religious combinations to effect a political et are always dangerous, and that when political institutions of a country begin to under pressure from such a combination end cannot long be delayed, and that we read in the catastrophe of other nations = that end must be.

he intelligent reader needs only to be reled that there are not merely one but a ber of such organizations operating in this try, altogether trying to effect a religious et by political means. That they will be essful in the end there is little room to t; but that such success can be delayed so true. To effect this delay is a part at = of the mission of LIBERTY magazine.

Sabbath Legislation and Liberty

HE following from pages 399 and 400 of the Christian Statesman for September, 3, is enlightening:

Legislation is essential for religious liberty. bath legislation is essential for Sabbath rty. No legislation should dictate to a man t he is to believe; nor can it compel him to to church. But legislation should protect 1 in his right to Sabbath rest and worship. hould say: No smoke from those tall chims on the first day of the week. Stop those eels on the Lord's day. Run no street cars t are not necessary for church purposes or er works of necessity and mercy. No noise m pienies on that day. No baseball to disb the rest and worship of the day. day papers to be sold on the street any re than potatoes or strawberries. No ice am and soda water and cigars may be sold the Sabbath in drug stores or elsewhere. a law does not protect the Sabbath, there grave danger that its observance will be ly weakened, if not destroyed.

No

Right Sabbath legislation protects liberty. protects the rights of society to a Sabbath. protects the morality of the nation. It prots the individual. It protects the laboring n."

We deny the opening asseveration of the regoing; namely, that "legislation is essential - religious liberty." It is no more true than at legislation is essential for freedom in writg or speaking. The law is supposed only to bid the doing (1) of things that are wrong se, that is, in and of themselves; and (2) things that are wrong because of conditions, surrounding circumstances.

For examples of the first class we might ce offenses against person, property, or repution. To the second class belong laws against e pollution of streams, the creating and mainining of nuisances, wasteful killing of game taking of fish, the setting of fires in forest on the prairie, shooting within corporate

limits, ete. Thomas Jefferson states the principle thus:

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him; every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him; and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage When the laws have of an impartial third. declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right."

The keeping of the Sabbath cannot be shown to come within this category. To the Christian man such observance is a religious service. To all others a day free from labor or business is simply a holiday to be used as the individual sees fit, having, of course, due regard to the equal rights of others.

We have said, and we here repeat it, that we find no fault with laws that seek only to secure to all men the right to a weekly rest day. Let the courts close on Sunday, as they have long done; let public offices be closed, as is now and has long been the case; let no man in time of peace be required to perform any service for the public on a day set apart by his religion as a day of rest. But at the same time require no man to regard any day merely because others regard it as sacred, provided his activities are not of a nature necessarily to interfere with the right of others to rest upon that day.

We have holidays - days when offices are closed, when banks suspend business, when courts do not sit, when schools are dismissed, and when the wheels of industry and of business are very generally silent. But we compel nobody to observe such days. These are permissive breathing spells; but the Sunday institution is different here there is compulsion: the community must rest, the individual must not work. Why the difference? Merely because holidays are purely civil, while the Sunday institution is religious. There is no other reason; there can be none, and in enacting Sunday laws, legislators assume to compel the observance, in some degree, of a religious institution.

C. P. B.

LAW is good; but there is a domain into which human law has not been commissioned to enter, the domain of the soul. There is an allegiance which the state has a right to claim; but there is another allegiance which only the Creator himself can of right demand. When the state enters that domain and demands that allegiance to itself, it usurps the prerogative of God.-C. M. Snow.

T

HE Government requested, some weeks

since, that automobiles should not be run on Sunday except in cases of extreme necessity. As the result of this request, the boulevards and favorite drives, previously frequented on Sunday by motorists, were at once deserted. One could easily imagine himself put back fifty years, for he heard no purring of gasoline motors, no sounding of Klaxons, and the streets of the cities were deserted. The Sunday pedestrian might cross the thoroughfares that were the most congested on week days without the slightest fear of suffering a violent death beneath the wheels of a speeding automobile.

Sunday sa

credness had not the slightest bearing upon the Government in the issuing of the "gasless Sunday" request. It was made solely as a conservation measure, and the reason for choosing Sunday was the fact that most

of the riding in motor vehicles on this day is done for pleasure, and not in the pursuit of necessary business.

