A Deception by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 26, 1882

A Deception.

By Editor

ONE of our brethren was recently accosted with the question: "Why don't you unite with the temperance people in enforcing the law against the saloons?" There is no such law now being enforced by any people, as a law against liquor selling. The law professes to be in the interest of religion, and for the enforcement of the observance of the "Christian Sabbath." It no more touches the liquor dealer than it does the Christian laborer who keeps the Sabbath of the Lord according to the commandment, and quietly pursues his honorable calling on "the venerable day of the sun." To show the deceptive nature of the query referred to above, we state that of thirty-seven warrants sworn out in San Francisco, under the law, only six were against liquor dealers. These were all procured, according to the report of the Chronicle, by an agent of the Good Templars. Thirty-five were sworn out in Oakland, by a member of the League of Freedom, and more than half were against liquor dealers.

We regret to learn that our position is being most shamefully misrepresented by some whose piety might be improved by a spicing of Christian charity. But where religious bigotry leads, we can only expect that intolerance and falsehood will follow. We have much respect for many of those who are laboring in the interest of this Sunday movement. But when once the gate is opened to superstition; when false religious zeal is once clothed with power, the peace-loving among the Sunday enforcers will be a small minority. Now they might preserve the peace by enforcing the truth of God on a moral basis; when the machinery of government is fully given to religious bigots to enforce their dogmas, who will stay the tide which leads to persecution and the destruction of religious liberty?