Purpose of the Lord’s Day Congress
By W. Mayhew Healey
The International Lord’s Day Congress held in Oakland, California, July 27 to August 1, was to the casual observer an apparent failure, and in its local plans and purposes it was decidedly such. However, the movement is making general advancement under seeming defeat. WOULD SECURE AND ENFORCE SUNDAY LAWS
The object of the association is set forth in the following words in the second principle of its platform: “We aim to promote among all classes such a true understanding of the value of the sabbath to themselves, to their families, and to the state, as shall lead them to resist whatever tends to deprive them of it, and to secure and enforce such just laws as shall protect the people in their right to this day of religious privilege and of freedom from toil.” The congress announces as an “important indorsement” the following from the International Sunday School Association, at Chicago, June, 1914: “We also indorse the plan to hold an International Lord’s Day Congress at San Francisco during the said exposition, and indulge the hope that it will so quicken Christian conscience as to give California a weekly rest day.” WHAT BETTER LAW IS NEEDED?
California already has a weekly rest day protected by law. California Statutes 1893, page 54, reads under the heading of “Day of Rest,” section 1, “Every person employed in any occupation of labor shall be entitled to one day’s rest therefrom in seven; and it shall be unlawful for any employer of labor to cause his employees, or any of them, to work more than six days in seven; provided, however, that the provisions of this section shall not apply to any case of emergency.” This law proposes to “protect” the Sunday keeper, the Sabbatarian, and those who attach no religious significance to any day, but desire one day in the week merely for pleasure and recreation. Why is not this law satisfactory to the International Lord’s Day Congress?—Because that organization does not desire a law to “protect,” but is seeking one to “compel,” to “enforce” the observance of a day, and that day to be Sunday. That the congress failed in its purpose to create local strength in support of a California Sunday law is evident from the fact that the people, who were fully informed of the purpose of the congress, paid little attention to it. The attendance the first evening was less than two hundred and fifty, including delegates. This decreased until the last evening, when the adjournment was taken with only thirty-six persons present. The chairman remarked that he hoped the world would not know of the small number in attendance, as it was insignificant compared with the great name they carried. The congress gained no influence in California, where the facts are so well known. On the contrary, it evidently lost in the estimation of the people, because of itself it fell so far below what it had been advertised to be. We believe this movement will develop power, not by sound argument, but rather by the sound of its great title, together with its claim to world-wide influence, and affiliation with many societies, kings, queens, presidents, princes, prelates, etc. By such means, the impression is created that this congress is a great world power, and some are led to think there must be good reasons for the movement if so many great men are engaged in it. Mankind in general go where they think the mass is going. Politicians are easily intimidated from going any way except the direction in which the people are supposed to be moving. Thus by claiming that which they do not have, they may build up that which they hope to have. Sunday laws, at best, are based on a wrong conception of facts. Sunday as an institution in the church rests on the fraudulent claim that somewhere, in some way, God sanctions its observance. By these means, many persons are deceived. There is strength in keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, the memorial of the true God. Laws of man give no added strength.