Some have undoubtedly been led to believe that the assumed sacredness of Sunday had much to do with the Government's request, and the advocates of Sunday legislation are in hopes that this request of the Government will give to the first day of the week the permanent prestige of civil authority. This, however, is denied by the most wary advocates of Sunday legislation. They well understand that this Government is based upon the principle of a total separation of the church and the state, and of course has no right to require by civil enactment or otherwise, the observance of any religious institution whatever; they therefore attempt to disguise the religious character of the day, and call it a "civil Sabbath."

Some of the most prominent advocates of religio-political legislation have, however, unguardedly admitted that it is the religious feature of the Sabbath that they desire to have protected by civil enactment, as the following shows:

Rev. W. F. Crafts, of Washington, D. C., says

"A weekly day of rest has never been per manently secured in any land except on the basis of religious obligation. Take the religion out and you take the rest out."-" Hearing on Sunday Rest Bill," Dec. 13, 1888, p. 21.

Dr. Joseph Cook once said:

"The experience of centuries shows that you will in vain endeavor to preserve Sunday as a day of rest, unless you preserve it as a day of worship."-" Boston Monday Lectures'

1887.

The late Chief Justice Brewer of the United States Supreme Court clearly recognized the religious character of Sunday legislation, as is shown by the following paragraph from his book entitled, "The United States & Christian Nation," pages 29 and 30:

"Indeed, the vast volume of official action, legislative and judicial, reeognizes Sun day as a day separate and apart from the others, a day devoted not to the ordinary pur suits of life. It is true, in many of the decisions this separation of

the day is said to be authorized by the police power of the state and exercised for purposes of health. At the same time, through a large majority of them there runs the thought of its being a religious day, consecrated by the commandment, Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.'"

In view of these statements it will require no argument to convince those who understand the principles upon which this Government was founded, as voiced in the First Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," that Sunday legislation is not only un-Christian but that it is un-American.

The request for a gasless Sunday did not violate this principle, nor was it designed to do so. It was issued as an easy and practical way of conserving gasoline, so essential for the successful prosecution of the Great War, now happily ended.

We do not want to be misunderstood. We believe with the Lord's Day Alliance that the Sabbath of Jehovah ought to be observed with true holiness, faith, and piety in the life of every Christian. We believe that all men ought to observe it, but we do not believe with the Lord's Day Alliance that any man should be forced to observe the Lord's day by the power and authority of the state, any more than he ought to be forced to receive the Lord's baptism, partake of the Lord's Supper, or pray the Lord's Prayer. All these are religious institutions, and should be observed religiously and voluntarily, or not at all. These are obligations we owe to God, and not to the state. A failure to recognize a distinction between religious and civil institutions has been the primary cause of all the bloody religious controversies and persecutions of the past.

Dr. Harry L. Bowlby, secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance in this country, made some striking statements in this meeting as to the aims of the Lord's Day Alliance in the United States. He said:

"The battleground of the churches during the next ten years will be on the field of the Christian Sabbath. The battle front of the Sabbath extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf. The church has been too long on the defensive, and must now turn upon the enemies of the Lord's day and hurl them out of this trespassed territory. The day is threatened with disaster. The time has come when every minister of the gospel must stand up and be counted, and when every church must have a clear vision of the dangers which threaten it through Sabbath desecration and the breaking down of the legal safeguards of our civil Sabbath. At no place in the church's battle lines are the drives of the enemy more terrific than at the point of our American Christian Sabbath. If the Sabbath goes, everything goes. The Sabbath is so absolutely foundational to all the work of the church, that if we lose it, Christianity herself will go. Christianity cannot stand and live if we lose our Christian Sabbath."

--

Dr. Bowlby does not mean that he is going to give up his Sabbath or the practice of Sunday observance. Nor does he believe that any real Christian is going to give up his day of worship. What he means is that we must have "civil laws "— Sunday laws to "protect the churches and the day" if Christianity is "to survive." And truly, if Christianity had no better foundation than a civil Sunday law, it certainly would go down; for Christ said: "In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." Matt. 15: 9. A church that trusts in man and makes flesh its arm, has the curse of God resting upon it. Such a church depends on civil laws to protect it and its institutions, and when these civil laws are taken away, and it has no divine laws to sustain it, it must go down. But true Chris

tianity does not rely upon civil laws. Its fourdations are divine laws. It is able to survive not only the absence of all human laws, but the fiercest opposition and assaults of its enemies. All that the true church needs to sustain her is a "Thus saith the Lord."

