Does California Need a Sunday Law?
THE Los Angeles Times, October 24, reports a sermon by Dr. Chas. Edward Locke preached at the First Methodist Episcopal Church October 23 from the text "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Ex. 20:8. Dr. Locke is Mr. Crafts's lieutenant in California. In connection with the question, "Does California need a Sunday law?" is discussed the one, "Should theaters be permitted to be opened on Sunday?" He gives us three reasons why theaters should be closed on Sunday. 1. Because the actors and other workers around the theaters "prefer not to work on Sunday." "Decent people, out of sheer sympathy for a great number of men and women who are being cruelly sacrificed to greed and frivolity, should boycott the Sunday theater." 2. "The theater should be closed because of the degenerating influence upon the theater-goer." "In ninety times out of a hundred, the themes of the Sunday stage are not only profitless, but perniciously defiling, and debilitating." 3. "The Sunday theater does not belong to the Sunday, and has no more right to be open than the department store, or the butcher shop. It is a secular pursuit." 4. Mr. Locke says: "Sunday frivolity not only breaks down the ideals of the nation, but it ruthlessly destroys the character of the individual citizen. It breaks down Sunday as a worship day. Nations decline when there is no worship or reverence. . . . Sabbath worship establishes a standard of morals." We are glad that in his presentation of the Sunday case, Dr. Locke takes his stand upon the eternal, immutable law of God, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." This we will refer to a little later, but we wish the readers to keep it in mind. We comment upon the quotations above from the report of his discourse; they give the points and substance of his sermon. 1. If the actors in the theater and the workers around the theater desire to rest on Sunday they have the privilege of doing so. Involuntary servitude is abolished in America. No employer, be he theater manager or trust magnate, has any power to compel a single soul to work on Sunday if that soul refuses so to do. And if the actors are so anxious about this, as Dr. Locke seems to indicate that they are, they have it all their own way; they can refuse to work that day. He shows that this can be done, in his reference to work on the Los Angeles aqueduct on which the contractors proposed to have Sunday work. Dr. Locke says, "The steam-shovel men have peremptorily refused to work except in emergencies;" and they will not be discharged for it either, and theater people could do the same thing. There are thousands upon thousands of men in all kinds of employment throughout the United States who could work if they would, but will not work, tho they are asked. The appeal to decent people to boycott the theater on Sunday is all right; let them do so. No one compels any one to go to the theater. It is not necessary that it be closed by law. If people stay away it will be closed; but if there are those who desire to go, they have the same right to go, so far as man is concerned, as others have the right to listen to Dr. Locke; and many doubtless would prefer to attend the theater than to listen to Dr. Locke's sermons, altho they may be much more edifying than what the stage presents. 2. It is no argument against a theater on SUNDAY that it is degenerating, profitless, pernicious, defiling, and debilitating. That argument holds against it every day in the week. An immoral play is no more immoral because it is presented on Sunday than it is if presented on Monday, Tuesday, or any other day of the week. It is just as easy to defile a mind with lewd suggestions on Wednesday as it is on Sunday; and therefore if the theater ought to be closed on Sunday because of its pernicious influence it ought to be closed on every day of the week. 3. The statement of Dr. Locke that the theater does not belong to the Sunday and has no more right to be opened than the department store and butcher shop, is purely gratuitous and arbitrary. The whole thing rests on the presumption that Sunday is sacred; but Dr. Locke nor any of his coworkers can give us a scintilla of evidence from the Book to which he appeals or the Book where the law is found, that Sunday is sacred. The law declares in the language of Dr. Locke's text, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Man can only KEEP holy that which God has MADE holy. By no act that sinful, mortal man can do can he make anything HOLY. God only can MAKE HOLY, and God asks that man shall KEEP holy what He MAKES holy. Again, MAN can not KEEP holy that which God makes holy, unless the man himself becomes a HOLY MAN; that is, holy in the Christian sense, set apart to God and to His service. He can only make believe unless Christ lives in his heart; and therefore every attempt to make worldly man keep the Sabbath in the light of the eternal law, is simply to coerce him into acting a hypocrite. Again, the text is, "Remember THE Sabbath