THE program of ex-President Roosevelt, announced at Chicago to the national convention of the new Progressive party, seems calculated to win the support of the large masses of the population of the States. To the great body of consumers it promises a downward revision of the tariff. To the workers it offers the prospect of a minimum wage, national insurance, and compensation for accidents and diseases due to industrial conditions. To the women it offers the suffrage. To the churches it promises one day's rest in seven, to be guaranteed by law. Although most of the individual States have Sunday laws, the federal government has no such statute; and, indeed, is prohibited from enacting one by the Constitution, which provides that Congress shall pass no law enforcing religion or prohibiting its proper exercise. By the framers of the American Constitution this clause was regarded as a most essential safeguard of religious liberty. If the prohibition against religious legislation be nullified, the safeguard will disappear. Let it be supposed that Colonel Roosevelt succeeds in his candidature, becomes the next president of the United States, and redeems his pledge to bring in a Sunday law, which is what he virtually promises. Will the cause of religion be thereby advanced? The Sunday law will have been begotten of political strife and hatred, of broken pledges, of all the corruption and bribery that has come to be associated with struggles for high office in the United States. Will such an institution revive religion, purify society, and exalt the standard of morality? It is not likely to. The churches will be degraded by their dependence upon such influences. Religion will become less than ever a spiritual force, and will sink to a department of political life, tainted with its manifold corruptions. Such was the fall of the church in the past when it leaned upon the arm of the state. The history of the Papacy is a solemn warning against an alliance between the church and the world. The dark ages of European history show the result of such a course. Yet it may be taken for certain that the churches which in the United States are clamoring for Sunday legislation will grasp at any help offered them, by any party, toward the realization of their aims. The Sunday institution seems to carry just such a curse with it. Its adherents have always depended upon human laws to compel its observance, and notwithstanding all the lessons of history and the enlightenment that has come to mankind regarding the priceless value of religious freedom, they are still clamoring for more of such legislation. The Sunday institution is evil from its very beginning, and naturally enough, its fruits have been evil: men do not gather figs from thistles. The rise of Sunday observance in the early church marked the success of a wrong principle. It was in direct conflict with the practise of Christ and all his apostles. Sunday observance only became possible as Christians turned away from the emphatic teaching of the New Testament. The warnings of the apostles, again and again repeated, bade the church beware of false teachers who would arise in their midst, speaking perverse things. The one safeguard against all heresy was to be found in the Word of God. To this Paul directed the mind of Timothy. The one cure for the innumerable ills that would assail the church was to be found in the faithful preaching of that Word. 2 Tim. 3:12-17; 4:1-5.—The Present Truth (London), Aug. 22, 1912.