Let us beware of being seduced into unlawful connection with the state in spiritual things 0. B. L

IN

Order Without Sunday Laws

N December, 1889, Rev. W. F. Crafts, the field secretary of the American Sabbath Union, now chief director of the International Bureau of Reforms, said:

"Washington is now the most orderly and quiet city on Sunday of any city in the country."

But Washington was then, as it still is, without a Sunday law, which showed then, as it still does, that a Sunday law is not essential to a quiet, orderly Sunday, even in a great city.

The same might be truthfully said of Wash ington today. Without a Sunday law it is still a quiet and orderly city on Sunday.

Nor is Washington alone in this respect. This same Rev. Mr. Crafts tells in his book, “The Sabbath for Man," of sending out to a large number of representative men in different States and cities the question, "Where have you seen the best Sabbath observance? A San Francisco pastor answered:

"Among the Christian people of California.”

California was at that time the only State having no Sunday law. Yet on page 94 of the edition of his book published in 1885, two years after her Sunday law was repealed, Mr. Crafts

Sunday Laws Unpopular

THE people of Los Angeles, Cal., on Nov. 5, 1918, were given an opportunity under the referendum law of the State, of voting on the proposition whether their city should have Sunday laws or not. They voted on the question of compulsory Sunday observance as follows: Against, 50,586; for, 26,390. This is the third time the citizens of Los Angeles have voted against the enactment of Sunday laws. Evidently the people in California believe in keeping religious and civil obligation separate. WE WE WE

A Public Rebuke

CHAIRMAN W. F. WOODWARD and Secretary John K. Kollock, of the State Council of Defense of Oregon, received a public rebuke from the people of Oregon for taking advantage of their office by endeavoring to force their peculiar religious views of Sunday observance upon the public contrary to the decision of the people. These men issued a general order that all business places were to be closed on Sundays. All over the State of Oregon the people held mass meetings and drafted protests and

signed petitions of remonstrance, many going even so far as expressing their intention of combating the Sunday-closing order of the State Council of Defense. A little more than a year ago the people of Oregon, by means of the initiative, repealed all their Sunday laws by a large majority vote. This general order of the State Council of Defense finally collapsed completely, because the civil authorities refused to enforce it, and the merchants everywhere ignored the order, claiming it had nothing to do with war-time necessities, but was purely a local ruling, out of harmony with public sentiment, and contrary to State law.

浅浅

Compulsory Church Attendance

THE Santa Ana (California) City Council recently received a petition from the churches of Santa Ana, asking for the closing of poolrooms and moving-picture houses on Sundays. The petition stated the reason for such action as follows: "That the moving-picture houses are the strongest competitors that the churches have for Sunday evening crowds." What a commentary upon the relative drawing qualities of the poolroom, the movie, and the church; and what a wonderful remedy these gospel ministers have suggested to overcome this difficulty and drive their recalcitrant members into the church pews! The city council evidently concluded that America had outlived the time when they used to fine people ten shillings apiece for nonattendance at church services on Sundays, as they unhesitatingly rejected the petition, and advised the clergymen to present their appeal to the people under the initiative. But if there is one thing which the clergymen of California fear, it is a vote of the people upon such a question.

Some Things are Fixed

Two and two make four, not five. That is a settled fact in mathematics. Two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen when united produce water. That is a fixed and permanent law of relationship discovered by science. The union of these two gases in this fixed proportion will always produce water.

The law of relationship between a tyrant and those oppressed by him produces conflict. There never can be peace between the oppressor and the oppressed, until the oppressed are set free and oppression ceases. That is a settled fact in political history.

If these fixed relationships and fundamental principles were practically recognized at all times in the political realm, what a happy and peaceful world this would be! The basis of lasting peace must be the stability of unchangeable relationships and invariable results.