A NEW DODGE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, February 17, 1885

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 7

A NEW DODGE.

We have been waiting with some curiosity to see how those who are laboring to secure a national Sunday law would undertake to surmount the obstacle which the first Amendment to the Constitution throws across their pathway; namely, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or to prohibit the free exercise thereof.”

A suggestion in the new work on the Sunday Sabbath question, by W. F. Crafts, indicates how it is to be done. It quotes from a petition to Congress in which the petitioners say: We “protest against the civil power being used to trample down or persecute the Church, or to weaken and destroy one church duty,” meaning the religious observance of Sunday. Again: “When the Constitution provided that Congress should pass no law establishing religion, it surely was not intended to vest that body with the right to pass a canon desecrating one of the most sacred institutions of the religion of the nation. This law is against religion.”

This plainly foreshadows the position to be taken on this point. The Sunday is assumed to be an established sacred institution of religion and the church; and while Congress must not establish religion, it must not desecrate any existing institution. But not to uphold the Sunday by Congressional enactment is to desecrate it and break it down, which the government is under obligation not to do. Hence by virtue of the first Amendment itself, we must have the Sunday law. Isn't it clear?