A Strange Spectacle by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 21, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 46.

A Strange Spectacle

By Editor

AMERICA has been justly lauded as the "land of the free and the home of the brave." It gave to the world a new order of things when it adopted the Declaration of Independence and presented its Constitution to men. It rightly placed upon the reverse side of its great seal "Novo Ordo Seclorum." It emphasized this "new order of things" in its first amendment to the Constitution, practically a part of the Constitution itself: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Federal Government stood for liberty, civil and religious. The sad part was that the union of religion with the State was not swept away from the various colonies or the individual States. Logically, this ought to have been done to bring them in harmony with the Federal Constitution; but in some of them it was not, and now, in these later days, men are harking back to the old intolerant colonial laws of the States, especially in regard to Sunday keeping.

Among the States which have "sabbath laws" is that of South Carolina. In the later days of harvest, heavy rains fell; and whenever sunny weather came, the farmers improved it. This seemed to them necessary respecting corn fodder, cotton etc.; and one Sunday being a clear, dry day, the early morning found many of the farmers in a certain neighborhood out in their fields trying to save their crops. Among these were two Seventh-day Adventists, Mr. and Mrs. Brown. Several of the workers in the fields were closer to the public way and nearer to the homes of others than were Mr. and Mrs. Brown. They were quietly picking cotton in their field, while other people in that section were hauling fodder, and among them the town constable; and yet religious bigots, taking advantage of the law, caused the arrest of these two persons, because the law declared that persons are not to perform labor of their ordinary calling on "the Lord's day, commonly called the Sabbath."

When the case came to trial, Mr. W. H. Branson, a minister of the same church, came to the aid of the "criminals." He wished to present before the jury and the court the reasons that the brother and his wife had for doing as they did, to show that they had not violated "the Lord's day, commonly called the Sabbath," according to that Book from which all Sabbath observance comes; but the court ruled that the Bible must not be used as evidence, that it was incompetent evidence, and must not be referred to in the trial. It was stated that the question as to which day is the Sabbath is to be decided by the State of South Carolina, and not by the Bible, and that to introduce God's law, God must be present in person, else it would be only hearsay or supposition.

Think of it! Think of a court prosecuting men for doing ordinary work on the "Lord's day, commonly called the Sabbath," and then shutting out of that court the evidence of the only Book which

calls for the observance of such a day! Of course the only thing that was left for Pastor Branson was to state the true principles of religious liberty, and he and a friend of his did so. It was also shown that the work was a work of necessity, as the cotton in the field was wasting.

The jury returned a verdict of "guilty."

There is a Court before which all will appear—the South Carolina judge and jury among the others. At that Court the law which will acquit or condemn men is the Decalogue, the law of Ten Commandments. No human pleading, no human perversion, no human law, can set aside the plain letter and intent of that law. It will stand as it was written by the finger of God. But entirely apart from this, man is responsible to God, and to God alone, as to the day he observes or fails to observe as the Sabbath.

We wish the case were appealed. We can not conceive that a South Carolina higher court could shut out from the pleading or the evidence that Book which furnishes the only basis for Sabbath observance.

Our sympathies are with those who suffer; and yet their case is a thousand times better than those who prosecuted them, because he who has the truth can afford to suffer for the truth and for the sake of the Master of the truth. Those who, however, put themselves in God's place, and prosecute men for conscience' sake, are in pitiable case indeed. Let us pray for them.