The American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 24.
Sunday Laws and the Workingman's RestPage 1
Sunday Laws and the Workingman's Rest.
A great effort is being made by the advocates of Sunday laws to justify such legislation on the ground that the workingman must have one day of the week for rest, and cannot have this needed rest unless the Sunday laws secure it for him. How then do the Sunday laws secure this rest for the laboring man, weary and worn from the effects of six days’ toil? They compel the shutting down of factories and shops one day in each week, thus providing a day of rest for all who care to avail themselves of it. So far so good. But the Sunday laws do not stop here. They do not merely provide the opportunity for rest; they compel every person—employer and employe alike—to rest, to cease from all secular labor. They go beyond providing the privilege of rest, and compel cessation from work; and in making rest compulsory, and not a matter of free will, they provide no privilege at all, for compulsion is certainly not to be viewed in the light of a privilege.2 It might often be a privilege to an individual, during his day of rest, to improve the opportunity to perform some secular labor about his home and premises, proper attention to which demands a considerable amount of manual labor, which the average workingman cannot well do before or after working hours, or afford to hire done by others. But the Sunday law frowns upon this as it does upon the running of a factory by a “soulless corporation.” Work by the individual done for himself and by his own wish, is a desecration of Sunday, and must be stopped, the same as the running of shop or factory. Even though an individual does no work for a “soulless corporation,” but is his own employer, and considers it necessary oftentimes to work Sunday for the support of his family, the Sunday law nevertheless prohibits it, that he may be secured a day of rest! How restful, indeed, an individual must be under such circumstances. But the Sunday laws go still further; they go beyond rest altogether, and provide something entirely different. For not only do they decree that an individual shall not work on Sunday, but they forbid him every form of recreation. He must not play any games, must not hunt or fish, he must not go to any pleasure resort (these are all closed by the law), he cannot get out of the city, for all the street cars and trains have stopped running; he must sit down at home and do nothing and endeavor to find some rest in compulsory idleness—a vain quest. One thing he can do—go to church; where the average workingman does not care to go on Sunday, as an analysis of the Sunday congregations plainly shows. And this is his rest,—this is how the Sunday law provides for his recuperation from the week of toil—compelling him to do what he does not want to do, or to sit down and do nothing, when every faculty of mind and body is calling for some employment, as is always the case with a healthy individual when he is not asleep! What can be more tiresome—what more wearing upon the nerves and the whole system—than this compulsory loafing, this strain of keeping idle faculties that continually clamor for some form of occupation? Yawning with weariness and ennui, looking out upon the world as from the grated window of a prison and counting the hours as they drag slowly by, employing the while various devices to “kill time,” the “emancipated” workingman worries along through his day of “rest” and awakens Monday morning with a feeling of relief that he is again at liberty to give vent to the natural activity of body and brain, to go out and mingle with his fellow-beings without any feeling of restraint upon his actions save that to which he has been accustomed as a lawabiding member of society. Of course, the individual who has a religious regard for the Sabbath day and enjoys communion with the Creator, will find in the Sabbath a peculiar and exalted pleasure, and will experience no weariness from want of occupation, because both body and mind are fully occupied in the devotional exercises of the day. But this is true only of those who love the Sabbath, and the law cannot put into any heart a single emotion of love. It may make the day more odious to some by joining with it exactions contrary to one’s sense of liberty and natural rights; it cannot make it more attractive to any. And as we have mentioned, the great majority of the workingmen for whose good Sunday laws are alleged to be necessary, have no love for the day, other than as a day of amusement and recreation. Is this picture overdrawn? If it is, it is because