The American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 22. (6/26/1889)

The American Sentinel

Jun 26, 1889

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1889

The Evils of Religious Force

To employ force in propagating religion or maintaining it where it has been propagated, is to offer a dishonorable and pernicious service. To attempt compelling a man to become religious is itself a species of irreligion, and the absurdity of such an attempt is as flagrant as the iniquity of it. The timid may be compelled to a feigned assumption of what they neither understand nor approve; but the judgment, the conscience, and the affections, the abodes of religion or its opposite, are not within the reach of compulsion; error and vice have retreats from which nothing but truth and grace can banish them. The conduct of the religious despot is preposterous and infamous; his machinations and efforts tend to the extinction of all that is free, noble, and ingenious in man, and to the production of those pests to society, suspicion, servility, deceit, and hypocrisy.—Sel.

Sunday-Law Theology.

By A. T. J.

THE president of the National Sunday-law Association, Col. Elliott F. Shepard, made a great speech May 18, in Brooklyn, N. Y., to the Kings County Sunday Association. Of course his speech was on Sunday laws, and he still insists, in spite of the denials of the two secretaries of the association of which he is president, that “the only authority for the Sabbath-day is to be found in the statutes and laws and commandments of the Lord God Almighty.” Dr. Crafts says that “Mr. Shepard don’t know very much about this.” Nevertheless, Mr. Shepard goes on as though he knew a good deal about it. Mr. Shepard seems to be quite a theologian in his way, and the professional theologians seem to think so too, because he is invited to their conventions, general assemblies, etc., to instruct them in regard to the limits and obligations of the ten commandments; they indorse his expositions of Scripture, by frequent manifestations of applause; and, from the assurance with which he sets out his views of Scripture and moral obligation, it evidently appears that he actually considers himself a theologian of no mean order.

We cite an instance or two illustrating the depth of his theological lore. He says:—

“God rested upon the accomplishment of his work at creation, and his seventh day was man’s first day.”

Now the Bible says that on the sixth day God made man and gave him dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moveth upon the earth. Then every beast of the field and every fowl of the air was brought unto Adam to see what he would call them, and he gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field. This was all on the sixth day, and for all that to be accomplished in the same day that he was created would seem to show that he must have been there on that day. Yet Mr. Shepard insists that he was not there until the next day. We have a sort of lurking suspicion that Mr. Shepard is wrong.

More than this, for all that to be accomplished on the sixth day would show that it must have been not very late in the forenoon, at least, when man was created; and it would seem that if man should be able to accomplish all that is written in the Bible of that man in the same day that he was created, that that must have been his first day. We have always understood that a man’s birthday—the day of his entrance into the world—counted as his first day; but Mr. Shepard’s theology will have it that his first day is the next day after his birth.

Yet more than this. When Adam had named all the creatures upon the earth, it was found that there was not any fit to be a companion for him. Then that same day the Lord made the woman and brought her unto the man, and married them—all this on the sixth day.; yet Mr. Shepard’s theology will have it that even his wedding-day didn’t count, and that his first day, his birthday, in fact, did not come till the next day after he was married. We can’t shake off the suspicion that there is something wrong with Col. Elliott F. Shepard’s theology.

Another instance. Mr. Shepard says:—

“The Sabbath was his [man’s] first day, and he was prepared by this first day of rest for six days of labor.”

The Sabbath was his first day, and yet the first thing he had to do was to rest! Well, well! we have indeed heard it suggested that certain individuals were born tired, but never before did we know that when the Lord created man, he made him tired.

Further, Mr. Elliott F. Shepard says that by resting on the first day of his existence man was prepared for six days of labor. This is another thing new under the sun. We have always understood that men rest after labor, and the whole world has understood it so, and has acted according to this understanding of the matter; but it must be that this is all wrong, because Mr. Shepard says so. He says that the rest comes first, in order that we may be prepared to labor.

Is it any wonder that after such a magnificent display of theological oratory as this, the divines and other members of the Kings County Association should greet the speaker with “applause”?

Just one more instance and we are done. Mr. Shepard says:—

“Mark, it was not the seventh day which he blessed, but the rest-day.”

Reader, please turn to Genesis, second chapter and third verse, and “mark” these words: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.” Then decide if you can that the Sunday theology of the president of the National Sunday-law Association is anything else than a downright fraud.

