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LAMST week we printed on our last page the text of the Sunday bill recently introduced into Congress by Representative Morse, of Massachusetts. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.1
This bill is entitled, “A bill for the protection of the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, as a day of rest and worship in the District of Columbia.” AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.2
Such being the title of the bill, it is clear that it is one which should meet with no favor form an American Congress, for it is opposed to the very fundamental principles of free government. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.3
The Declaration of Independence is not law in the common acceptations of that term, but the principles enunciated in it, existing as they do in the very nature of things, are superior even to the Constitution, and by those principles that instrument must be interpreted. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.4
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” our forefathers declared, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.... that to secure these rights, governments are institute among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.5
That we have not read amiss or misinterpreted the Declaration of Independence when we say that it teaches that government exists for the protection of human rights, is evident from the following words by the author of that immortal instrument, written nearly forty years later, namely, June 7, 1815: AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.6
OUR legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. 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. 1Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 7, p. 3. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.7
This leaves no room to question Jefferson’s meaning. But with these words the language of the Declaration is plain: the American doctrine as enunciated by our forefathers is that just governments exist for the purpose of protecting men in the exercise of their rights; not “for the protection of the first day of the week,” or any other day of the week. But the title of this Sunday bill shows that it is designed, not to secure human rights, but to confer honor upon a day because of its religious character, something never contemplated by the founders of the Government as is witnessed not only by the Declaration of Independence, but by the First Amendment to the Constitution as well. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.8
But it may be said that the words: “For the protection of the first day of the week,” etc., really mean for the protection of people in the use of the day for the purposes specified. Not so; for the language of the act itself forbids this interpretation. The words, “The first day of the week, known as the Lord’s day, set apart by general consent in accordance with divine appointment as a day of rest and worship,” stamp the proposed legislation as religious, and show the purpose of the act to be, not to secure human rights, but to honor as a divine institution the particular day in question. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.9
That the purpose of the bill is, as we have stated, to honor Sunday and to secure its religious observance is further shown by the clause exempting from its provisions “those who religiously observe Saturday.” It is not enough that one simply rests on Saturday; he must “religiously observe” it, showing that the bill aims at religious observance on one day or the other. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.10
Further, the bill assumes to settle a religious controversy by declaring that “the first day of the week, commonly known as the Lord’s day,” is “set apart” “in accordance with divine appointment.” The First Amendment to the Federal Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What possible right then has the national legislature to decide that a given day is “set apart in accordance with divine appointment”? or to decree that it must be observed by refraining upon it from “any labor, except works of necessity and mercy”? AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.11
If Congress may, for the reason given, require Sunday observance, might it not also require anything else that it deems “in accordance with divine appointment”? If, as some assert, the First Amendment means no more than that Congress shall not establish any denomination as the State church, and that it shall not forbid the profession of any faith,—if the First Amendment means no more than this, we ask, might not Congress require any other religious observance as well as the observance of “the first day of the week, commonly known as the Lord’s day”? Might not the national legislature require, for instance, that all persons should profess some religion, leaving each one free to choose the particular church he would join? Or might not Congress require all within its jurisdiction to have their children christened, leaving them free to choose the particular church whose minister should administer the rite? Certainly. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.12
