California Sunday-Rest Bill.
the law is religious in its exemption. See lines 50 and 51. Inquisition must be made as to whether the worker on Sunday has kept another day as a Sabbath. 2. THE PROPOSED LAW IS CLASS LEGISLATION. It proposes to take one day, held by a part of the religious community, and place behind that the sanction, support, and strength of civil law. That very act at once places the supporters and promoters of such a measure in a favored class, loyal to law and order and government, while it correspondingly places a ban upon those who oppose it. It does this not because of any intrinsic virtue or merit which the one class possesses above the other, but that condition is created simply and solely BY THE LAW which makes the discrimination. A few months ago in dark Turkey one class was composed of loyal citizens, the other classes were tolerated criminals. To-day all are free and equal. No change has taken place in the character of either class. The difference in yesterday and to-day is a matter of the presence or absence of iniquitous law. To-day the Jew or Seventh-day Christian, or no-day man is as good a citizen as the Sunday-keeper. Pass a Sunday law, and you make the three first named criminals. Whatever the motives of the misguided men behind the law, it is unequal and iniquitous. 3. IT ERECTS A FALSE STANDARD. It declares that a business is legal, proper, laudable on six days, but criminal, wrong, on the other day of the week. Smith may keep open his one grocery store of the village on six days, but he is a criminal if he opens it Sunday. Why? Smith prefers to do the work. He delights in it. He enjoys the day better in honest work. He wrongs nobody. He accommodates some. He has conscience in his work. Who has the right to forbid him? If he were busy every moment, he could not begin to do the mischief that the man would do who preaches false doctrine every Sunday. The next step, if the Sunday religionists should become strong enough, would be to suppress all freedom of speech and doctrine which did not agree with them. 4. SUCH A LAW IS UNCHRISTIAN. It is unchristian in that it seeks to enforce morals—a thing which pertains to motive. Morality, the instructed Christian knows, can only be lived on the basis of a good conscience and a right heart. It is unchristian in that it is unequal. "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." No Christian would seek to compel his brother or fellow to obey a law the infraction of which harmed no one. It is unchristian in that it is contrary to the Golden Rule. If the Mohammedan were in power, would Mr. Tufts desire the follower of11the prophet to compel him to keep Friday? Would he like the orthodox Jew to compel him to keep Saturday? Would he like the no-day man to compel him to work every day? To all these he would enter an emphatic negative. Then according to Christ's Golden Rule he should not seek to enforce upon any one of them the observance, of Sunday; "for WHATSOEVER YE WOULD that men SHOULD DO unto YOU, DO YE EVER SO TO THEM." It is unchristian in that it is a denial of Christ. The Master promised "all power" to His servants, apostles, preachers. To seek the aid of civil law to enforce religious dogmas is to deny faith in Christ's promise, or to repudiate the institution as Christian. 5. THE "IDEAL LAW" IS NOT YET. The exemption granted and the mildness of the law is not, according to Mr. Tufts and others, the ideal thing. The ideal law does not fall short of the Puritan Sunday law. Then, too, power which grants an exemption may remove it. The exemption is presented as an act of kind tolerance. Dr. Philip Schaff and others have truly said that Americans demand equality, liberty, and not tolerance. 6. IT IS CONTRARY TO ALL RIGHT LEGISLATION. Civil law is designed to protect men in their rights, never to promote or support class institutions. Just as soon as the institution is honored above the man, just so soon injustice and inequity come in. A wise statesman will honor the freedom of men; and leave with the men the voluntary privilege of honoring the institution. 7. The law is iniquitous in that it sets a man to watching his neighbor, espying on his actions, becoming his informer, and using his efforts to convict him of crime, or be heavily fined and lose his official position. Read the blackly iniquitous section 300 B. We do not know how free men civilly, to say nothing of Christians, could frame such a law, or put such provisions in cold words. There are many, many more things which might be said. We admit the Sunday excesses. We sympathize with the men who wish to see crime and drunkenness and lewdness and oppression and injustice banished; but religious legislation can not do it. Let the men who are pleading for such legislation preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its simplicity and power. Let them preach God's law as He gave it, and press it home upon the conscience. Let them leave with God the privilege, as it is His prerogative, to care for His own by enshrining it in the hearts of His people. Seventh-day Adventists would be unworthy of manhood or womanhood, and so would every other soul, if they or he felt it necessary to seek to the "tolerance" of Mr. Tufts, or any one else, to know what they could do on Sunday or any other day. Every free citizen of America ought to have the God-given right assured him, every commonwealth ought to stand by him, in the exercise of the right to arise Sunday morning and do any proper, legitimate work which he would do on the next day if he were so minded. The Sabbath bears "God's image and superscription," to Him alone he renders the service done. It is not for man to assume to "permit" or "allow." It is worthy of note that nearly all the things Mr. Tufts in his great kindness and tolerance would "permit" Sabbath-keepers to do are the very occupations which they could not very well follow. But for that they are not pleading. For themselves they are not pleading. They are pleading for the equal rights of every man, God-given rights, let him be Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Mohammedan, Christian or infidel. God grant that California legislators may be free men, willing to protect all in equal freedom.