Theologically, Mr. Shepard’s statements are unworthy of anything but contempt; but yet there is a serious side to this thing which forbids its being passed by with the contempt which it deserves. Mr. Shepard and all those who are working for a national Sunday law propose to compel everybody in this Nation to accept that theology, and to act in conformity with it. They propose to have the National Legislature frame this stuff into a law; and then to have the courts of the United States adopt the same theology, and by their decisions uphold the law; and then

to have the executive department of the Government compel all people to receive it as the oracles of God. The stupendous impudence of such a proposition can be accounted for only upon the theory that again the “mystery of iniquity doth already work.”

A. T. J.

Manna Gathering on Sunday

REV. J. M. WYLIE, a prominent Sunday-law advocate, says: “Those who went out to gather manna on the Sabbath got nothing.” Correct; and it is equally significant that when they went out on Sunday they got the regular daily allowance.

National Divorce Law Debate

The National Reform Association, at its last annual meeting, urgently discussed the necessity for a national divorce law. But the advocates of this measure still cling with great tenacity to their pet scheme of repealing one of the best of divorce laws,—that which separates Church and State.

Sunday Music and Church Attendance

ANOTHER despairing cry that arose from the Kings County, N. Y., Sunday Association was as follows:—

“By the conjoint efforts of the Common Council and Park Commissioners, we are advised that music will be provided in Prospect Park on Sunday afternoons during June, July, and August; perhaps they will be dubbed sacred concerts, to make them more palatable. . . . That if established here, they will be the means of depopulating the churches and Sunday-schools, there can be no doubt.”

Well, well, well! Can it be possible that the churches and Sunday-schools are held together by so frail a tenure, and rest upon so capricious a basis, that they will be depopulated by music Sunday afternoon in the parks?—It must be so; else this great association would not in public convention have confessed it to be so. But what a confession!

Who Are the Friends of the Bible?

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

The Congregationalist of February 7 contained an editorial entitled “Unsectarian Morality,” in which it says:—

“The Christian Register published last week the replies of thirty-five eminent men and women, many of whom are practical educators, to the questions whether morality can be taught in our public schools without sectarianism, and what suggestions they had to offer as to methods and influences. As, naturally, they look at the subject from widely different points of view, their replies vary considerably in detail. It is the more gratifying, therefore, to notice that most of them answer the first question heartily in the affirmative. Of course the five Roman Catholics claim that morality cannot be taught, in any sense satisfactory to them, without including the inculcation of the principles of Roman Catholicism; and there are one or two others who reply negatively.”

This is in line with the ideas expressed by Senator Blair in his speech in the Senate, December 21, on the occasion of referring his proposed religious amendment to the Committee on Education and Labor. Said he:—

“In regard to the general principles of the Christian religion, no one but a bigot would think of having introduced into the public schools instruction in favor of any form of sectarianism; but a knowledge of the Christian religion, even if there be no enforcement of those truths upon the conviction and belief of the child, instruction in those principles, a statement or explanation of what they are, exactly as instruction is given in the principles of arithmetic and geography and any of the common branches of science, is exceedingly desirable and important for every citizen of this country to possess, whether he applies the principles in his personal conduct or not.”

No one can talk that way who has any just idea of the Scriptures—their nature and object. Such talk can come only from those who can see no more in the Bible than they do in an ordinary text-book on science; just as the carrying out of Mr. Blair’s proposed amendment would result in lowering the Bible, in the minds of the people, to the level of text-books on arithmetic and geography.

In contrast with the statements of those who imagine that the Bible can be studied with profit in the same way that history and geography are studied, let us place the statement of a man who knows what the Bible is, and what it is for. In the Old Testament Student of February, 1889, the editor, Prof. William R. Harper, of Yale University, writes as follows:—

