p. 216 | The American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 27. (7/31/1889)

NOW READY!

THE NATIONAL SUNDAY LAW,

We do not mean that a National Sunday Law is now ready, but that a treatise under this name, prepared by Alonzo T. Jones, is now ready for circulation.

This pamphlet contains the arguments in behalf of the rights of American citizens, and in opposition to the Blair Sunday-rest bill, which Mr. Jones presented before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Dec. 13, 1888.

Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts has pronounced the report as published

“MIGHTY INTERESTING READING,”

And Mr. Jones's comments will make it more so. His argument is enlarged to what it would have been without Senator Blair's interruptions, objections, and counter-arguments, and is accompanied with answers to all of his objections and counter-arguments.

The following specimen page from the book shows some of the questions and answers, and every page of the book is replete with sound arguments by Mr. Jones.

60 THE NATIONAL SUNDAY LAW.

Senator Palmer.—Do you suppose they intended there a practical theocracy?

Mr. Jones.—I do, sir; but let me read further, and you will get their own words.

Senator Blair.—If these women are trying to overthrow the institutions of the country, and are about to establish a sacerdotal State, we ought to know it.

Mr. Jones.—That is true, and that is why I am speaking here; we want the nation to know it.

Senator Blair.—These women need looking after, I admit.

Mr. Jones.—They do in that respect, and there are many men concerned in the same business.

Senator Blair.—Otherwise it would not be dangerous.

Mr. Jones.—It would be dangerous anyway. A theocratical theory of government is dangerous anywhere. It is antichristian, as well as contrary to right and the principles of justice.

Senator Blair.—Do you suppose that the government of heaven is a theocracy?

Mr. Jones.—Yes, sir; but a civil government—a government of earth—is not.

Senator Blair.—Then why is it dangerous?

Mr. Jones.—Governments of earth are not dangerous when properly controlled.

Senator Blair.—They only say that a true theocracy is yet to come. A millennium is supposed to be coming; perhaps they have reference to a millennium that we have not yet got, so that they will wait some years before they get it.

Mr. Jones.—But I am going to read what kind of laws they propose to make to bring in the millennium.

Senator Blair.—So far as you have read, you have not touched the question; for they say a true theocracy

Page 60, “National Sunday Law.”

As the Sunday question is now a living issue, this treatise will be interesting to all classes, especially legislators, lawyers, judges, and other public men. The argument is

Based on Scripture and History, Constitution and Law,

Showing the limits of the civil power, the unconstitutionality of the Sunday bill, an analysis of the Sunday laws and other religious legislation of the different States, the Sunday-law movement of the fourth century, the Sunday-law movement of the nineteenth century, the methods used in securing inducements to the petition for the Blair bill, and the workings of such Sunday laws as are proposed for the United States.

The work contains one hundred and ninety-two pages. Price, 25 cents. Address,

AMERICAN SENTINEL,

1059 Castro St., Oakland, Cal.; 43 Bond St., New York.

Sunday Laws Used for Oppression

WE oppose Sunday laws not because the day is without divine authority, but because it is a religious institution, and because with matters of religious faith and practice civil government cannot of right have anything whatever to do. The innate iniquity of Sunday laws is well illustrated by the administration of such laws in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia, where they have been used not to preserve the peace of the community while a portion of its citizens are engaged in worship, but to oppress those who conscientiously observe another day in obedience, as they verily believe, to the divine command. In the States mentioned, as the readers of the AMERICAN SENTINEL are aware, men have been fined and imprisoned for digging potatoes, painting, plowing, and such other work.

But it may be urged that this is only enforcing the law; then why is it not enforced upon all alike? In all of these States, and in the very neighborhoods where the hand of the law has been laid upon these seventh-day worshipers, members of other churches and men who belong to no church at all have been permitted to violate the law with impunity, no complaint being made against them. The law has simply been used to harass those who hold views that are distasteful to the majority of the community in which they live. Such laws are a disgrace to any State.

Manipulating Sunday Law Petitions

A CORRESPONDENT writing to this paper from Placerville, California, under date of June 17, says:— “Yesterday the Presbyterian minister had a congregation of only seven persons, all ladies and one of them his wife. He embraced this opportunity to present the matter of a petition for a National Sunday law, which he did in this way. He said, ‘All who are in favor of keeping the Sabbath stand up.’ Of course all the seven arose. He then said, ‘My object in taking this vote is to send a petition to Congress for a Sunday law, and I wished to take the sense of the church.’ He also said that other churches were doing the same thing.”

Our correspondent says he can give the name of every member present at this meeting, and that the total membership of the church is over one hundred. This church will of course be reported as being unanimously in favor of a National Sunday law, and the entire membership will be counted as petitioners in favor of such a measure. This does not seem exactly honest to ordinary people, but it is in perfect keeping with National Reform methods.

