Then and Now by ABDIEL

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 22, 1910

Then and Now

By ABDIEL

Sunday Legislation

If one wishes to see confusion worse confounded, let him read the discussion in the Senate of the United States over Senate Bill No. 404, called the Johnston Sunday Bill for the District of Columbia, as that discussion is recorded in the "Congressional Record" of January 26, 27.

The measure was religious in its conception, religious in its requirements, religious in its exemptions, religious in its phraseology. Senator Johnston, its sponsor, practically admitted as much.

There were mild protests against religious legislation, but the ground of the protests seemed to be as clear in the minds of the protestants as a London fog. The phraseology was changed in a few instances, and lo! the religious measure became a "police regulation."

Several times grave senators spoke of keeping Saturday for Sunday. The word "Sunday" to them is sacred evidently, and identical with the religious term "Sabbath." Yet they voted for the Sunday law.

Again and again it was stated that the District of Columbia ought to possess a Sunday law, as every state in the Union possessed one. Nor did it seem inconsistent to them to plead for a Sunday law in the District as a "police regulation," and use as an argument the fact that Sunday laws, intensely religious, elsewhere existed. They do not believe in religious legislation, O no; but they demand a Sunday law in the District of Columbia, because all the states have Sunday laws, some of which are relics of the most intense union of church and state. These gentlemen did not know that the "Golden State" was an honorable exception. Evidently while many of these able senators had visited California, the awful "godlessness" of this state — without a Sunday law — had not particularly impressed their minds. California must have been remembered as a commonwealth of average respectability. The Mormon state has a Sunday law.

These gentlemen did not see that this mild measure, the author of which was willing to accept any amendment to his bill only so that it passed a Sunday law, was but an opening wedge for full-fledged religious legislation, without exemptions for any religious class, whatever their conscience or rights.

Eighty Years Ago

How clearly, keenly, strongly, different, gleams out the Senate action on the same kind of measure eighty-one years and eight days before — Jan. 19, 1829. The Senate at that time reported through Mr. R. M. Johnson, senator from Kentucky. We wish we had space for that whole report, adopted by

the Senate; but we can only give a few excerpts:

"The proper object of government is to protect all persons in the enjoyment of their religious as well as civil rights, and not to determine for any whether they shall esteem one day above another, or esteem all days alike holy."

"The committee would hope that no portion of the citizens of our country would willingly introduce a system of religious coercion in our civil institutions; the example of other nations should admonish us to watch carefully against its earliest indication."

"It is not the province of the legislature to determine what religion is true, or what false. Our Government is a civil and not a religious institution."

"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. . . . Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object are, in the opinion of the committee, always dangerous. . . . If admitted, it may be justly apprehended that the future measures of the government will be strongly marked, if not eventually controlled, by the same influence. All religious despotism commences by combination and influence; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence."

"If the principle is once established that religion or religious observance shall be interwoven with our legislative acts, we must pursue it to its ultimatum."

"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."

Would God that our present Senate could have had the clear vision of that Senate of four fifths of a century ago. If I may be pardoned the parody,

"Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, When bigots dictate laws and men decay." ABDIEL.