17. Because they deprive a considerable and respectable portion of the Christian community the observers of the seventh day of one sixth of their rightful working time. 19. Because they make criminal on Sunday acts which on any other day of the week are considered perfectly lawful and right. Honest toil and innocent recreation and amusement, while not consistent with proper Sabbath observance, are not crimes on any day. Crimes are not determined by the day of the week upon which they were committed. 20. Because they withhold from one class of citizens what they freely permit to another, the right to six days' work,- simply because of a difference in religious belief. 21. Because the penalizing of religious belief and inoffensive religious practice is no part of the business of the state. 22. Because the power that makes a law is the only power authorized to compel its enforcement. One State or one nation never enforces the laws of another State or another nation. Should it attempt to do so, the act would be a plain implication that the other power was unable to enforce its own laws, and therefore was nonexistent as a governing institution. When, therefore, a demand is made that the state enforce the law of God, it is a plain implication that the Ruler of the universe is unable to enforce his own laws, and that his government is non-existent. This attempt of human government to strengthen, defend, and enforce the decrees of divine government is not merely the most ridiculous of absurdities, but is positively blasphemous when its import is fully understood. Uzzah's attempt to steady the ark of God was of the same nature. The ark of God contained the law of God, the symbol of God's government. Uzzah thought that unless supported by his hand, it must fall. God in his dealing with Uzzah, taught the world a lesson which never ought to need a repetition. The incidents recorded in the third and sixth chapters of Daniel, in another way, teach the same lesson. - 23. Because, as stated in the Sunday Mail Reports adopted by Congress in 1829 and 1830, they are an attempt to settle a religious controversy - the question of which day is the Sabbath — by law. 24. Because Sunday laws are contrary to the principles of the gospel and of good government, and are in direct conflict with the law of God. They enforce a rival to the Sabbath appointed by Jehovah. If it is wrong for the state to enter the domain of religion and require the sabbatical observance of the day divinely appointed, it cannot be right for it to enter this domain and enforce the sabbatical observance of a day not thus appointed. Convenient tools for 25. Because they are convenient tools for the inquisitor, and are persecuting in character. They imply that certain men have a right persecution. not only to interpret God's law for their fellow-men, but to execute vengeance upon those whom they pronounce transgressors of that law. The Sunday Mail Reports adopted by Congress in 1829 and 1830 spoke correctly against such laws when they said: "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." "If a solemn act of legislation shall, in one point, define the law of God, or point out to the citizen one religious duty, it may, with equal propriety, proceed to define every part of divine revelation, and enforce every religious obligation, even to the forms and ceremonies of worship, the endowment of the church, and the support of the clergy." "When man unman becomes dertakes to become God's avenger, he becomes a demon. Driven by the frenzy of a religious zeal, he loses every gentle feeling, forgets the most sacred precepts of his creed, and becomes ferocious and unrelenting." As an avenger, a demon. The same principle involved. IN CONFLICT WITH INALIENABLE RIGHTS. All Sunday laws are religious, and are in conflict with constitutional and inalienable rights. It is a well-established American principle that the taking of money from an individual by way of taxation for the support of an established religion, is a denial of religious liberty. Exactly the same principle is involved in the taking of a portion of time from the weekly calendar of every man's time for the support, maintenance, or preservation of an established religious rest day. One is a tax in money, the other in time. The principle is the same in either case. Sunday legislation, therefore, is no more defensible than is any other form of taxation for the support of religion. WHAT IS THE EQUIVALENT?' Upon Anglo-Saxon principles of government, and unquestionably the perfect governmental principle of justice, no citizen can be required to surrender the personal exercise of any of his natural rights without an equivalent. By this principle in this government of the people, even in the case of war, when "the people" would be fighting in plain self-defense, no man is ever required to leave his home and Anglo-Saxon his personal affairs of natural right without receiving a definite and principle. regular recompense. By this principle, under the exercise of the governmental right of eminent domain, the state cannot take the property of any citizen without the recompense of a fair valuation. The 1 From a speech of Mr. A. T. Jones before the House Committee on the District of Columbia, on the Johnston District Sunday bill, March 8, 1910. But by Sunday laws, through enforced rest, the state deprives each citizen of one seventh of his time and effort. The right to acquire and to enjoy property, in itself, includes the right to the means and to the use of the means to acquire property. Time and effort, therefore, are property. By Sunday laws, the state, through enforced rest one whole day in seven, deprives each citizen of one-seventh of his time and effort, and thus, in effect, of one-seventh of his property. And what is the equivalent?-Just nothing at all or worse. For a day of enforced rest is nothing but a day of enforced idleness. What Sunday laws do, therefore, is, by governmental force, to deprive every citizen, for one whole day in each week, of his natural right of honest occupation; and the only shadow of equivalent given in return for this is the consequent enforced idleness. But idleness is no equivalent at all for the time and effort of honest occupation. General idleness voluntary is only mischievous; general idleness enforced is far worse. Industry, industry, honest occupation, not idleness, is the life of the state. And to put upon idleness the enormous premium of making honest industry a crime to be punished by fine and imprisonment, is nothing less than governmentally suicidal. The originators and promoters of Sunday legislation know this. They know that this proposition is true; that enforced rest is enforced idleness, and therefore is mischievous. Accordingly, on that side, it has been said, and it stands in print as accepted doctrine with them, that taking religion out of the day