“The Old Testament is not Hebrew literature. This statement may appear startling; but it is true. The Old Testament is not Hebrew literature in the sense that the Iliad and the Greek Drama are Greek literature; or the Book of the Dead, Egyptian; or the Zend Avesta, Persian. If one desires simple Hebrew literature, the product of the Jewish mind, he will find it in the Talmud, Targums, and other rabbinical writings. The writers of the Old Testament were more than mere Hebrews. Moses, David, and Isaiah did not simply reflect national thought and feeling. They were inspired, were men to whom divine thought and feeling were revealed. When we speak of the study of the Old Testament as literature, we mean, then, the study of the national dress and outward adornment of a body of divine truth. Such study is profitable and interesting, and very important. But is it insignificant when compared with the study of the doctrine which this outward national dress contains? Renan has made a special study of the Hebrew Scripture from the point of view that they are a national literature, and with what result? The divine truth has made so little impression upon him that he can write a play, ‘the story of which, of a nun’s debauchery the day before the guillotine, is as corrupt as can well be conceived, and its leading thought is that passions must run their course even if death stands at the door.’ Such debasing thought and philosophy may thus co-exist with the highest appreciation of the Bible as a literature. Turn now from Renan to those who have studied these sacred writings to find therein the voice of God speaking of sin, justice, and mercy; and how great the contrast! Here belong such men as Luther, Calvin, Latimer, Knox, Wesley, together with the great rank and file of earnest Christian workers and believers. The Old Testament is not the history of men’s thoughts about God, or desires after God, or affections toward him. It professes to be a history of God’s unveiling of himself to men. If it is not that, it is nothing; it is false from beginning to end. To make it the history of the speculation of a certain tribe about God, we must deny the very root of any speculations which that tribe ever had. For this root is the belief that they could not think of him unless he had first thought of them; that they could not speak of him unless he were speaking of them.”

“In the modern revival of biblical study there is a danger that the Scripture by some may be studied only after the manner of Renan, or too exclusively as a national literature.”

Dr. Harper is not ignorant of the literary beauty of the Bible, as anyone who is acquainted with him can testify; but he sees the danger of studying it with that sole object. As a matter of fact, it cannot be taught according to Mr. Blair’s ideas—except by avowed infidels, which of course would never be thought of, and if it were, the result would necessarily be to make infidels. No man who has any regard for the Bible as the word of God, can teach it without conforming his teaching to his own religious views; and if this were done in the public schools, confusion and religious strife would inevitably follow. How can the danger be averted?—Only by keeping the Bible out of State schools, and leaving instruction in it to the family, the church, and the private or denominational school.

They are not true friends of the Bible who are clamoring for its introduction into the public schools. They may be sincere in their motives, but they would give the sacred Book the worst blow it has ever received. The friends of the Bible are those who wish it studied for just what it is—the revelation of God’s will to man—the guide to holiness and eternal life. E. J. W.

Government Religion.

[The manuscript of the following article was found among the papers of the late Elder J. H. Waggoner, after his death. It was evidently intended for the SENTINEL, and contains pointed facts, gathered from various ages, pertinent to the question of national religion now agitating our country. The matter has not been published before, and those who have been readers of the AMERICAN SENTINEL from the beginning will be pleased to read this, one of the latest emanations from the pen of its founder.]

THE self-styled National Reformers repudiate the idea that they are advocating a union of Church and State, and yet they openly advocate “religious legislation” in the State, and “national religion,” even commending the Roman Catholic Church as being the upholder of national religion. It is a sad truth, as many martyrs have witnessed, that the Roman Church is an earnest defender of national compulsory religion. Indeed, the National Reformers have not only commended the Catholic Church, but advocated a coalition with that church, because that, in some countries, it is the only upholder of national religion. And if anyone wishes to understand the actual benefits and beauties of national religion, he need not go to the history of the Inquisition, to Constance, to Smithfield, and like places, but let him go, even at this day, to those countries where the Catholic Church and national religion have entire control.

Let the Presbyterian members of the association try a six months’ residence in Spain, and they will find that, in certain circumstances, their Presbyterianism must be compromised or concealed, or it will prove the door to a prison. And if that is not sufficient, let them go to certain places in South America where government is administered solely in the interest of the church, and where such is the case the country is removed scarcely a step from barbarism. How can people rise whose minds and consciences are enslaved by a priesthood which claims the exercise of supreme power in the name and place of God. And yet this is exactly the position that the Christian Statesman and Christian Nation declare that the Church and the State relatively ought to occupy. They say that the kingdom of Christ is to be set up by the votes of the National Reformers, and they are to be the administrators of the kingdom.

The celebrated historian, Neander, noticing the secularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, made the following suggestive comment:—

“While it was the State that should be Christianized, instead of this Christianity would be changed into a civil polity, and what belongs to the kingdom of God would be secularized; an evil in which, to be sure, as we shall see, the Eastern Roman Empire especially involved itself.”—Torrey’s Neander, Vol. 1, p. 162; Hurd & Houghton, N. Y.