the present Sunday laws are not such as the advocates of Sunday observance want, and are not enforced as this class desire and mean that they shall be. When such laws as they want are enacted and enforced, there will be an end both to secular work and worldly pleasure on the day they call the “Christian Sabbath,” and the workingman will enjoy (?) precisely such “rest” and experience precisely such recuperation from his week of toil as we have described. In the light of such facts, which nobody can candidly deny, the alleged benefit of the Sunday laws to the laboringman dwindles to the vanishing point, and the argument based on such grounds is seen to be but a disguised plea for the exaltation of a religious institution, by a means contrary to Christianity and to just principles of government. Let the workingmen have liberty—the liberty to which all men are entitled every day in the week, and let the Sabbath rest upon the foundation of conscience and the love of God, where the Creator himself has placed it. Freedom of Choice and Character
It is better that men should be free to do wrong, than that they should have liberty only to do right; for without freedom of choice there is no real liberty, and without liberty there can be no development of character. Nothing but the power of godliness can successfully resist ungodliness. If the Creator had designed that people should be forced to do right he would have made it impossible for them to do wrong. Law Condemns, but Cannot Save
The most perfect law that could ever be devised could do nothing more than condemn men for wrong doing. For reformation and salvation, men must look to another source for help. Law Cannot Accomplish Moral Reform
God himself could not save the world by enacting and enforcing law, yet law is the first thing to which appeal is made by organizations that are now seeking to promote moral reform. Religious Institutions and Civil Law
Civil laws is not designed to protect religious institutions, nor can any such institution possibly be preserved by such means. A religious institution that depends upon human law for its preservation, is destined to sure extinction. Nothing human can survive the touch of time. Religious Bigotry and Ecclesiastical Ambition
As religious bigotry knows no such thing as enlightenment or progress, so ecclesiastical ambition never can be content without power to persecute. The State and Sabbath Rest
The state has no right to enforce the right of Sabbath rest, or any other right of the people, upon the people. When the state attempts to enforce rights, it fails to preserve them. To preserve a right is not to compel an individual to exercise that right, but to compel other persons to refrain from interfering with the individual touching the exercise of that right; and the state has no more right to interfere than have the people whom it restrains in this respect. Contradictory Arguments for Sunday Laws
Speaking in defense of the Sunday laws, a prominent representative of the W. C. T. U. argues that the prohibition of work one day in the week will pay financially, and in evidence cites the reports of railway corporations that have discontinued Sunday work. These reports allege that employees earn as much in six days as they did previously in seven, and that as much work is done in the six days of labor as was previously done in the whole week. This is a common argument for the enforcement of Sunday rest, as all will recognize who are familiar with the literature published in support of Sunday enforcement. But almost in the next sentence appears another argument for the Sunday laws, which says:
“Overproduction is the bane of many kinds of business. Reduce the output one seventh regularly by shutting off all business on Sabbath and it would prevent accumulation and bring relief.”371 Reading these two contradictory statements, the unbiased searcher after truth is forced to wonder how it can possibly be that if as much work is done when the weekly rest day is observed as when it is not, cessation from work on that day can reduce the output one seventh, and thus be a remedy for overproduction. The only conclusion one can draw from reading such arguments is that the person making them did not aim to be logical, but had in view only the justification of Sunday laws, and seized upon any idea that seemed available for such use. The aim was not to reveal the truth, but to maintain a cause to which a branch of the W. C. T. U. had become committed. Arguments which contradict and devour each other belong not to reason, but to sophistry, and to the cause of error, not that of truth and right. Some Sunday Sophistry.
By B.
