THE present is an era of Sunday closing. The times seem to be propitious for such a crusade; for the reason that a great temperance wave is sweeping over the country, and in its wake comes an unparalleled demand for rigid enforcement of all Sunday laws. It is a shrewd movement on the part of the Sunday people. There are many who favor the Sunday closing of saloons who are not in favor of rigid enforcement of Sunday laws in other respects; but when the law is enforced against saloons, the saloon keepers and their friends say, "If we must obey the Sunday law, all others must do the same." And so they insist on enforcing the extreme letter of the law, no matter how great hardship it works many people; and so it often happens that the people wake up to find that the laws are much more rigid than they ever supposed them to be, and that even the sale of food, milk, ice, etc., is unlawful. on Sunday but on other days as well: and we cannot but view with alarm the use that is being made of the temperance sentiment to further the strict enforcement of Sunday, not merely as a day when tired toilers who wish to do so may rest, but when all the people, whether tired or not, must rest, and must observe the day by abstaining not only from their ordinary employment, but from every form of secular pursuit, including those KING CHARLES II Charles II was the father of our American Sunday laws, since practically all of them are modeled after the law promulgated by him in 1676. But it will be asked, Why not modify the law then, so as to permit the sale of needful things on Sunday, while still prohibiting the traffic in liquor? That is not, however, an easy thing to do. The saloon keepers and their friends insist that if any change is made, it shall redound to their benefit as well as to the benefit of the poor people who, not being able to have ice chests and to buy twenty-five or fifty pounds of ice at a time, and two days' supply of perishable provisions, must do without, even though it may mean actual suffering for tender infants. and fever-parched patients. We are opposed to saloons, not only forms of recreation not wrong in themselves, nor out of keeping for a civi rest day, but not consonant with a religious day. The fact is that every effort and expedient possible is being put forth and invoked to fasten upon the American people the legalized Puritan sabbath, under the name of the "civil Sunday," which is absolutely nothing but a religious institution intrenched in civil laws and enforced by the policeman's club. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," but it is a price that many people are not willing to pay; and so liberty is subverted, not at the behest of the majority, but at the demand of an aggressive minority holding the balance of power and ready to cooperate with any element they can use to further their own end, the exaltation of Sunday as a religious institution. We may be sure that no stone will be left unturned to further the ends of the Sunday law forces. Their theocratic theory of civil government impels them to the adoption of any measure that promises success. The friends of liberty of conscience should be no less tireless and even more vigilant than the enemies of soul freedom. National Reformers Want Death Sentence Pronounced on Promoters of "Liberty" C. S. LONGACRE IN the October issue of the Christian Statesman the promoters of the LIBERTY MAGAZINE are declared to be guilty of treason against the government because they dissent from the ideas of the National Reformers, and from their schemes to establish "a national religion" in the American Republic. A person guilty of treason against the government merits. the death penalty. What we have predicted time and again is now made manifest; namely, that the last step taken by the advocates of a compulsory religion would be to invoke the death penalty upon all dissenters and nonconformists. The Christian Statesman takes the LIBERTY MAGAZINE to task for making the following statement: --- If the government should, through its lawmaking branch, act regarding the Sabbath, it would be legislating concerning a religious establishment. That would be opposed to the national Constitution. . . . The Sabbath [enforced by law], whether regarded as occurring on the seventh day or the first day, is altogether an establishment of religion. The Christian Statesman makes the following comments: Of course all intelligent readers, will see the absurdity of the statement in the quotation given above, that “the Sabbath is an establishment of religion." The statement is so supremely absurd that it needs no refutation. It is enough merely to call attention to it. . . . It is throwing dust in people's eyes to say that it is a religious institution. But now note well this admission if you want to see the absurdity made still more absurd. The very next statement made by the Christian Statesman is this: It [the Sunday] certainly is a religious institution, but that does not mean that it is wholly a church institution. What a mistake to refer to the statuteintrenched Sunday as "a religious establishment"! Is not Sunday a religious institution? and when established by law, is it not in that sense a religious establishment? Of course the Christian Statesman would like to make it appear that the words "establishment of religion," as used in the First Amendment to our national Constitution, refer only to the setting up of a fully equipped state church; but it is evident that the fathers of the republic intended them to have no such . restricted meaning. The phrase "respecting an establishment of religion," must be understood in the light of the words immediately following it, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Therefore, to intrench any religious observance, institution, or custom in the law of the land is to that extent to set up or establish a religion, or, in other words, to erect a religious establishment. Is not Sunday such an institution? It is certainly religious. Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, a stanch defender of the principles promulgated by the Christian Statesman, makes the following statement: 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. Impossible to Extract Religion This makes it very clear that the Sunday law advocates want religion enforced, and are unable to separate religion from the Sabbath. We submit that any pretense that the Sabbath is a civil institution is nothing short of a deception and a fraud. The Christian Statesman continues: There can be no ecclesiastical sabbath unless there is a civil sabbath. No one can keep the Sabbath ecclesiastically if he does not keep it civilly. What logic! Let us apply it to some other ecclesiastical institutions, and see where it leads us. The Lord's Supper, the Lord's Prayer, and Christian baptism are all in a sense ecclesiastical, and they are certainly of divine origin. Does the Christian Statesman mean to say that these are also civil institutions and cannot exist unless legally enforced by the state? Certainly its logic would lead to this conclusion. We candidly admit, however, that it is just as legitimate to enforce the Lord's Supper and Christian forced the observance of the Lord's Supper, Christian baptism, the Lord's Prayer, and Sunday as the Lord's Day. It even made church attendance and church support compulsory. The penalty for the violation of any of these compulsory observances ranged all the way from imprisonment or standing in the stocks, to a cruel death on the gibbet, on the rack. or at the stake. The people of the United A case wherein a double death sentence was imposed under the Puritan theocracy in colonial Massachusetts. Martha Corey, standing near the center of the picture, was condemned for witchcraft, and hanged. Her husband, Giles Corey, standing just behind her with his hand on her arm, was pressed to death for contumacy in refusing to plead to the indictment against him on the same charge. baptism by the police power as it is to enforce the observance of the Lord's Day. All are religious, and the Lord's Supper and baptism are unquestionably of divine origin. If it is wrong to enforce the Lord's Supper at certain intervals and compel all men to observe it, then it is wrong to enforce the Lord's Day by civil statute. In medieval times when the church dominated the state, the civil powers en States repudiated every Sunday Observance Not of The Christian Statesman further says: Just now it matters not how, when, or where it [the Sabbath] originated, although we hold that it is divine, and that by divine, not Roman Catholic, authority it has been fixed on the first day of the week. The best way to settle this question as to whether the Lord authorized the transfer of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week or whether the Catholic Church effected this change, is for the Christian Statesman to make good its assertion that the Sabbath has been fixed on the first day of the week by divine authority. Let it supply just one text from the Bible stating that the Lord commanded or authorized the observance of the first day of the week as the Sabbath, or Lord's Day, or as a rest day, either civil or religious. If the Christian Statesman will promise not to Leaders of the National Reform Association, of which the Christian Statesman is the official organ. They are cultured gentlemen, as were also the leaders in the Puritan theocracy. or ecclesiastical legislation concerning the matter of Sunday observance earlier than the fourth century after Christ, or after the commencement of the great apostasy when the world was about to enter the Dark Ages. Constantine, Not Christ, Introduced Sunday Laws We are prepared to prove that Constantine the Great promulgated the first Sunday law in A. D. 321, in honor of "the venerable day of the sun," instead of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We Sabbath, or Lord's Day. Some of the early synods sanctioned the observance of both Saturday and Sunday. The Council of Laodicea, held between A. D. 343 and A. D. 381, was the first one that made Sunday observance obligatory upon all, irrespective of divergent faith, under pain of excommunication." The Council of Sardica directly' specified that if any one neglected divine service on three consecutive Sundays, "he is to be excommunicated." The Council of Orleans, in A. D. 538, went a step farther by authorizing the bishops instead of the Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.- Constitution of the United States, Art. III, Sec. 3. laity or civil authorities to punish all who refused to observe Sunday. Under the church-and-state system of the Middle Ages, the edicts of the church councils became the laws of the state. Sunday Laws Religious for Fifteen Hundred Years The canons of the church councils prove that Sunday is a religious institu JAMES MADISON, THE FATHER OF OUR NATIONAL CONSTITUTION tion, and of ecclesiastical, not divine, origin. Nobody will contend that the medieval Sunday legislation was other than ecclesiastical and religious. It was the same in the seventeenth century. The Act of the Twenty-ninth of Charles II, chap. 7, issued in 1676, was the law in force up to the time of the Revolutionary War, and was the basis of American Sunday laws. The preamble to the act states its object to be, in part, "that all laws enacted and in force concerning the observance of the day, and repairing to church thereon, be carefully put in execution; and that all and every person and persons whatsoever shall upon the Lord's Day apply themselves. to the observation of the same, by exercising themselves thereon in the duties of piety and true religion, publicly and pri vately." How men can call Sun- The "Christian Statesman" The Christian Statesman finally hurls its anathema against its opponents, and particularly against the promoters of the LIBERTY MAGAZINE, in the following threatening charge of treason against the government: It is necessary either to silence the guns of the enemy or to render their fire harmless. . . . If we cannot silence this battery of the enemy, it surely should not be allowed to do harm to our historic institutions. . . . Whenever any one's theory of liberty leads to the invasion of the liberty of others, it is surely fallacious. Whenever it invades the right of the nation itself, it is doubly fallacious. Opposition to Sabbath laws does invade those rights. But when it would uproot the fundamental principle of government that nations sustain relations to God and his law-it is treason. This shows clearly that if the National Reform Association ever succeeds in getting its policies incorporated into law, it will reinstate the gibbet, the rack, and the stake for all dissenters and nonconformists, and deny the right of free speech, free press, and of petition for redress of grievances. Every protest sent to the governmental authorities concerning an oppressive statute would be regarded as an invasion of the right and authority of |