p. 15 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 4. (1/23/1907)

Right to Differ

By John Clark Ridpath

"Proscription has no part nor lot in the modern government of the world. The stake, the gibbet, and the rack, thumbscrews, swords, and pillory, have no place among the machinery of civilization. Nature is diversified; so are human faculties, beliefs, and practises. Essential freedom is the RIGHT TO DIFFER, and that right must be sacredly respected." —John Clark Ridpath.

The Days of Rest

"If we can not trust free agents to regulate their own labor, its times and quantity, it is difficult to trust them to make their own contracts. If the Legislature could prescribe THE DAYS OF REST for them, then it would seem that the same power could prescribe the hours to work, rest, and eat. If the Legislature have the authority to appoint A TIME OF COMPULSORY REST, . . . it is without limit, and may extend to the prohibition of all occupations at all times."—Cal. Supreme Court, Ex. Parte Newman, 9 Cal., pp. 509, 518, 517, 510.

News and Notes

A DESPATCH from St. Petersburg says: "Russia is getting seriously alarmed about the threatened renewal of hostilities in the far East. Not only is Japan making colossal warlike preparations, but under her influence China is also sharpening her sword."

MORE railroad track has been laid during the year 1906 than in any year since 1888, in all 6,067.40 miles, at an approximate aggregate cost of $250,000,000. The most extensive building has been in the Southwestern states, the least being in the New England states.

A PRESENT of one hundred sausages, a pyramid of salt ornaments and several dozen hard-boiled eggs may seem strange for an emperor, but such is the traditional custom in Germany on New Year's Day. The salt works in the neighborhood of Halle made the present to the kaiser.

THE first official step toward ameliorating the awful conditions in the Congo Free State was taken recently when the government pledged itself to support any steps taken by the British Government along that line. King Leopold's extensive rubber concessions to Americans in the Congo territory are not to stand in the way of reform, it is promised.

PHYSICIANS who prescribe eggs as the chief item of food for consumptives can certainly find no fault with a Chicago girl in a Denver sanitarium who consumed 4,000 eggs during the year 1906, an average of eleven a day. According to other figures given, this is but little above the average number in several similar institutions for consumptives in Denver.

CONDITIONS in Russia are becoming more and more alarming especially among the laboring classes. At Lodz all the factories have been closed indefinitely, and over 100,000 persons are idle as a result of Socialist and militia control. Those who are willing to accept the employers' terms are prevented by the extreme Socialists who threaten to murder all who yield.

CLASS LEGISLATION

By Editor

PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE in hour of the California Conference on another page. It meets at 2:30 p.m. The mistake was in the copy furnished us.

OUR STATE LEGISLATORS thruout the country will, in the nature of the case, be compelled to hear much of the appeal for Sunday laws; will they not take a little time to read the other side?

BRETHREN IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY, why not trust in the power of the Gospel to secure better observance of Sunday? Coercion can not reach hearts. You may compel a man to obey outwardly a law which human beings have no right to enforce. But how have you helped him? He is not attracted to the Gospel. He does not love you more because you have endeavored to make him seem religious. The glory of Protestantism has been that in principle it has held to the absolute non-interference of the civil magistrate in things religious, and the church has held Jesus Christ and His word to be all-sufficient in saving men. Why not preach the Gospel and leave results with God? Is He not worthy of being trusted?

WHEN ONE SO LOVES SELF that he turns from Christ and His word, he is very apt to charge his disaffection or defection to the failures that professors of religion have made. This is a common excuse of unbelievers. They never stop to think of the mistakes and blunders and sins and crimes of the unbelieving ones, or even of themselves, who set up their own opinion as superior to God's word. Granting all the blunders and sins and crimes of those who belong to the ranks of Christianity, yet how small in number they are compared with those who prove false to Christ and His cause. It is natural for men to choose the pleasant paths of least resistance. It is easy to drift with the tide in the do-nothing negatives of life. To move upward, tho Christ furnish all the power, demands manhood.

CLASS LEGISLATION.

It is a deadly poison, says the California Sunday EXTRA SIGNS, which these reform organizations are injecting into our government and body politic. It is deranging and perverting every just principle of liberty and humanity. It is sacrificing man to institutions, principles of right to popular prejudices, right or wrong. That government which exalts in its laws institutions at the expense of human rights, will always and forever be guilty of class legislation and subject to class prejudices, traditions, bickerings, strifes, jealousies, and, eventually, utter ruin. For instance, the so-called "American Sunday" is a CLASS institution, and nothing else. It is a RELIGIOUS class institution. People MAY observe it who will, but they have neither human nor divine right to say that he must observe or honor it who elects otherwise. Nay, more, they have no right to say that HE MUST honor it who elects so to do. The honor or observance is elective; the right of choice is universal, vested in the individual, and dominant over all civil authority whatsoever. The observance or non-observance of the institution is a matter of conscience between the individual and the being he may call God, but it is not a matter with which the State has any right to interfere, except to guard the equal rights of all her citizens and subjects.