“The Sunday League of America (Incorporated)” publishes at Columbus, Ohio, “Sunday Reform Leaflets,” “issued quarterly or oftener.” This is rather indefinite in view of the fact that the publication is regularly “entered as second class matter;” and the law specifies that any publication to be entitled to such entry must be “issued at stated intervals.” The number before us purports to have been issued in April of the present year, and the first article in it is entitled “The Sunday Movement.” “All over the civilized world,” says the writer (which presumably is Dr. Edward Tompson), “there is increasing interest in this matter. It is found that one day of rest and thought is a necessity for the welfare of man.” Doubtless what is said is true as to the increasing “interest in this matter.” This must almost necessarily follow from the untiring agitation of the question by the various Sunday leagues, of which the Columbus association is only one. But the statement “that one day of rest and thought in seven is a necessity for the welfare of man,” is not quite so clear. If our memory serves us, it used to be found that one day of “rest” was “necessary” not only for man but for inanimate things even. But nothing was said about “thought.” But since it has been pointed out that so far as the merely animal nature is concerned, the theater is the peer of the church; the concert equal to the sermon; the excursion as good as the trip to meeting and return; the picnic as profitable as the regulation Sunday dinner; the advocates of the “civil Sabbath” have been compelled to revise their arguments slightly, and they now couple “thought” with “rest.” This is as it should be, and we hope that the subjects of this enforced “rest and thought” will occupy at least a portion of the time in thinking about the rights which belong to every man in virtue of his being a human being; one of which rights is to do as he likes, provided always he does not interfere with the equal rights of some other person. The plea so persistently put forth that “a regularly recurring seventh day of rest is a physical necessity” is fallacious. The history of the race has demonstrated quite the contrary. What country or what age ever produced a better physical or mental type of men than Greece and Rome, before idleness, luxury, and vice rendered their people effeminate? And yet they had no Sabbath; only the “wild solar holiday of all pagan times,” which was none other than the “continental Sunday” of modern Europe, only with less restrictions, less beer, and more liberty in every other way. That a weekly Sabbath properly used is a good thing in every way, morally, mentally, and physically, we have no wish to deny. But physical rest is not, and never was, the primary object of the Sabbath. First of all the Sabbath is memorial in its history, spiritual in significance, and religious in character. It can be no more properly enforced upon anybody than can baptism or the Lord’s Supper. Moreover, as before stated, not only is it incapable of demonstration that a weekly day of rest is a physical necessity, but the facts of history are all against the idea. Several years since, the Christian Statesman published the following item relative to the Jews, many of whom observe no regular weekly rest; doing business on the Sabbath of their fathers and devoting Sunday either to business or to pleasure-seeking. The Statesman said: “Attention is being called to the comparative longevity of the Jews. Thus, it is said that in Polish Russia, in a population of ten thousand, three Christians die for every two Jews, and that in Austria the proportion is about the same. In Saxony, one Jew in fifty-one and one Christian in thirty-three expresses the comparative death rate. At Frankfort, fifty-four per cent of the Jews reach their seventieth year, against thirty-eight per cent of the Christians. In Hungary, the chances of life among the Croats is put at twenty years, the Germans at twenty-seven, and the Jews at forty-six.” Even if this item did not disprove the statement so confidently made that a regular weekly rest is necessary to the physical well-being of man, it would utterly and forever negative the assertion that “the liberty of rest for one is dependent on a law of rest for all.” For so far as these Jews observe a day of rest at all, in the manner insisted upon as essential, they observe it upon Saturday, when all the world is busy around them. The same is true of at least sixty thousand Christian Sabbatarians in this country alone, who find no difficulty in resting, nor even in worshiping, while other men are working and transacting business in close proximity to them.372 Another fact that ought to give pause to the zeal of those who parrot-like are repeating the false statement that regular weekly rest has been found to be a physical necessity, was stated by Bishop Andrews of the Methodist Episcopal Church, March 11, 1890, in a public meeting in New York City, at which the writer was present. The Bishop had but recently returned from a missionary tour, and speaking of China said, “In that country they have no Sabbath; yet laboring men live to be very old.” The Bishop added that he did not understand it, but that it was nevertheless a fact. This statement was made by Bishop Andrews in a meeting held under the auspices of the American Sabbath Union, but with no intention of discrediting the physical-necessity argument. But facts have always been unkind to falsehood, and so the blow was no less deadly because given by a friendly hand. The truth is that “physical necessity” is only used to obscure the real principle involved. Religious legislation has no standing in constitutional law in this country, therefore it must be made to appear that Sunday laws are not religious in their design, but intended only to meet certain “civil” ends. But this leaflet which we are examining reveals its true character even more plainly in other things. On page three we find this: “Blackstone says, ‘A corruption of morals usually follows a profaning of the Sabbath.’” And this is just exactly what Sunday laws are for, namely to guard “morals,” which is only another way of saying that they are enacted and enforced in the interests of religion. The very first definition of the word “moral” is: “Of or pertaining to the practice, conduct, and spirit of men toward God, themselves, and their fellowmen, with reference to right and wrong and to obligation to duty.”—Standard. Notice, morals have to do with one’s relations to God, and with right and wrong, not with rights and wrongs. It is no wonder that Blackstone treats of “Sabbath-breaking” (by which he means treating Sunday as a common day) under the heading of “offenses against God and Religion.” That is all that Blackstone saw in it; and that is just what the Sunday laws of his day were designed to punish; and their purpose is just the same to-day. The leopard of religious legislation has not changed its spots. B. “Works of Necessity.”