This is the natural tendency, and, indeed, the very object, of national religion. And what do we find in the United States at the present time but a plea for the accomplishment of this object? We are gravely informed that the Sunday, as the “Christian Sabbath,” is the “very safeguard and bulwark of our holy religion.” Prize books are industriously circulated to prove to the world that the Sunday is one of the most sacred and important of all religious institutions. And yet politicians, and doctors of a sickly divinity, and such sensible religious journals as the New York Independent, assure us that when they advocate its enforcement by the State, it is not at all as a religious institution, but altogether as a “sanitary regulation,” as “a Government holiday,” and that compulsion to observe it is not an infringement upon anybody’s conscientious convictions or religious rights, because it is not enforced upon religious grounds, but for purely civil reasons. If that is not secularizing what they claim to be a most sacred religious institution, we fail to see what could be. Reading the words of Neander, and applying them to ancient Rome, we can all see the inconsistency, the evil, and the danger. But when the very thing is being enacted in the United States, under the specious pretext of Christianizing our beloved country, and to glorify the Saviour, how different it looks! But it must be remembered that the Inquisition was established, and the auto da fé was kept in existence, by the very same pretext.

The Independent scorned the idea of the National Reformers, and of all who wished to give our Nation a religious character by changing the Constitution. But at length it declared this as the solution of the difficulty: Let the “Christian Sabbath,” and other Christian tenets if necessary, be adopted by the Government as civil institutions, and all may consistently be compelled to observe them as civil laws. The Sabbath ceases to be a religious institution as enforced by the

Government, and therefore it is not religious persecution to compel people to observe it even though they conscientiously observe the identical day commanded in the Bible.

The reader will see that the idea is not new. Neander outlined it as the evils of the Catholic Church in ancient Rome in the early centuries. On the fulfilling of this purpose I will give another item of history. In a work entitled, “A Concise History of the Papal Supremacy,” published in Dublin, Ireland, 1810, a copy of which I found in the library of the British Museum, in London, I read something of interest on this subject.

The general council of Chalcedon was called by the Emperor Marcian in A. D. 351. It is well known that its canons provoked no small controversy and contention. The history here referred to speaks of the action of the emperor as follows:—

“He forbade any person to hold disputes in public about religion; and he gave this reason for it: ‘He does injury to the judgment of the holy synod, who shall discuss and dispute the articles which were there rightly judged and disposed of, since those matters appointed by the bishops, assembled at Chalcedon, concerning the Christian faith, were ordained by us, or were decided by our commandments; and those who despise this law shall be punished.’”

And so the matter has already been solved in this self-same way. It was no infringement on the rights of anybody’s conscience to compel them to accept without questioning the canons of the council. Oh, no; they were established as imperial laws, and surely it was right that all should obey the laws of the empire. How easily and consistently is the whole matter disposed of, and nobody’s religious liberty endangered. “Whatever man has done, man may do.”

An authority with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union has presented a picture of the happy state of the Nation when every voter will be called upon to consider the religious bearings of political questions; when Christianity shall be discussed in every caucus, and declared from every rostrum. Neither is this a new idea. Neander has also given us a sketch from real life of that very state of things; and he has stated the inevitable results. Thus he speaks:—

“Now, as so much depended on the fact whether a party had the emperor’s vote on its side, every art was employed, consequently, to secure this; all that was corrupt in the Byzantine court found its way into the bosom of the church—court parties became doctrinal parties, and the reverse. Imperial chamberlains, eunuchs, directors of the prince’s kitchen, disputed on formulas of faith, and affected to set themselves up as judges in the theological disputes. That which must pass current for sound doctrine in the church was subject to the same fluctuations with the parties at court.”—Pages 165-66.

Here is the evil inherent in this national religious system, as we have pointed it out in the SENTINEL. If our Nation is to retain its republican features, then the religion of the country is to be subjected to the decision of every election, liable to be changed with the changes of administration, and every corrupt faction in the State, or will urge its way into the church for political effect. And yet we are charged with being enemies to Christianity because we do not unite with them in their efforts to bring about this very state of things. Woe to the church and to Christianity in our country, if ever this National Reform scheme is successful.

