Lord’s Day Alliance Aggressive in Canada by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 1, 1914

Lord’s Day Alliance Aggressive in Canada

By C. M. S.

THE thirteenth annual meeting of the Lord’s Day Alliance of Canada was held in Quebec on December 5. The secretary, Rev. Geo. W. Mingie, reported very material progress in the matter of Sunday enforcement. He reported as their able assistants the Roman Catholic Church and the labor unions. The report states that during the year the Alliance has been busy, “working quietly, but nevertheless surely, toward its aim—a proper observance of the Sabbath.”

The Alliance has been earnestly endeavoring, first, to bring about the conviction of the moving-picture men. These have been defending themselves by pleading the unconstitutionality of the Quebec Lord’s Day Act, and it seems that they have been successful up to the present time; and the inability of the Alliance to secure convictions in these cases has naturally tied their hands in the matter of other prosecutions.

The Alliance has been advised to bring about the trial of a test case in the higher court, that the question of unconstitutionality might be settled. It selected a skating rink for this purpose, and secured the conviction of the manager in the magistrate’s court. The defendant appealed to the Court of King’s Bench, and the decision of the case is now pending. If the Court of King’s Bench upholds the constitutionality of the Quebec Sunday observance act, the Alliance will begin a regular crusade of arrests for infractions of the Sunday law.

In showing how important is the work of the Lord’s Day Alliance in “safeguarding the Sabbath,” the secretary states that “the Lord’s Day Act of Canada is now the sole legal safeguard for the day of rest in this province.” This may not have been so intended, but is, nevertheless, a very exact statement of the only basis the Sunday sabbath has to rest upon—a human law. And that is the only basis that Sunday laws have ever rested upon in any part of the world. If the exponents and promoters of compulsory Sunday idleness could be made to see the great contrast between the basis upon which Sunday enforcement rests and the basis upon which the true Sabbath of Jehovah rests, it does seem as if they would cease to trample upon the Sabbath of Jehovah, and cease trying to make men criminals for performing honest work upon the day which God himself and Jesus Christ consecrated to labor.

The Alliance, if it succeeds with the test case now before the Court of King’s Bench, proposes to demonstrate that the Lord’s Day Act applies to all occupation on Sunday, that there shall be “no inroads upon the day of rest.” The inability of the Alliance promoters to see that the trend of their work is toward a union of church and state is demonstrated in the following quotation from the secretary’s report, and the quotation itself proves the converse of what it is aimed to teach:—

While we believe an association or the state has no right to impose by its authority any religious ceremonial or duty on the Lord’s Day, we believe a Christian state should encourage and foster religious exercises on the day set apart for it.

But even the Alliance ought to be able to see that in enforcing the observance of Sunday, they are enforcing the observance of a religious institution. They are compelling all to do, whether they wish to or not, what a great many believe it is their religious duty to do. Again, if the state encourages and fosters religious exercises “on the day set

apart” for such exercises, it must choose what religious exercises it will “encourage and foster,” and in doing so, it establishes the religion whose exercises it encourages and fosters, and discriminates against all others. And there is no union of church and state in that? They who claim there is not have no just ground of complaint if their claim is looked upon as an insincere one.