By B.
What are works of “necessity” within the meaning of the Sunday statutes of the several States? for without exception they all contain the saving clause, “Works of necessity and charity excepted,” or words to the same effect. Even a very superficial examination of the subject will convince any one that it is exceedingly hard to distinguish between convenience and necessity. In fact, what to one may seem an absolute necessity may, to another, be only a luxury, or a convenience. For instance, to the one reared in the enjoyment of even the more common luxuries of civilized life, a frequent bath is a necessity. Without it life would not be worth living, health would be impaired and bodily comfort would be impossible. And yet there are thousands of people in every country who seldom bathe, who are never clean, and who do not regard frequent bathing as at all necessary. Take another example. Two farmers live in the same neighborhood. The one has an abundance of hay already stored in his barns or secured in the stack. He has, however, a few tons still in the field, which, if saved, would add to his profits for the year, but not at all necessary either to his own comfort or support, or to the proper care of his stock. His neighbor has not so much hay, and a larger proportion of his crop is still in the field. It is essential to the support of his family and to the proper care of his stock that this hay be saved. It is Sunday and all the indications are that the night will bring rain. They both work to save their hay. They are both prosecuted for breach of the civil law. Both make the defense of “necessity.” Is it equally good in both cases? or must the one farmer suffer the penalty while the other goes free? In the one case it is simply a question of adding a few more dollars to the profits of the year; in the other it is not a question of profit but of providing necessary food not only for cattle but indirectly for human beings. Another case not an imaginary but a real one presents a slightly different phase of this subject; not a question of monetary profit, but of which is the more necessary, that a corporation make larger profits on its business or that the individual preserve a conscience void of offense toward God. The Sunday law of Tennessee prohibits the “doing or exercising any of the common avocations of life, or of causing or permitting the same to be done by his children or servants, acts of real charity or necessity excepted, on Sunday.” In that State are two classes of people who have sought to avail themselves of this saving clause, touching “acts of real necessity.” These two classes are, first, corporations operating railroads, smelting furnaces373etc.; and second, Sabbatarians, religiously observing as the Sabbath the seventh day of the week instead of the first. With the first class the plea has been so successful that so far as the writer knows they have never even been prosecuted. At Dayton, Tenn., some years ago when several Sabbatarians were in jail for working on Sunday (some of them in retired places where they were “detected” only by being spied upon), the prosecuting attorney was asked why they were prosecuted and nothing said about a great iron furnace which was in constant operation night and day seven days in the week. The reply was, “O, that is necessary.” But the necessity is no more real than is the necessity requiring the Sabbatarian to work on Sunday. The foreman of that same furnace told the writer that the furnace could be banked not only for twenty-four hours, but for a week if necessary, without injury to the plant. The only loss occasioned by shutting down on Sunday, therefore, would be the loss of the profits of the business done on that day. Therefore the necessity is no greater in the case of the furnace than in the case of the individual Sabbatarian. Nor is it as great, for with the furnace it is simply a question of larger aggregate profits for the year; with the individual it is often a question of ability to provide for his family if, after voluntarily giving one day to his own religion, he is compelled to surrender another day to the State or rather to his neighbor’s religion. Conscience and the Rights of God
The power that would invade the conscience of but one individual, must be prepared to meet and overcome the throne of God. The rights of conscience cannot be set aside without also setting aside the rights of God. A Tale of Two Nations.