But the First Amendment means more than that: it means as expressed May 26, 1797, by George Washington, the father of his country, that “the Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion;” 2Treaty with Tripoli. “American State Papers,” Class I., Foreign Relations, Vol. II., p. 18. it means as Jefferson expressed it in 1808, that “the Government of the United States” is “interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.” 3Works of Jefferson, vol. 5, p. 236. It means, as Mr. Madison, the father of the Constitution, expressed it in 1823, “that religion is essentially distinct from civil government, and exempt from its cognizance.” 4Writings of James Madison, vol. 3, p. 305. It means, as a committee of the United States Senate expressed in 1829, that “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. To prevent a similar train of evils in this country, the Constitution has wisely withheld from our Government the power of defining the divine law. It is a right reserved to each citizen; and while he respects the rights of others, he cannot be held amenable to any human tribunal for his conclusions.” 5Report of Senate Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads commissioned to the Senate Jan. 19, 1829, by Hon. Richard M. Johnson. See “American State Papers,” class vii., p. 225. AMS January 9, 1896, page 9.13
Such being the meaning of the First Amendment to the Constitution, will Congress reject this Sunday bill? Time alone can tell. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.1
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NUMBERS and rights sustain no relation to each other. This is contrary to the general idea; but it is nevertheless true. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.1
Rights are God-given. As the Declaration of Independence says: “We hold these truths to be self-evidence: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” They do not pertain to men because men are associated together in large numbers; nor are they determined by that fact. The rights of man have their basis in the purpose of the Creator; and that purpose is independent of the number of those to whom it pertains. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.2
Every individual is bound by his relation to his Creator and to his fellowmen. But his relation to his fellows is not independent of his relation to God. In other words, it is a duty which man owes to God, to love his neighbor as himself. It is a part of the law of God that a man should not steal, kill, commit adultery, bear false witness, or do anything that would invade the rights of his fellowmen. “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.3
In fulfilling the purpose of God in our creation, we must of necessity fulfill every obligation which we owe to mankind. And to fulfill that divine purpose, it is necessary that we should possess and exercise certain rights. An all-wise Creator has accordingly endowed all men with those rights; and these rights, being thus inherent in the individual, are unalienable. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.4
The purpose of the Creator is that every being whom he has made should be upright and perfect in all his ways, a free agent, and should live a life of unmarred happiness. Because of the fall, this purpose can never be fully realized in this world, but it will be perfectly accomplished in the world to come. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.5
In this world progress is made toward the attainment of this purpose by development of character. God does not want automatons, nor slaves. God would stultify his own name if he should create beings of such a nature. He could not do less than create beings of the highest and most perfect type; nor could he be satisfied with anything else. He will have no one love and serve him from fear, or because he could not do otherwise. Such a tribute would be of an inferior nature, and therefore entirely unsuitable as an offering to the infinite God. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.6
In order that man may develop a perfect character, he must have liberty. In order that his tribute to God may be voluntary, he must have freedom of choice. Accordingly men are left free by the Creator either to love and serve him, or to ignore him and serve themselves. The devil aims to interfere with this freedom of choice and compel men to refrain from the service of God. He would make every man a slave, controlled not by his own free choice, but by the will of another who leads him about in chains. And any effort of men to deprive any of their fellowmen of this freedom of choice further than to make secure from invasion their own God-given liberty, is against the divine purpose, and in harmony with the purpose and work of the devil. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.7
The necessity of this individual liberty to the development of noble, God-like character, is amply and sadly illustrated by the spectacle of individual character presented among those races and classes of people which have been long the victims of oppression. We find them very largely deprived of their manhood, without that sense of honor and self-respect which shrink from acts of meanness, and with no adequate conception of moral principle as a thing of value. Lying and deception are counted as accomplishments, hypocrisy as a virtue, and vice as a legitimate pleasure. Every noble faculty is debased. It is not with such beings that God would people his world. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.8
And in order that this shall not be, men must cherish and exercise their individual right of free choice. They must choose for themselves whom they will serve, and choose that Master who will never take from them this freedom. Development of good and noble character can take place only along the line of free individual choice. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.9
This individual freedom of choice comprises within its limits the unalienable rights of mankind. When this freedom is denied, the highest interests of the individual are attacked; and if the attack be successful, the gravest injury to mankind results. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.10
