SUNDAY CLOSING OF THE JAMESTOWN 1906. BILL APPROPRIATING $250,000 AGREED TO JUNE 29, 1906.1 Sunday closing That in aid of the said Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is hereby appropriated. . . . Provided, That as a condition precedent to the payment of this appropriation in aid of said exposition, the Jamestown proviso. Exposition Company shall agree to close the grounds of the said exposition to visitors on Sunday during the period of said exposition.2 1 H. R. 19844, and Public Document No. 383, fifty-ninth Congress, first session, page 78. 2 For this exposition, celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of the first permanent settlement in the United States, held at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1907, Congress appropriated, altogether, over one million dollars. As with previous expositions, through the strenuous efforts of Sunday-rest organizations and Sunday-law agitators, the opposition met in the House was overcome, and a Sunday-closing rider was finally secured to a portion of this. Thus, in a four-page leaflet, entitled "The American Sabbath Union," issued about this time, appeared the following: "The International Federation of Sunday Rest Associations of the United States and Canada, has been the main agency by which the following clause was inserted in the bill making the appropriation: The grounds of the exposition shall be closed on Sundays.' This is another grand victory for the Sabbath cause. The American Sabbath Union, as one of the constituent organizations of this International Federation, labored diligently and continuously for months, in connection with other associations, to achieve this great triumph." The following note, headed "Complete Sunday Closing of Jamestown Exposition Assured," accompanying a "syndicate article from Wilbur F. Crafts, Washington, D. C., released May 31 (1906)," throws additional light upon the subject: "The battle for the complete Sunday closing of the gates of the Jamestown Exposition has been fully won. The Committee of Congress reported in favor of closing only the exhibits and amusements' not the gates. The superintendent of the International Reform Bureau went to Norfolk and persuaded the exposition management to vote complete closing, and the law will therefore close the gates by contract. (Signed) Wilbur F. Crafts." Secured through strenuous efforts of religious organizations. How it was done. Jan. 29, 1908. A MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS.' INTRODUCED IN BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS JANUARY 29, 1908. To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives in Congress Assembled: Your memorialists respectfully represent that the body of Christian believers with which they are connected, the Seventh-day Adventists, and whose views they represent, has a growing membership residing in every State and Territory in the Union; that nearly all these members are native-born American citizens; A body of and that it is supporting missionaries and has a following in every continent of the world. It is a Protestant body, which was established in this country about sixty years ago. Christian believers. We recognize the authority and dignity of the American Congress, as being the highest law-making power in the land, to whose guidance and fostering care have been committed the manifold interests of this great country; and our justification for presentObject of ing this memorial to your honorable body is that we are not seeking to direct your attention to any private or class concerns, but to principles which are fundamental to the stability and prosperity of the whole nation. We therefore earnestly ask your consideration of the representation which we herewith submit. memorial. CHURCH AND STATE DIVINELY ORDAINED. We believe in civil government as having been divinely ordained for the preservation of the peace of society, and for the protection of all citizens in the Object of enjoyment of those inalienable rights which are the highest gift to man from the Creator. We regard properly constituted civil authority as supreme in the sphere in which it is legitimately exercised, and we civil gov ernment as ordained of God. 1 Printed in the "Congressional Record" of January 29, 1908, pages 1281, 1282. conceive its proper concern to be "the happiness and We heartily profess the Christian faith, and have no higher ambition than that we may consistently exemplify its principles in our relations to our fellowmen and to the common Father of us all. We cheerfully devote our time, our energies, and our means to the evangelization of the world, proclaiming those primitive principles and doctrines of the gospel which were interpreted anew to mankind by the Saviour of the world, and which were the fundamental truths maintained by the church in apostolic times. We regard the Holy Scriptures as the sufficient and infallible rule of faith and practice, and consequently discard as binding and essential all teachings and rituals which rest merely upon tradition and custom. THE TWO SPHERES DISTINCT. Respect thority. Highest ambition of memorialists. Holy Scriptures guide in sufficient religious matters. Separation While we feel constrained to yield to the claims. of civil government and religion, as both being of divine origin, we believe their spheres to be quite distinct the one from the other, and that the stability of the republic and the highest welfare of all citizens demand the complete separation of church and state. of church The legitimate purposes of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," are clearly defined in the preamble of the national Constitution to be to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the and state. Founders of nation wisely excluded religion from legislation. The principle abundantly justified. History gives solemn warning. general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty" to all. All these aims are of a temporal nature, and grow out of the relations of man to man. The founders of the nation, recognizing that “the duty which we owe our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can only be directed by reason and conviction, and is nowhere cognizable but at the tribunal of the universal Judge," wisely excluded religion from the concerns of civil government, not because of their indifference to its value, but because, being primarily a matter of the heart and conscience, it did not come within the jurisdiction of human laws or civil compacts. The recognition of the freedom of the mind of man and the policy of leaving the conscience untrammeled by legislative enactments have been abundantly justified by a record of national development and prosperity which is unparalleled in history. This is the testimony of our own experience to the wisdom. embodied in the principle enunciated by the divine Teacher of Christianity: "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's." WHAT GOD PUT ASUNDER MAN SHOULD NOT UNITE. We, therefore, view with alarm the first indication of a departure from this sound principle. In the history of other nations of the world, where church and state have been united to a greater or less degree, or where the struggle to separate them is now in progress, we have a warning, ofttimes written in blood, against the violation of this doctrine which lies at the foundation of civil and religious liberty. We affirm that it is inconsistent with sound reasoning to profess firm adherence to this principle of the separation of church and state, and at the same time endeavor to secure an alliance between religion and the state, since in principle. the church is simply religion in its organized and concrete expression; and, furthermore, that the same au Church and state and religion and state same thing thority which can distinguish between the different religions demanding recognition, and give preference to one to the exclusion of the others, can with equal right and equal facility distinguish between the different denominations or factions of the same religion, and dispense to one advantages which it denies to the others. These considerations ought to make it doubly clear that what God has put asunder, man ought not separate. to attempt to join together. A LESSON FROM HISTORY. Should remain Early Christians and the Ro man state. A reversal A more specific reference to an important period of history may illustrate and enforce the affirmations. herein set forth. Under a complete union of a heathen religion and the state, with extreme pains and penalties for dissenters, the first disciples, directed by the divine commission, proclaimed the doctrines of Christianity throughout the Roman empire. For nearly three centuries the warfare of suppression and extinction was waged by this haughty power, glorying in the superiority of its own religion, against non-resistant but unyielding adherents to the right to worship according to the dictates of their own consciences. Then came a reversal of the unsuccessful policy, and what of the policy. former emperors had vainly sought to destroy, Constantine as a matter of governmental expediency embraced, and Christianity became the favored religion. Then began that period of "indescribable hypocrisy" in religion, and of sycophancy and abuse of power in the state. "The apparent identification of the state and the church by the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the empire, altogether confounded ity adopted the limits of ecclesiastical and temporal jurisdiction. religion. The dominant party, when it could obtain the support of the civil power for the execution of its intolerant edicts, was blind to the dangerous and unchristian principles which it tended to establish. . . . Chris Christian as the state |