By P. T. MAGAN
The magnificent imperialism and expansion of the days of Solomon were of short duration. He sowed to the wind and reaped the whirlwind. After his death the kingdom was divided, two tribes going under one leader and ten under another, and this was the end forever of that “strong central government” which the elders had called for in order that they might hold the tribes together. The strong central government utterly failed of its purpose; the twelve tribes were not held together by it. The simple plan which God had ordained and which had preceded this one had been much more potent for this purpose. And now began a checkered period in the history of Israel. They had departed from the principle of the consent of the governed. They had wandered from republicanism into imperialism; and this led to the violation of the mandate, “Israel shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” No sooner had Israel become an empire than it became evident to her leading men that if they maintained their place among the great powers of the earth they must do so by means of alliances with different ones of these powers. But once they commenced making alliances, they were no longer dwelling alone, they were no longer not reckoned among the nations. This command that they should dwell alone and should not be reckoned among the nations, was not an arbitrary one on the part of God. It was given for their own good. It came in the very nature of things. God knew the form of government which he had given Israel could not be maintained amid alliances with other nations. The principles governing republicanism and monarchy are so vastly different that it is impossible for the two systems of government to unite, and for the purer system at the same time to maintain its own pure and peculiar form. Monarchs are not accustomed to consulting their people, therefore when the king of Assyria made a treaty with the king of Israel, that treaty was made without even the knowledge of the people of Israel, for the treaties and understandings of monarchs are almost always secret, in the very nature of things. Modern diplomacy will amply bear out this idea. Of course, there are commercial treaties which everybody knows about; but there are also secret understandings between princes and potentates concerning which their subjects know little or nothing. No sooner was Israel a monarchy, than alliances and confederacies began to be made with the different heathen nations. These, one and all, proved disastrous to Israel. God continued to warn His people against them, hence it was written in the book of Isaiah: “The Lord spake also unto me again, saying, Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloh that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah’s son; now therefore the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks; and he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel. Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear all ye of far countries; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word and it shall not stand; for God is with us. For the Lord spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not a confederacy to all them to whom this people shall say a confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself; and let Him be your fear and let Him be your dread.” (Isa. 8:5-13.) This was not the only time that God warned Israel about these confederacies. Jeremiah also spake: “And374now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Shiloh? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?” The words also of Rabshakah bore witness to the same truth: “Now, behold, thou trusteth upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it; so is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, unto all who trust on him.” God warned Israel again and again against these confederacies, but the people continued to think that alliances with the powers of the earth were the only sources of strength and safety. Instead of being a source of strength and safety, however, these alliances dragged them down to unutterable ruin. Their kings became weaker and weaker; their power became less and less respected in the earth, until they finally went down captives into Babylon. Even there, God in his mercy visited them, and in his great kindness brought them forth to lead them back to Jerusalem once more. But they never regained their former power or place in the earth. Monarchy was still the form of government and it was unable to give them the respect among the nations of the earth that they had enjoyed in the old days under Moses, Joshua, the judges and Samuel. By and by Rome came and put the land of the Jews under tribute, and the chosen people were obliged to bow the neck to the proud rule of the iron monarchy of Italy. This was the condition of affairs when Christ came with healing in His wings. And there is no more interesting chapter in Jewish history than that of the Christ and the kingship. P. T. MAGAN. A State Cannot Be a Theocracy.
By J. O. Corliss
That injustice to citizens and final governmental destruction arises from ecclesiastical assumption of power in the civil sphere, or vice versa, has been fully demonstrated in the history of the Roman government. In the fourth century the bishops of that time adopting the theory that the Roman government was, or could become, a theocracy, brought about a union of the church with the civil power, in order to receive support from the state in bringing the world to the religious faith held by themselves. In his History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. 2, sec. 2, part 1, Neander says of that time: “There had in fact arisen in the Church . . . a false theocratical theory, originating not in the essence of the gospel, but in the confusion of the religious constituents of the Old and New Testaments, which . . . brought along with it an unchristian opposition of the spiritual to the secular power, and which might easily result in the formation of a sacerdotal state, subordinating the secular to itself in a false and outward way. . . . This theocratical theory was already the prevailing one of the time of Constantine; and . . . the bishops voluntarily made themselves dependent upon him by their disputes, and by their determination to make use of the power of the State for the furtherance of their aims.”