takes the rest out."1 This is profoundly true. And that truth fixes it that the obligations and sanctions of a day of rest can come only from God, the Fountain of religion; for he, and only he, can supply the religion, which is the only possible equivalent of a required day of rest. From their true premise that "taking religion out of the day takes the rest out," that religion is the only possible equivalent of required rest, it follows inevitably that from some source there must be supplied the religion which shall make effective the rest which Sunday laws enforce. Time and effort are property. Enforced idleness the only equivalent. Honest industry made a crime. Religion essential to permanent weekly rest. But it being enforced rest, this essential religion cannot possibly come from God, for the government of God is not of force. Neither can it come from the state, for the state is not religious, and cannot supply what it has not. But, lo! here is the church, the church combine, that originated this legislation, and that for more than twenty years has been diligently pressing it upon Congress! She is fully the religion. ready to supply exactly the religion that is fitting to this enforced rest. The situation, then, is this: Taking religion out of the rest day takes the rest out of the religious day. The church combine demands 1 See ante page 732. Church will supply that the state shall enforce the rest, and she will supply the religion that is essential to the rest. And they will give you no rest until they do, you may be sure of that. The sum of the whole matter, then, is simply this: Upon their professed claim that it is merely and only to secure a rest day as a civic and economic measure, the legislation is economically and governmentally suicidal. Through the operation of law enforcing a day of rest, the church crowds herself upon the state as the only means of supplying the religion that is essential to required rest. Thus there is forced upon the state a union of church and state as the inevitable consequence of this legislation. And that can only sink the state. Accordingly, both in its direct workings and in its consequences, Sunday legislation is evil, only evil, and that continually. Sunday. law logic. Religious statute essential to free gov. ernment. The conclusion does not follow. DO SUNDAY LAWS PRESERVE A NATION ?1 The advocates of Sunday laws frequently make the claim that such laws are essential to the preservation and stability of civil governThe following are samples: ment. In his work "The Sabbath for Man," page 248, Rev. W. F. Crafts says: "It is the conviction of the majority that the nation cannot be preserved without religion, nor religion without the Sabbath, nor the Sabbath without laws, therefore Sabbath laws are enacted by the right of self-preservation, not in violation of liberty, but for its protection." Dr. R. C. Wylie, in his "Sabbath Laws in the United States," page 231, says: 66 Our free government would be impossible without our Christian civilization; our civilization is produced and perpetuated by the Christian religion; the Christian religion cannot exist without the Christian church; the Christian church would languish and die without assemblies for public worship; assemblies for worship are impossible without a day of rest; a day of rest needs the protection of statute law." Even if it were admitted that religion and the Sabbath are essential to the preservation and stability of civil government, it would not follow that these should be enforced by civil law, or that that kind of religion or that kind of Sabbath which is enforced by civil law, or which needs the aid of civil law for its own preservation, can save the nation. The very fact that any religion or any Sabbath needs the aid of civil law for its own preservation is proof that there is no 1 By the editor of the revised edition of this work. salvation in it. If it cannot stand without the help of the government, it surely cannot uphold or preserve the government. The fallacy in these arguments lies in the statements that the Sabbath cannot be preserved without laws," and that a day of rest needs the protection of statute law." Benjamin Franklin never spoke more wisely nor more truly than when he said: When religion is good, it will take care of itself; when it is not able to take care of itself, and God does not see fit to take care of it, so that it has to appeal to the civil power for support, it is evidence to my mind that its cause is a bad one." At a mass meeting held in the New York Avenue Presbyterian church in Washington, D. C., February 26, 1908, in the interest of Sunday legislation, Justice Harlan, of the Supreme Court of the United States, who presided, said: "I have always felt very keenly upon this subject of the Sabbath day, not that I have kept it as I ought to; but I firmly believe that next to the marriage relation the proper observance of the Sabbath day is at the very basis of our civilization. A nation without a sabbath is a civilization that is rotten rotten to the core. You cast your eye over the nations of to-day, and I think without an exception the nations that turn the Sabbath day into a holiday and a day of amusement are on the down grade." Franklin's utterance. Justice Harlan's reasoning. The statement It is quite proper for men to feel keenly over the subject of the Sabbath day, but it is quite another thing for them to become anxious for a Sabbath law. It may be true, and doubtless is true, that next analyzed. to the marriage relation the proper observance of the Sabbath day lies at the very foundation of many of our greatest blessings; but because this is so, it no more follows that the proper observance of the Sabbath day" can be secured by law, than that proper marriage relations can be secured by law; or that Sabbath observance should be made compulsory and enforced by law, any more than that marriage should be made compulsory and enforced by law. Both those who observe the Sabbath and those who marry should receive the protection of law; but there should be compulsion in neither case. A nation without a Sabbath may be a civilization rotten to the core, but it does not follow that a nation should have a Sabbath law. Any one needs but to cast his eye over the nations, both of to-day and of the past, to learn that the nations that have and that have had Sunday laws are the ones that have turned their Sabbath day into a holiday and a day of amusement, and are either extinct or on the down grade. The Roman empire had Sabbath laws galore, but the Roman empire is no more. In a word, and to sum it all up, proper Sabbath observance never has been and never can be produced by human Sabbath laws, and therefore, though the existence of the world itself depended upon such observance, it could not be preserved by such laws. The sav Sabbath laws turn day into holiday. |