They must be dull indeed who cannot see that all that is corrupt in politics will force itself into the church, whenever a profession of Christianity becomes necessary to political preferment. That was a wise and prudent action of the framers of our unrivaled Constitution prohibiting religious tests in our Government; a provision well calculated to preserve the purity of religion in the churches, as well as an equal administration of justice to all classes.

Eusebius, the historian, overpraised Constantine for the benefit that it was supposed that he had conferred upon Christianity and upon the church; yet he left on record the baleful effects of the emperor’s kindness and liberality, writing thus:—

“In truth, I can myself bear testimony to the grievous evils which prevailed in those times; I mean the violence of rapacious and unprincipled men, who preyed upon all classes of society alike, and the scandalous hypocrisy of those who crept into the church, and assumed the name and character of Christians.”—Life of Constantine, chap. 54.

Statements of this kind might be multiplied to almost any extent, yet the lovers of national religion are wont to paint the church, in the days of Constantine, as in its most happy state, blessed with the patronage of this first Christian emperor.

Human nature is always the same—never to be trusted too far. Like causes may be expected to produce like results. Many in America flatter themselves that in this age, and in our country, there can be no danger. So it always appeared when evils came in by small beginnings, and with deceitful promises. But the promises are just as deceitful, and the dangers just as great, at this time as in any age when religious ambition grasps for the reins of civil power.

The Missouri Convention.

A Sabbath Observance Convention was held at Sedalia, Missouri, May 23 and 24. After the organization of the convention, a paper was read by Rev. T. A. Tatlow, of Edina, on “Sabbath Observance in Rural Life.” The main point of the paper was to show that Sabbath observance “has a quickening and abiding influence upon man, especially in rural life, because he is in such life especially impressed with a sense of his dependence upon God. For not only man himself, but even his cattle also, are directly dependent for their subsistence upon the products of the earth. . . . Therefore, as far as the divine law regarding the Sabbath-day contemplates the secular good of man, so far the civil power must obey the law and secure proper secular obedience to it on the part of its subjects.”

The reading of the paper was followed by a free discussion of its contents, Rev. M. A. Gault being first to speak. He said:—

“This question [whether Government shall appeal to the divine authority in enforcing Sabbath legislation] has been put by Dr. Howard Crosby in this form: He says that Governments should not say you must keep the Sabbath because God says so. That is not the province, he says, of civil government. That Government has no right to compel another or higher authority than the will of the people. All that Government can say is prescribed by the will of the people, according to Crosby. And Dr. Crafts very heartily declares and teaches that Governments should say you must keep the Sabbath because it is good for you; because, as Brother Tatlow has stated to you, it is a law of our physical being. We must have one day’s rest in seven, therefore Governments should have Sabbath laws, but not to compel divine authority in enforcing those Sabbath laws. “Now we take the ground that Governments should invoke divine authority on this question; Governments should say to the people, You must keep the Sabbath, and have the Sabbath’s rest secured to all classes, not merely because it is good for you, but because God says so; because there is a divine appointment behind this question. The point may be illustrated by the story of a man who had a melon patch, and who put up at one end of the patch a sign which read as follows: ‘Boys, don’t steal these melons, for they are green, and God sees you.’ That is, that farmer appealed to divine authority. He gave the boys to understand that they must not steal melons, not merely because it would injure them, but because God saw them. And in that way he reached their conscience.”

“Well, that simple idea of the farmer expresses the philosophy that underlies this whole question. I believe that Government can reach the conscience of the people. A man without God is a man without a conscience, and a Government without God is a Government without a conscience. A Government has no right upon the conscience of man to enforce a law without recognizing the idea of a supreme Being, the Almighty God, as revealed in Jesus Christ. Now, the only reason why I should appeal to divine authority on this question is because God is the source of all legitimate authority, whether in the family, or in the church, or in the State,—God is the source of all authority. We cannot go back of God to find even a definition of virtue or a standard of virtue, or the authority for virtue. And you may take this position, and hold it successfully,—that without God, without the ten commandments, there is no right or wrong. You cannot go back of God’s decalogue to find a definition of right. So this is a fundamental question.

“Now, when the child asks the parent, What business have you to order me around, that parent can say, God has vested me with parental authority. So it is in the church; the church appeals to the divine law; and so the State must also appeal to the divine law. Now, let me explain here that we do not mean that the State should appeal to the ecclesiastical law, nor to the divine law. The ecclesiastical law binds the church, and the civil law binds the State. Civil government has no right to compel people to religiously observe the Sabbath-day, or to compel the church to perform any religious duty as such; that is beyond the province of the State. But the civil law—the ten commandments—because they are civil—they bind the State. They bind the State just as well as they bind the church.”