It may be readily supposed that when a worldly church thus prostitutes itself to the civil power in order to accomplish its ends, the civil government will in turn, to secure the political influence of the church, yield to its demands, although it may be evident that the granting of such demands will lead to flagrant abuses. In this case, it is well known what followed. Decrees were issued by the emperor regulating the conduct of all Roman subjects in matters of religious faith. Penalties so severe were attached to these edicts, that all feared to disobey who desired to preserve their lives. Hence, nearly all conformed to the decrees, even though at heart they were not in harmony with them. Such a course made hypocrites, from whom were chosen the chief dignitaries of the church and empire. The result was that the bishops became more and more ambitious, bold, and unscrupulous. But the government having bargained with the church for its influence, could not well withdraw from the compact, because the political influence for which it had bargained had become the dominating one. To combat it, at that stage in the drama, meant the loss of the empire to the civil power, yet to let matters still go on was sure to bring the same result at some future time. As the rapidly-growing influence of the church in secular matters was a dangerous thing to oppose, it was allowed to strengthen year by year till the church clearly gained the ascendancy in political intrigue. In fact, the emperors, in order to maintain their authority, had themselves recognized as bishops of the church, in order to administer affairs of the church as well as those of the state. The result of all this was most natural—men who desired some rich benefice became extremely servile before those from whom they expected favors, and were ready to bestow upon their anticipated benefactors the most flattering titles. This in turn placed the suppliants where they were ready to be used as tools of the bishops to do the vilest work. Not only were appeals made to the bishops to settle religious controversies, but Rome being the first city in the empire, other bishops appealed to the bishop of Rome to arbitrate their differences. Then Constantine enacted a law “permitting judgment to be passed by the bishops when litigants preferred appealing to them rather than to the secular courts. He enacted that their decree should be valid, and as far superior to that of other judges as if pronounced by the emperor himself; that the governors and subordinate military officers should see to the execution of these decrees; and that sentence when passed by them, should be irreversible.”375Sozomen’s “Ecclesiastical History,” Book I, chap. 9. Neander says that this furnished to worldly-minded bishops “a welcome occasion for devoting themselves to any foreign and secular affairs, rather than to the appropriate business of their spiritual calling; and the same class might also allow themselves to be governed by impure motives in the settlement of these disputes.” Vol. 2, sec. 2. Thus the way was open for the church to exalt itself above the civil power, and the dignitaries of the church were not slow to seize the opportunity. This point gained, the highest offices in the church were filled by political methods, and through intrigue and bloodshed the worst characters became bishops, sometimes before any formal initiation into the church. With these, no opposition of any kind was tolerated, and any one who dared to be out of harmony with a bishop, paid the penalty with his life. All this naturally grew out of the false notions of theocracy entertained by the church of that time. If the state was a theocracy all government must be moral, as the government of God. In this way the church became the state, and the state the church. This accomplished, the church of Rome was not long in securing an empire, known as the estates of the church, and its bishops lived in a style of luxury and pomp rivaling that of the emperor himself. But when the church thus permitted itself to surrender the power of the gospel for that of regal splendor, it only hastened the nation’s downfall. Corruption of the most fetid kind permeated both church and state, and ennervated the people. This made them an easy prey to the barbarians of the North who dismembered and destroyed the empire. The Dark Ages followed, and for hundreds of years religious wars and religious persecutions afflicted the people of Europe. Not one of these was necessary had the great truth been recognized, “that the state has no concern with the opinions of men, and no right to interfere, even in the slightest degree, with the form of worship which they may choose to adopt.” Buckle’s History of Civilization, vol. 1, page 190. The theocratical theory has, in fact, always wrought mischief when introduced into human governments. It could not be otherwise; for that theory undertakes to make the Bible the rule of government, and to administer civil affairs according to the interpretation placed on the Bible by the officers of the government. This takes away the right of private judgment, extends the authority of law to opinions, as well as to acts, and so destroys the individuality of every subject of the government, which always was, and always will be, utterly ruinous. Force Excluded.
