Sunday amusements, and threaten to carry on a fight before Congress to secure a Sunday closing law for the District. This resolution is the result of a mass meeting held on Sunday. "It is unfortunate because it is going to make the church unpopular. Yet its object is to gain popularity for the churches.

"This paper always has and always will support the churches of Washington and their work. We devote all possible space to their activities. During the Billy Sunday campaign we printed twice as much news about the campaign as any other newspaper in Washington. "But when the churches of Washington try to fill their pews through force, we are against it. We believe that Washington needs Sunday amusements, and we believe that if they are restricted it will be the restriction of Constitutional rights. Surely the church and its people should realize the value of liberty. The history of the church through the ages certainly shows what radical measures have been taken to secure religious liberty.

"The crux of the whole situation is probably summed up by one of the preachers who quoted figures to show that on a certain Sunday 7,000 people attended fifty churches, while more than 50,000 people attended thirty-eight motion picture shows. This statement in itself gives to the layman the impression of jealousy in the

church.

"We are looking at the subject with the good of the city in view, and we believe that the good of the city requires Sunday amusements. Washington is in a very unique position right now. There is an opportunity at hand to make the city one of the foremost in the country with the attendant danger of its deteriorating in size

In fact they are under police supervision and we believe that our city is far better off with its citizens. sitting in a theater on Sunday evening than if these same people should flood the streets seeking other amusement which, because of its scarcity, might take baser form.

"The churches should remember, too, that the day is already partly restricted to them, as theaters are not allowed to open until three in the afternoon. This gives to the church full sway on Sunday morning. If they cannot induce sufficient to attend these services, something is wrong with the church.

"We would like to see Washington purged of everything tending toward viciousness, and we have on numerous occasions conducted campaigns against vice that was very apparent, but when the churches seek to eliminate Sunday amusements they are ill advised, and their activities instead of filling their pews will have an opposite tendency."

Puritanism, in the colonial days, compelled all people under its civil and religious jurisdiction "to attend divine services on Sunday." A nonconformist was fined ten shillings for nonattendance at church on Sunday. Dr. Bownde, a Puritan, published a treatise on the Sabbath, wherein he maintained that it was an act of immorality not to attend divine service on Sunday, and "all the Puritans fell in with this doctrine."

There can be no sound reason given why the theaters and movies should be closed by civil authorities, at the instigation of some churches,

and importance to a somnolent village. Provincial blue laws will tend to bring about the latter alternative.

"We must bear in mind that Sunday is the only day on which a number of our people can indulge in any form of amusement, and that there are religions whose Sabbath day does not mean Sunday. We do not argue the wisdom of their belief, but under our Constitution, they are entitled to it.

"So far as our amusements are concerned, there is nothing to show that they have in any way corrupted the morals of the community.

upon one day of the week while admitting their lawful operation on every other day of the week, except it be that the church ritual regards the day as sacred. But this latter reason makes such legislation religious and consequently unconstitutional.

If the theaters and movies are breeders of crime, then the state ought to prohibit them every day in the week. But the civil law has no more right to prohibit legitimate business on Sunday because the church demands it than it would have to prohibit church prayer meetings on Wednesday night because the movies demand it in the interests of their business.

The individual who believes that it is morally wrong to disregard Sunday as a sacred day ought to be encouraged to be true to his conscience until it can become properly enlightened, but he should not be allowed to make his conscience the guide and monitor for his neigh(Continued on page 42)

America the H

of the World

cre

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The enjoyment of liberty is the most precious boon in this life. The gift life without the gift of liberty would be but ject slavery. No person can be truly happy as ng as he and others are in bondage. Conseently the greatest of all earthly blessings and alienable political rights is liberty.

Our great and glorious nation is the only nation at ever guaranteed in its fundamental law libty in its fullest and truest sense. Here democcy has come into full bloom and has yielded its ost benign fruitage. It is a government of the eople, by the people, and for the people. The eople know no masters and no rulers but such as ey themselves choose. Immediate and final sovreignty rests with the people. Americans realize mat civil and religious liberty stand or fall toether. The conscience of the minority must be eld as sacred as the conscience of the majority. If America ever repudiates her fundamental rinciples of the equality of civil and religious

rights in the individual, denies the right of the free exercise of the individual conscience in religious matters, abandons the true principle of separation of church and state, and abdicates the sovereignty of democracy for the tyrannical rule of autocracy, -if America turns the wheels of progress and civilization backward instead of forward, the last hope of reforming the world politically is gone. Whenever America and Americanism go down, the hope of lasting political world reconstruction is lost, for when the hope of America perishes the world is doomed.

But we must not close with this dark picture even if America should fail and this present world be doomed, for our trust is in One who is greater than America. If all men and all earthly systems should fail us, we still believe in the eternal truth of which Lowell wrote so forcefully:

"Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

A

Good Helping Evil

N evil principle put into effect by a good man is more potent in its harm than its exercise by a bad man; for the moral influence of the good man will weigh in favor of all he advocates. A reliable business man could pass a counterfeit note without suspicion, whereas a strange, depraved-looking person would be suspected under the most favorable circumstances. Principles and measures should be weighed and accepted because of their intrinsic worth, not because advocated by men however high in position or in the estimation of their fellows.

The Golden Rule

True and intelligent Christians will never seek to control the religious or nonreligious opinions of even a single man, save by the law of love and the method of persuasion and reason. They know in their own experience that Christ did not compel their allegiance by force; he won it by love. As did Christ toward them, so will they do toward others. And this is the golden rule. The law of Christianity is persuasion, not force. Says the great apostle to the Gentiles: "Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand." 2 Cor. 1: 24, A. R. V. "Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men." 2 Cor. 5: 11. "Persuade," "beseech," "entreat," "whosoever will," is the language of the gospel.

What is Rest?

Is it rest to you, reader, to lay aside all manual labor, attend church, read, idle about, eat a good dinner, and go to sleep? You meet the letter of Sunday law. But your neighbor

Smith, lean, sallow, nervous, has wrought within doors all the week at his desk. He needs, and feels he must have, a change on Sunday; so he works in his garden in the morning, and goes to a park or attends a baseball game in the afternoon. This is rest, real refreshing rest to Smith. Yet a Sunday law, professedly to give rest to the toiler, would make Smith's resting a crime and Smith a criminal. Reader, candidly, do you want such a law? Do you wish to make Smith a criminal and enemy, or hold him as neighbor and friend?

Usurping Divine Prerogatives

To assume the control of conscience-and all religious legislation enters that domain — is to usurp the authority of God, is to put the human in place of the divine. Now A may be in the right and B in the wrong in a religious controversy; but what authority has either to decide for the other? or what right or authority has the civil tribunal to determine the issue? Each and both are responsible to God alone for conscience and religious conviction. God, the spiritual One, is the Judge. Whoso therefore assumes the judgeship in a religious controversy under penalty of law -and that is what a Sunday law is in whatever guise usurps the place of God. Even the Christ came not to judge, but to save; and he then declared, "If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not." The word of God's truth will judge "in the last day." See John 12: 47, 48.

Who is to be Protected?

Human government is a device not to protect the many against the few, but to protect and secure the few against the many; not to pro