It matters not, also, whether this freedom be denied by some individual despot, or by the doctrine that rights are determined by the judgment of majorities. The so-called “public conscience” cannot take the place of the individual conscience. The individual who surrenders his conscience surrenders his very soul. He surrenders faith; for Christian faith is not mere assent to the truth, but it is belief which is manifested by works. (See James 2:14-20.) And with the surrender of faith, goes also the right to eternal life itself. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.11
The doctrine of the “greatest good to the greatest number” when so applied as to demand the yielding of the individual conscience to the will of the majority, becomes but the means of erecting a despotism. The theory that the majority must rule, is a very plausible one in this day, and a correct one so far as concerns those matters in which all have a common interest, and which are subject to human control. But it does not apply within the sphere of rights. And it is a fact also that the majorities in this world are made up not of leaders, or persons of independent judgment, but of followers: so that what appears to be the judgment of the majority, is very often only the will or opinion of the few by whom the majority are led. This is especially true in matters where the people do not feel their immediate interests to be directly affected, as in questions of religion. A religious despotism can be all the more readily established by a few influential bigots because the public are generally willing to let others (their spiritual advisers) think for them in religious matters, and thus be spared the trouble of investigating and deciding for themselves. This is human nature; and the religion of human nature is popery. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.12
The facts we have stated can be more readily perceived through an illustration. It is contended at the present time that the best interests of the largest number demand the observance of the first day of the week. In London, England, as notice in our last issue, seventh-day observers have recently been denied the relief which might be afforded them by legislation, and which would simply have protected their rights, on the ground that they were but few in number. And in this country the plea of the same people for their right to set apart the seventh day according to the command of God, is denied on the ground that the majority think the first day is the proper one to be set apart, and the majority must rule. Shall the individual allow the “public conscience” to guide him in such a matter? Will the “public conscience” be responsible to God for individual conduct respecting his commands? Will the doctrine of majority rule shield a person in the day of Judgment in any matter where the majority happened not to be on the side of God’s law? And will the penalty of disobedience be shifted from the individual transgressor and placed upon the spectre of “the majority,” or of “government”? AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.13
No; every one of us shall give an account of himself before God. The “public conscience” will afford no individual any security in that day. The doctrine that rights pertain only to numbers,—that individual freedom of choice is swallowed up in the higher interests of the community, will excuse no one for failing to make that choice and to stand by that choice which his own conscience, as educated and guided by the word of God, told him to be right, and which, firmly adhered to, would have developed in him that character which is fitted for eternity. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.14
“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers;” but let every soul also remember that “there is no power but of God,” and that his relation to God is an individual relations, and that as such it demands of him the exercise of his God-given rights. And let him, as he values his eternal interests, refuse to allow that relation and those rights to be controlled by the opinion and the “conscience” of the majority. God is the great “higher power” and he alone constitutes the true “majority.” AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.15
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THE book, “Practical Christian Sociology,” 1By W. F. Crafts, Ph.D., published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York. a late literary production, to which we have taken occasion to refer several times recently, is full of unique and striking things. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.1
Like a true “reformer,” the author of the book in question, cuts and slashes in every direction, sparing neither friend nor foe. Dividing the 19th century into three periods, of the second he says:— AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.2
The daybreak that came with that middle third of our century has already been overcast with heavy thunder clouds, especially in our own country. No doubt there has been moral progress since 1867 in the world at large, but it would be hard to prove moral progress in the United States since that date. 2“Christian Sociology,” p. 41. Italics ours. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.3
Our author then enumerates the rise and development of various evils, prominent among which is “the Sunday paper, which,” he says, “in most instances, is not only a sin but a crime.” AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.4
Following his bill of particulars, he says:— AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.5
One reason why these evils have grown apace is because the church has not adequately recognized personal and social ethics as an integral and important part of its work. As Columbus discovered an unknown hemisphere, so we are just discovering a neglected hemisphere of social ethics. Those critics of the church are in error who assume that in British and American pulpits dogma has crowded out duty and creed has displaced conduct. All that can truly be said is that individual and social ethics have not had due emphasis in the utterances of the churches even in sermons, much less in creeds. They are a nineteenth-century development not sufficiently recognized in the eighteenth-century creeds and disciplines of our churches. 3Id., p. 43. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.6
