Is It a Religious Measure?
By Editor
THE RESPONSE OF THE "CALIFORNIA CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE" TO THE REPLY OF THE "SIGNS OF THE TIMES" OF JANUARY 30. THE "California Christian Advocate" of February 14 has the following. We print it entire that our readers may know just what is said (we wish the "Advocate" were as willing to print the other side): Giving It to Us in the Short Ribs.
The "Signs of the Times," the organ of the Seventh-day Adventists, devotes some space to the editorial of the Advocate on the attitude of the Adventists toward the proposed Constitutional Amendment providing for a Sunday rest law. "The Signs of the Times" discerns that the measure is a "religious" measure disguised. The reason it is religious is because there is no other sort of a day of rest. "The rest day must be a religious day." "The Signs of the Times" declares we can not reply "to the averment that the Sunday law would interfere with 'religious liberty.'" The "averment" is too absurd. It carries its own denial. No normal man outside of the Advent fold could be induced to believe that a Sunday law which prevents employers from working their employees seven days in a week does in any way interfere with the personal rights of any one. The law protects the weak and dependent man against the greed and avarice of the employer. This Sunday rest law is in the interest of the laboring man. All this fine balancing in the air is well enough for a show, but the hard facts remain. The Seventh-day Adventists for the sake of their theory have united themselves with the saloon-keepers, the gamblers, the godless, the conscienceless, and made common cause with all the evil-doers in the State of California against the peace and good order of the State. Their contention is so utterly absurd, so morally blind, so intellectually dreary, that we believe their responsibility is limited. First of all, let us say we are sorry that what we said reached only to the ribs. We wish that it might touch the heart. Secondly, as to the "Advocate's" contention that is "not a religious" measure. This was stated repeatedly by those who spoke for the proposed amendment before the Assembly Committee. Yet another reason, strongly urged by the California Sunday-law advocates everywhere, is to the effect that California is disgraced because it has no Sunday law, that all the older States with their higher degree of civilization have that mark of superiority, while California stands almost alone in this respect; and that California ought to put itself in the ranks of the older States. Ordinary people could come to no other conclusion than this, that California asks just such Sunday laws as are on the statute books of other States. Now, almost invariably, the older States do not try to hide the issue; the law is not for the workingman, but for the religious day called "the Sabbath," "the Christian Sabbath," or the "Lord's day," "commonly called Sunday." The laws are to guard that day and to prevent its desecration. Arkansas exempts from its law "persons who are members of any religious society who observe the Sabbath on any other day of the week than the Christian sabbath, or Sunday." Some of these laws prohibit all amusement and recreation, and all travel by any means of conveyance, wagon, stage, or railway train. See also the laws of Connecticut and Delaware. Georgia's law prohibits "bathing in any stream or pond of water in view of any road to or from any house of religious worship," and all convicted under the Sunday law are liable to be sentenced to the chain-gang, and may be sold for the length of their term, and the county may do this "upon such terms and under such restrictions as may subserve the ends of justice." Other States copy New York's Sunday law, which reads (Penal code, section 259): "The first day of the week being by general consent set apart for rest and RELIGIOUS USES, the law prohibits on that day certain acts hereinafter specified, which are serious INTERRUPTIONS OF THE REPOSE AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY of the community." See also Minnesota's law. Practically all the States have the RELIGIOUS-DAY law, and make all exemptions, when made at all, for religious reasons. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated scores of times that those who have to bear the penalties of the law are not the saloon-keeper, the gambler, the brothel-keeper, nor the great corporations, or railway companies, but those who religiously observe some other day. This has been witnessed in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Editors of secular papers have said again and again, in so many words, that almost every other kind of business has been in operation, men have been at work on their farms, in their orchards, and yet they have been passed by, and religious people who have been working have been the ones to suffer arrest; and that not because they have been openly or ostentatiously working. Ostentation is discountenanced by seventh-day observers everywhere. Sometimes they have been working in their shops, sometimes on the inside of buildings, sometimes far from street or highway, on their farms, in schoolrooms; but there were always certain bigots that were ready to spy them out and bring upon them the penalty of the law. Here is a case in point both as to stability and tolerance of Sunday laws. The Arkansas Sunday law had up to 1885 exempted from its penalties those who observed the seventh day as the Sabbath. That year the exemption was repealed, showing the uncertain tenure of all such exemptions. The same power which grants exemptions can repeal them. Following that repeal, twenty-one prosecutions were instituted against seventh-day observers. Of this law, Samuel W. Williams, an ex-judge of the State Supreme Court, one of the foremost lawyers of the State, wrote, March 21, 1887: "A test case was brought from Washington County; our Supreme Court could not see its way clear to hold the law unconstitutional, but the justices as man and lawyers abhorred it." Judge W. M. Rose, of Little Rock, wrote under date of April 15, 1887: "The act of 1885 was found to work oppressively on persons believing that Saturday is the Christian as well as the Jewish