By T. E. BOWEN
No worker for Christ during the Christian era has accomplished more for the gospel than the great Apostle Paul. He was an incessant worker. From city to city, country to country he worked, under the direct guidance (the privilege of every gospel minister) of the Holy Ghost. It must be admitted that he had wonderful success in dealing with human minds. Nearly everywhere he went, believers were left behind to mourn his departure. On one occasion the whole church accompanied him to the seashore, and there, when he had spoken with them and “kneeled down and prayed with them all,” we are told that “They all wept sore, and fell on Paul’s neck, and kissed him.” Surely such manifestations reveal the fact that this servant of Christ had a strong hold upon the affection of those for whom he labored. Perhaps one secret of his wonderful success lay in the fact that he believed and acted upon the principle that perfect liberty of action was the inalienable right of every man. He would compel no one. He wished to receive no forced hospitalities; and so he hired a house at one place and worked, supporting himself and those with him, while he preached the gospel. He wanted no unwilling contributions. “Let every man be fully persuaded (not forced) in his own mind.” “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver.” Then to show how carefully he respected the wishes of others, even though personally he could have advantaged himself, another instance is recorded by inspiration for our learning. He was old, and a prisoner. Philemon, a believer, had a servant Onesimus. They had had trouble, and Onesimus had left his master. Through Paul’s efforts he had been converted, and in the prison at Rome had relieved Paul’s sufferings very much. But Paul thought his master might need him, so he writes him a letter, sending Onesimus home with it. He writes: “Wherefore though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds, which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me; whom I have sent again; thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels; whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel: But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly.” Philemon 8-14. People who go about seeking to compel people to376do this or that (of themselves being perhaps right things to do), are not serving God. God accepts of no forced service. All such labor passes for nothing with him. Ministers of Christ can only persuade men. Hunting up civil statutes to wield against their fellow-men is no part of the service of Jesus Christ. The Foundation of Morals and Religion.
By S.
We note the following in a leaflet that is being widely circulated through the educational campaign that is being conducted by the organizations favoring the Sunday laws: “Our State Sabbath laws are good and wholesome and afford a sure foundation for morals and religion.” Is it not strange that professedly Christian people will advocate the idea that civil enactments are necessary as a foundation for morals and religion? And is not the idea that the civil government should lay the foundation for religion, a strange idea among the principles of American republicanism? If the Government can properly lay the foundation for religion, why can it not as properly erect the superstructure upon that foundation? As a building depends upon its foundation, so must the character of religion depend upon its foundation; and if the civil power can rightfully lay the foundation, by the same authority it can affect religion in any other way, and establish a state church. If the civil power has authority to do the greater thing, it must have authority to do the less. If state Sabbath laws are the foundation of morals and religion, what foundation had the latter before there were any such laws, or what foundation have they now where no such laws exist, as in California, for example? Are there no morals and religion in California? or do they rest upon another foundation there? and if upon another foundation, why must state “Sabbath laws” exist to furnish them a foundation elsewhere? And how many different foundations can morals and religion have? Christianity is divine and rests upon no human foundation. The foundation of morals and religion was laid long before any human laws existed, even when the relation which they cover first came into being. God himself laid the foundation, and that foundation stands to this day, as firm and as efficient as at the beginning, and thus it must stand through all eternity. Morals and religion which rest upon a human foundation—the foundation of state laws—are not the morals and religion established by the Creator upon the eternal foundation of his own power and wisdom. That which rests upon a human foundation is itself human, and morals and religion which express only human wisdom and human righteousness must be a delusion and a snare to all that trust in them. The conclusion reached in the leaflet is that since the “State Sabbath laws” afford “a sure foundation for morals and religion,” “they should be rigidly enforced.” But there can be no stronger reason why State “Sabbath laws” should not be enforced, than the very fact that they assume to be the foundation for morals and religion. An idea so erroneous as this does not speak well for the cause in behalf of which it was uttered. The cause of truth has no use for the assistance of error.