Opposition to National Reform

By Editor

IN a recent letter to the Christian Statesman, written from Cincinnati, District Secretary Foster says that the Journal and Messenger of that city gave an article on National Reform a few weeks since. But Mr. Foster forgets to say that the article was in point blank opposition to his so-called reform movement. It is an excellent article, and so we give it to the readers of the SENTINEL. We wish that it could be read by all who imagine that only infidels are opposed to the schemes of these pseudo-reformers.

National Reform and Religious Despotism

THE Christian Statesman of July 4, quotes approvingly the words of Rev. W. D. Gray before the Missouri Sabbath Convention:—

“I do not believe that, as a political maxim, Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And so the object of this movement is an effort to change that feature in our fundamental law.”

These words need no comment, for they show positively and clearly that the object of both the National Reform Association and of the American Sabbath Union is to subvert the very principles of our Government and establish a religious despotism upon the ruins of our free institutions.

Methodist Sunday Legislation in Montana

JULY 10 a memorial was presented to the Helena Constitutional Convention from the Montana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, praying the convention to incorporate in the new constitution a clause providing for strict Sunday observance. Methodists were once persecuted for conscience' sake, but it seems that now they are themselves becoming persecutors. An article on another page of this paper shows how they are using the Sunday law of Tennessee to drive from the State those who conscientiously observe the seventh day, and at the same time their brethren in the North are laboring to make such things possible in Montana. Has Methodism lost its old-time power, that it is invoking the civil power in behalf of its dogmas?

Sunday Legislation and Equal Rights

ADVOCATES of Sunday legislation urge in behalf of their measure that they are willing to grant an exemption clause permitting Seventh-day people to do “private work” on Sunday at “almost anything except to open shop, which would interfere with the general rest.” But are seventh-day people the only ones who have any rights which are bound to be respected? How about others who have no conscientious scruples in regard to Sunday. Must they rest simply because others do?

Sunday Laws and Religious Duties

THE Denver, Colo., News is in favor of a Sunday law which shall respect the “rights of those who from religious motives keep another day,” and “also the rights of people who attach no religious significance whatever to any day.” That would be a very peculiar sort of a law, and totally unlike any Sunday law ever enacted, for it would apply only to those who believe that they ought to religiously observe the day. That being the case it would seem that they might get along very comfortably without such a law, but possibly some of them need it to reinforce their consciences. But much as we would like to see them gratified, we are not prepared to admit that the State has any just right to compel any man to perform even those religious duties which he freely admits that he should perform.

Sunday Rest and Religious Obligation

When the field secretary of the American Sabbath Union was before the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor last November, with the petition for a National Sunday law, the question was asked:—

“Could not this weekly rest-day be secured without reference to religion by having the workmen of each establishment scheduled in regular order for one day of rest per week, whichever was most convenient, not all resting on any one day?”

The answer was:—

“A weekly day of rest has never been permanently secured in any land except on the basis of religious obligation. Take the religion out and you take the rest out. Greed is so strong that nothing but God and conscience can keep him from capturing all the days for toil.”

And yet in the face of this it is denied that the Union is asking for religious legislation.

Welcome to the Western American

WE have received No. 1, Vol. 1, of the Western American, a paper published in Chicago, Illinois, “devoted to politics that will preserve liberty, civil and religious.” In his salutatory the editor says:—

“We shall courageously expose every attempt to unite Church and State, to secure fraudulently, public money for institutions under religious control, to weaken and in time destroy religious liberty.”

And again he says:—

“If the teachings of Christ mean anything, they command his followers to keep their hands and tongues out of politics, to concern themselves only with a government that is not of this world, and to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

We welcome the American to this field, and hope that it will prove true to its motto, and to its statement of principles. Certainly there are not at the present time too many papers to oppose this work of a union of Church and State.

Sunday Laws and Church-State Union

SUNDAY-LAW advocates persistently assert that they do not want a union of Church and State; that nothing could be further from their designs or desires. Nevertheless the logic of their position compels some of their leading spirits to confess the truth. An utterance of the Rev. T. H. Tatlow at the Missouri Sabbath Convention is an evidence of this:—

“The party of carnal policy protests, and cries out that this is uniting Church and State. The Christian replies: It is indeed a union, but limited, and applies only so far as two separate jurisdictions—the one spiritual and primary and the other secular and secondary—exercises each one its own appropriate authority, within its own individual province, to secure a two-fold good to the two-fold life of man.”

And what is such a union, but a union of Church and State? And if the spiritual jurisdiction is primary, must it not dominate the civil? That was exactly the state of affairs in Rome in the palmiest day of the Papacy.

The American Sentinel Welcomed

THE AMERICAN SENTINEL is always welcomed to our table. It is for religion; but religion free from the trammels of law. All experience has shown that a Church in alliance with the State proceeds at once to become a monstrous evil, and the religion of the devil. The thirst for power is natural to man, and the Churches of Rome and England have shown how religious men can abuse it. The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury are alike the enemies of all true religion, true liberty, and true humanity. They are bulwarks of barbarism.—Political Record, San Francisco.