The Chairman—“The discussion is now open for anyone to take part in it.”

Elder R. C. Porter, in addressing the chairman and members of the convention, said:—

“It is hardly to be expected that all of us, without any discussion, would see eye to eye upon this question; and possibly what I may have to say will not be exactly in harmony with what Brother Gault has said. The question before us is whether it is the province of human government to appeal to the divine law in enforcing the Sabbath. And as I look at that question it seems to me that I shall be compelled to differ with Brother Gault upon this question simply for this reason: Our Saviour has taught us in the sacred record that we should render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Cæsar represents civil government. The things to be rendered to God are our religious obligations to him. Now, the question to be settled with reference to the subject of

this discussion is, Is the Sabbath God’s, or is it Cæsar’s? If it is the Lord’s, then render it to God, not by Cæsar, or through Cæsar, but to God, because it is his. The Sabbath is the Lord’s; then we should render it to God, not because Cæsar says so, but because we should render to God the things that are God’s, and the Sabbath is the Lord’s, and God does not ask Cæsar to have anything to do with rendering to him the things that are his. We are to remember the Sabbath-day in obedience to the command of God, and Cæsar has no right to say whether we shall or shall not render obedience to that command. But the Lord will hold us individually responsible for his claims upon us, and we will have to settle that with God. Therefore, it seems to me that the logical conclusion of the matter is that God does not want us to frame laws that would compel anybody to render obedience to that which he claims as his.

“Now let me illustrate: Suppose we take that precept and appeal to the divine law in support of the idea that we should remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy. Now, I ask, what would be the result of it? The result of it would be that the first question to be decided is, What was the intent of the Lawgiver in giving the law? Cooley, in his ‘Constitutional Limitations,’ says: ‘It is the intent of the lawgiver that is to be enforced.’ Then the object of the State is to enforce the intent of the lawgiver when the law was made. Suppose we apply that to the divine law. What was the intent of the Lawgiver in making the law concerning the Sabbath? It was to enforce the seventh day as the Sabbath. Then applying this rule of interpretation in the enforcement of law, would we not be obliged to keep the seventh day, as that was, unquestionably, the intent of the Lawgiver when the law was made? But even suppose that the intent of the Lawgiver should be carried out by a civil enactment, compelling all people to keep the seventh day, I should as strongly oppose any such an enactment as I would if it enforced the observance of the first day of the week, on the ground that it would interfere with the rights of conscience of those who conscientiously believe they should observe the first day of the week, and that civil government has no right to interfere with the rights of conscience, or to legislate with reference to religion, or to dictate what a man shall or shall not believe.

“If the State has a right to enforce one precept because it is a divine commandment, it has a right to enforce all other religious obligations, because they are divine commandments. It is unsafe for us to appeal to the divine law and make that the basis of our statute laws simply because it is a divine law. Civil laws are the natural outgrowth of the civil relations of man with his fellowman. It is the province of human government, if that be true, to legislate only with respect to these civil relations. Then, suppose we should appeal in the enforcement of the fourth commandment to the divine law, as stated by Brother Gault, why would we not then be at liberty to take another step and appeal to another precept, which says, ‘If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.’ Then would we not have an equal right to appeal to this precept and enforce it by civil statute? But if this were done, how could a criminal ever be brought to trial in any court of justice? And so when we come to look the matter squarely in the face, in consideration of these facts, we see that the true province of civil government, as declared in our Saviour’s words, is to render to Cæsar only the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Mr. W. P. Gray, secretary of the convention, then said:—

“I for one have made this question very much of a study, especially that topic of it. To appeal to divine authority in our legislation on this subject would be to fundamentally change the law of our land, or the principle adopted by our fathers when they said that all Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. I for one do not believe that, as a political maxim, Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And I believe with Mr. Gault on this, I think. And so the object of this movement is an effort to change that feature in our fundamental law. Jefferson was under the influence of French ideas when the Constitution was framed; and that had something to do with leaving God out of the Constitution. And I think that the provincial history of this country will compel us to come back to that and recognize God in our Constitution. And I see in this reform a providence teaching us the necessity of recognizing something else besides the will of the people as the basis of government.”

