their religious rights, and NOT TO DETERMINE FOR ANY WHETHER THEY SHALL ESTEEM ONE DAY ABOVE ANOTHER, or esteem all days alike holy. What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as RIGHTS of which government can not deprive any portion of citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them.—United States Senate Report, 1829. HUMAN GOVERNMENT is a device not to protect the many against the few, but the few against the many; not to protect the strong against the weak, but the weak against the strong. Religious tyranny always puts it the other way. THE PRICE OF THIS ISSUE is, up to 20 copies, five cents each; from 25 to 75 copies, three cents each; 100 copies or more at the rate of two and one-half cents each. Order soon and give it a wide circulation. THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES makes no plea of liberty for itself or those who support it, or for any class whatsoever. Its plea is for the man, be he Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile, believer or infidel. "Among all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for the violation of what government denominated the law of God."—United States Senate Report, 1829.