Sabbath. . . . It was manifestly unjust to them as well as to Jews who are sincere in their faith. . . . Nothing can exceed my abhorrence for any kind of legislation that has for its object the restraint of any class of men in the exercise of their own religious opinions." Mr. E. Stinson, a farmer and teacher in Hot Spring County, not a seventh-day observer, wrote, March 27, 1887, regarding the indictments in his county: "In each and every case the parties so indicted have been conscientious observers of the seventh day, so far as I know them. To my knowledge, others have worked on Sunday who did not observe the seventh day, and no bills were found against them. I believe the prosecutions to be more for religious persecution than for the purpose of guarding the Sunday from desecration. The men who have been indicted are all good moral men and law-abiding citizens to the best of my knowledge." Under the date of April 9, 1887, Benj. C. Fitzhugh, Justice of the Peace at Malvern, Hot Spring County, writes: "There were five or six of them (that is, seventh-day people) indicted (and some of them the second time) by the Grand Jury of this county, for the violation of this law. In fact, these people were the only ones that were indicted for Sabbath-breaking, during the two years in which this law was in force." Thus it was in Tennessee. We could fill this paper full of the opinions of disinterested parties, observers of Sunday, belonging to the so-called evangelical churches, living in the vicinity of the prosecutions, who cried out against the religious intolerance that was manifest whenever any prosecution for violation of the Sunday law took place. Almost invariably the judges who convicted them expressed their opinion that they condemned because that was the law, and not because those who were condemned were in any true sense wrong-doers. Moreover greater effort is constantly being put forth, thruout the East to make their present laws more stringent. The "California Christian Advocate" may endeavor to deceive its readers. The advocates of a Sunday law may endeavor to deceive themselves, that the law is not in the interest of the religious day, but the history of all religious legislation from Constantine to the year 1907 demonstrates to the contrary.15 Thirdly, it is said that the Sunday law is in the interests of the laboring man, and a great plea is made for the poor laboring man, but when the proponents of the California measure were making their plea for Sunday, there stood within the committee room at least two representatives of the labor councils and Federation of San Francisco, who were diametrically opposed to the bill, and would have said so had opportunity been given, but who said after the hearing was over that they would oppose the law to the last limit. They said, also, that when they wished any one to speak for them, they could furnish their own speakers instead of trusting to the preachers. Certainly the laboring men of California and other States have able representatives, men who are capable of speaking at any time and on all occasions where labor interests are involved. It certainly was a strange thing that the laboring men, union or non-union, had no representative at the hearing for the enactment of the measure. It would seem that so many proponents might have included one labor representative. We have yet to be convinced that the "poor workingman" is such a slave, is so fearfully oppressed, as the "Advocate" and its allies would have us believe. He seems, unitedly, at least, to get about all he wants in California. Usually he gets from one and a half to two times the wage Sundays he does on other days. Furthermore, there is a law on the statute books of California now which grants him one day in seven. See Penal Code 722. "The fine balancings in the air," is on the part of the "Christian Advocate" and its allies. It is an easy matter for the "Advocate" to state that "the averment that the Sunday law is religious is too absurd." Ridicule is one of the stock arguments that we always hear on the wrong side of a religious cause. Ridicule is the last ditch always of the man who suffers defeat; we should have said the last ditch but one. Persecution is the last. Fourthly, we are charged with uniting ourselves with saloon-keepers and gamblers. On the true principles of religious liberty we have, as a body of Christians, stood almost alone, the many Baptists—regular and Seventh-day—have stood with us. But we are willing to stand alone for religious liberty, not for ourselves but for all men, every man, including the editor of the "California Christian Advocate." We stand there forever unless we reject Christianity. We believe in the exercise of the rights God-given. If saloon-keepers and gamblers look upon a right thing as right, that does not affect the right thing. Shall we condemn a good thing because those who engage in evil practices or occupations, which are tending to degrade their fellow men, look upon some things rightly? Is that evidence that the thing is wrong? A little less than two thousand years ago, the charge was brought against the Master that He had gone to be a guest with a man who was a sinner. One class of people at that time had divided the community into two, themselves the holy and orthodox ones, all others sinners. They themselves could not do anything wrong; the sinners could not do anything right; and not having the argument and the truth with them to meet the Christ of God and His wonderful teaching, they sought to prejudice the people by saying that He had allied Himself with the publicans and sinners. He said at that time to those critics: "The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." As to whether that has application to-day or not, it is not for us to say; we are not putting ourselves in the Lord's seat. It is certainly true, however, that it is well worth consideration. The sad, sad thing to us is that those who profess the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom the Father has given all power, and who has vouchsafed all power to His church, have so little grasp of that power that they must turn from the living springs of God and seek help from the broken cisterns of the world that can hold no water.