Secretary Foster’s Leap in Logic.

By A. Delos Westcott

SECRETARY FOSTER, of the National Reform Association, has a letter in the Christian Statesman, of April 18, in which he says:—

“But even on the secular theory, Sabbath laws should be enforced. Man has an inalienable right to the seventh part of time for rest. The Government, as the institution of human rights, should secure this right. That would prohibit all common labor on the Sabbath.”

We pity the intelligence of the man who is honest in such an argument. Secretary Foster, haven’t you the civil right to rest on Wednesday, if you want to? Is it any of our business, or the Government’s business, if you lay aside your National Reform nonsense, and indulge in absolute rest every Wednesday? Don’t hesitate; tell the truth, and say, No. Very well, “the Government as the institution of human rights should secure this right. That would prohibit all common labor on” Wednesday.

And haven’t you the right so far as the civil government is concerned, to rest every day if you have money to pay your bills?—Certainly you have, and it is the duty of the Government to secure to you this right. “That would prohibit all common labor” forever.

Now, Mr. Secretary, for the sake of your own cause, don’t give it and yourself away by any more such absurd arguments.

But you will ask, How are the railroad men going to keep Sunday? Answer—By refusing to work. Didn’t they know when they went into that kind of work that they would be asked to work on Sunday? If a man is anxious to keep Sunday, will he deliberately enter into a contract which requires him to work on that day? Is there any law on the statute books of this country that requires any man to enter into a contract with a railroad company against his will? One would suppose there must be, to hear these would-be reformers talking about securing the rights of the workingmen. But there is not; and no railroad company can compel any man to work on Sunday if he does not want to work. If the railroad men wanted to keep Sunday they would keep it, and the trains would be obliged to stop for want of men to run them. But in order to get these men to rest they are obliged to pass a law compelling all trains to stop on Sunday; and then, when the trains are stopped, the men still refuse to rest, so they ask for another law to keep the men from engaging in some other kind of work, or in games and amusements, on that day. How these railroad men must be clamoring for Sunday, when they will not keep it unless they are absolutely obliged to!

Again, there is a principle involved in this question which seems to be overlooked, namely, the principle of governmental interference with private contracts. If, on the ground of protection to the public health, it is proper to interfere with a private contract by which a man voluntarily agrees to work on Sunday, then, on the same ground, and with the same propriety, all night work should be strictly forbidden. From a physical standpoint, a law prohibiting night labor would be ten times more valuable than any kind of a Sunday law. No one thing has so much to do with breaking down young men as night labor and night debauchery. Why not compel people to go to bed at nine o’clock?

How plausible, and yet how dangerous! That man whose time is not his own, every moment of it, except when needed in the service of his country, is a slave. No one has the right to interfere with any man’s time, against his consent, so long as he does not interfere by force with the rights of others. No railroad company forces anyone to work on Sunday. This is an article in their contract to which the laborer voluntarily consents.

On the principle that the Government has a right to compel a man to rest, it may also control by law all the voluntary functions of nature. It may command him when to sleep, when and how much to eat, and how much exercise to take. It may regulate and appropriate his property with absolute authority. A man’s time is his property, and if you may tell him how he is to spend his time, you may tell him how he is to spend his other property. The Christian Statesman quotes from Mr. Kennan as follows:— “The theory upon which the Government of Russia proceeds is that the citizen . . . is incompetent to manage even the affairs of his own household; and that, from the time when he leaves his cradle and begins the struggle of life, down to the time when his weary gray head is finally laid under the sod, he must be guided, directed, instructed, restrained, repressed, regulated, fenced in, fenced out, braced up, kept down, and made to do generally what somebody else thinks is best for him.” “Weary of Ishmaelitism in theology and upon questions of public morals,” the Russian Government enforces upon all the “laws of Christian morality” as defined on its statute books. In harmony with the public-health argument for Sunday laws, they “prove that political interests are to be placed before the rights of religion,” and offer “political necessities and expediences” as a sufficient excuse for the adoption and enforcement of a national standard of religion.

It is astonishing to hear National Reformers condemn the Government of Russia for carrying out the same principles which they are seeking to establish in our own Government. They seem willing to resort to any artifice whereby their own popularity and influence may be increased. Let us watch the viper while we gather the roses.

A. DELOS WESTCOTT.

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