day." It carries us to the very reasons why it was made and how it was made. The law itself tells us this, and refers to the very origin of the Sabbath itself found in Gen. 2: 2, 3. The origin of the Sabbath is founded in the Creator's REST upon that day, by the Creator's BLESSING upon that day, by the Creator's SANCTIFYING, or setting apart, that DAY, that DAY upon which He rested, the last day of the great septenary cycle which has made the week for all mankind. That day, according to the Book, comes just before the first day of the week (Matt. 28: 1; Mark 16: 1, 2), as confirmed by all history, and the universal testimony of ancient and modern languages, so far as these languages speak of the week or the day commonly called Saturday. This day, known to the Jews, to Seventh-day Baptists, and Seventh-day Adventists, is the Sabbath, which begins with the setting of the sun Friday and closes by the setting of the sun twenty-four hours later. This is the day which God commands to be kept holy; that is the day embosomed within God's great sacred moral code, the Decalogue. The attempted change of that Sabbath by foisting Sunday in its place is high-handed treason against God. We do not mean by this that millions of those who have kept Sunday are traitors to God's government; they have not known this; they have not studied it; they have accepted the spurious bill, the almost universal counterfeit, as the genuine; but the genuine is genuine forever, and the counterfeit is counterfeit forever. God's law still demands obedience to that Sabbath day; and for man to profess to be obeying that Sabbath day on the one day of the week which could not be by any possible logic a Sabbath day, is to hold out before the people a broken standard of morals, an utterly inconsistent demand which it does not take the keenest logic to perceive. In the light of blazing Sinai, men have as much right to open the theater on Sunday as on Monday or Tuesday; as much right to open department stores and butcher shops as they have on any other day of the week.11 Once more: We have been told that the workers for a Sunday law are not after a religious day, they are not demanding the religious Sunday; but the argument of Dr. Locke is that "Sunday as a worship day" must not be broken down. We are told that "nations decline when there is no worship or reverence," and "the Sabbath day establishes a standard of morals;" and that is true. But how is Dr. Locke or the Sunday-law people to enforce worship? True worship is obedience given from the heart. How clearly this is taught in the words of Jesus our Lord to the arch-tempter. Satan said, "All these things will I give thee, if Thou wilt fall down and WORSHIP me." Jesus replied, and in that reply gives us the definition of the truest, strongest, holiest worship: "Thou shalt WORSHIP the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou SERVE." Matt. 4:10. But to worship God is not to substitute our way for His way; it is not to set aside what He has said implicitly and explicitly in His Word and put the spurious man-made thing in its place. The experience of all the past teaches us that man can through fear, coercion, punishment, be made to conform outwardly to religious observances; he may be made to bow the head as the procession of the "host" passes by; he may be made to attend church on Sunday; he may be made to cease his work, close up his place of business, and seem to keep Sunday; but the very coercion and compulsion to the soul who would be free arouses the bitterest opposition in his heart, which sometimes breaks bounds, and the result is seen in the French Revolution. We do not believe in the theater; we have no use for it on any day. We honor the man who follows his conscience in observing the Sunday. We will do all we can to enlighten his conscience and teach him the better way, but would not compel him by so much as the weight of a feather to seem even to observe the Sabbath of God's commandment against his choice; and those who observe that Sabbath to the extent of 150,000 in various countries of this world contrary to the customs of neighbors, and friends, and communities in which they live, need no law nor do they ask any law from human government to help them to obey God. Sunday is kept in California as well as it is anywhere. California needs no Sunday law. Let her not take one single backward step toward the Dark Ages, which began by as mild a Sunday law as Dr. Locke and others would foist upon the people now. Let those who would plead for the sacredness of Sunday, use moral suasion in appealing to conscience. If they have the true moral standard they can do it; if they have not the true moral standard, let them take that which was spoken by Jehovah from Sinai, which was confirmed by the life and death of Jesus Christ. They will favor a standard then which needs no apology; they will have a worship then that needs no outside help to enforce. They can say with the psalmist of old, "O how love I Thy law; it is my meditation all the day."