A SUNDAY BILL.—The Sacramento "Evening Bee," of January 9, has the following:

By Editor

"The Church people of the State have signified their intention of trying to get a bill thru the present Legislature that will close every saloon in the State on Sunday and cause recreative amusements to be barred on that day. Not only will fun be curtailed, but any kind of unnecessary work will not be allowed. The bill will provide against Sunday street labor, renting of livery rigs, boats, automobiles, or balloons, and if you have a chug-car or bicycle of your own, you can not get in a repair shop to have it fixed in case you break down."

The "Bee" further says: "Paradoxical as it may seem, a religious denomination is to take up arms with the sporting element and fight the measure," referring to Seventh-day Adventists. Let us say that the Seventh-day Adventist attitude in this matter is that of protest against all religious legislation. All history shows that religious legislation has ever been a curse to the church and a curse to the State. It makes one class persecutors, another hypocrites, another the persecuted. If Sunday is of God, it will stand of itself if its devotees are loyal. If it has no inherent strength or worth let it die. And this also of the Seventh-day Sabbath or any other religious institution.

It is not in the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine what religion is true or what false. Our government is a civil and not a religious institution. Our Constitution recognizes in every person the right to choose his own religion, and to enjoy it freely without molestation. THE PROPER OBJECT OF GOVERNMENT IS to protect all persons in the enjoyment of their civil as well as their religious rights, and NOT TO DETERMINE FOR ANY WHETHER THEY SHALL ESTEEM ONE DAY ABOVE ANOTHER, or esteem all days alike holy. What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as RIGHTS of which government can not deprive any portion of citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them.—United States Senate Report, 1829.

HUMAN GOVERNMENT is a device not to protect the many against the few, but the few against the many; not to protect the strong against the weak, but the weak against the strong. Religious tyranny always puts it the other way.

THE PRICE OF THIS ISSUE is, up to 20 copies, five cents each; from 25 to 75 copies, three cents each; 100 copies or more at the rate of two and one-half cents each. Order soon and give it a wide circulation.

THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES makes no plea of liberty for itself or those who support it, or for any class whatsoever. Its plea is for the man, be he Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile, believer or infidel.

"Among all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for the violation of what government denominated the law of God."—United States Senate Report, 1829.

IN THIS ISSUE.

By Editor

GENERAL ARTICLES.

Christ or Diana. Our Allegiance to the State. Questions, 1984-1988. The Great Salvation. "Time's Noblest Offspring." The Man, the Person, the Individual. Whose Is This Image and Superscription? Equality of Rights. Some Observations on the State and Individual. A Faithful Warning. Moral Freedom. "Servant Girl Problem." Men Bought and Sold. France and the Vatican. Labor Supports Church for Sunday Observance. Some of the Year's Tragedies.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Christ Saving Peter (Plockhorst) Christ or Diana (Long) The Crucifixion of Jesus (Munkascy) "Behold the Man!" (Hofmann) Church of the Madeline, Paris.

POETRY.

True Freedom. Liberty Versus Tyranny. Heroes Wanted. "When Wilt Thou Save Thy People?"

True Religious Liberty

TRUE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY is liberty for the other man. No man truly believes in religious liberty unless he is willing to grant; nay, more, to demand it.

A CHARGE TO THE MINISTERS OF GOD.

By Peter the Apostle

"THE ELDERS which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: FEED THE FLOCK OF GOD which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither AS BEING LORDS OVER GOD'S HERITAGE, but being ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away."—Peter the Apostle.

THE TRUE MAN.

HE stood upon the world's broad threshold wide, The din of battle and of slaughter rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side That sank in seeming loss before its foes; Many there were that made great haste and sold Unto the cunning enemy their swords; He scorned their gifts of fame and power and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss, therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part; Fanatic named and fool, yet well content, So he could be the nearer to God's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Thru all the wide-spread veins of endless good. —James Russell Lowell.

"Not that we have lordship over your faith; but are helpers of your joy; for in faith ye stand fast."—Paul.