We thank our author for the frank statement that his so-called “reforms,” prominent among which is his “sabbath” crusade, are “a nineteenth-century development.” This is practically what we have been telling our author, and everybody else for years about the Sunday movement; that Christ and his apostles knew nothing of it; that the early church never kept Sunday; that it always rested upon no better authority than the edict of Constantine and the decrees of a fallen church; and that the idea of compelling its observance as the sabbath, is of very modern origin indeed. Now, Mr. Crafts acknowledges this himself. The demand that everybody shall observe Sunday as the “Christian sabbath,” is only a nineteenth-century development, saving, of course, the Puritan theocracy in New England in the seventeenth century. The Puritans were something more than two centuries in advance of our author in the matter of enforced Sunday-keeping. But no matter; Mr. Crafts is quite right: it is a modern discovery—certainly much more modern than the sacred Scriptures; which accounts fully and satisfactorily for the fact that it is nowhere mentioned in the writings of apostles, prophets, or evangelists. AMS January 9, 1896, page 10.7
But notwithstanding the modern origin of these “reforms,” our author sharply arraigns the whole of the modern church for failure to give them financial support. He says:— AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.1
Not one of the large denominations, so far as we know, recognizes any of the social reforms as a part of Christianity in its official schedules of benevolence. How the efficacy of other church collections is decreased by lack of adequate church support of social reforms, for example, sabbath observance! Offerings for church erection and ministerial education and home missions are of value in proportion as the people are on the sabbath free to attend the churches thus erected and hear the preachers thus educated and supported. Mr. Puddefoot, the well-known home missionary secretary, informs me that there are in the frontier towns home missionary churches where the only man in attendance on sabbath morning is the preacher; churches where the communion has to be postponed from sabbath morning until evening, “because the deacons are all down in the mines.” Surely, if only to increase the efficiency of other church benevolences, there ought to be in every church table of collections a column for sabbath reform. 4“Practical Christian Sociology,” p. 44. AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.2
Our author would, with his so-called sabbath reform, very soon change all this, for he would by civil law compel those deacons to remain out of the mines on Sunday; would prohibit Sunday papers, close places of Sunday amusement, and make the day everywhere so uninteresting that the deacons and everybody else would gladly resort to the churches. Then would the people not only receive the instruction supplied by collections taken elsewhere for the support of frontier churches, but such churches would themselves have larger collections, for there would be more persons present to give. This is certainly “practical sociology,” even though it be not Christian. AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.3
Then, too, with the Sunday laws of all the States put in proper working order and energetically enforced, as would be the case if our author was well supplied with collections, it would be so much easier to enforce church discipline. The worldly-minded deacons who not having the fear of the minister before their eyes go into the mines on Sunday instead of to the communion, could be persuaded by the terrors of the civil law—by fines or by imprisonment, if need be—to go to the communion on Sunday morning instead of to the mines. And though at first they might realize that it was not their choice, that they would prefer the mines and the wages there earned, they would by and by come to imagine it a matter of their own choice, and then if not before, would they be devout observers of the so-called Christian sabbath; and all owing to the collections for so-called sabbath reform! Yes, the scheme is practical; very practical—but is it Christian? AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.4
But how about the spiritual life of the churches whose pews and collection boxes must be filled by means of Sunday laws? The words of our author himself, though not so designed, are well adapted to answer this question. He says:— AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.5
Christians have mostly ceased from hating each other for microscopic differences of doctrine, but Christian love seldom goes beyond its own church walls, and does not always go beyond its own hired pew. General society is, of course, more Christianized, and the quantity of Christian sociology is much greater, but the quality of it inside the church, we fear, has not improved. The heathen are not audibly exclaiming to-day, “See how these Christians love each other!” They, and the Christians also, are rather pointing to “the flagitious anarchy,” the “Hadesian theology” of our sectarian conflicts, and to the well-defined Christian castes that radiate from the central high-priced pew of Deacon Dives to the inferior pews of Demas and Lazarus; the one next the pulpit and the other next to the door. Not thus were the Christian slaves and “the saints of Cesar’s household” separated in the early church. There were no class churches. Christian brotherhood was not as often to-day so nominal that in the words of Prof. Ely, one would rather be a second cousin by blood than a “brother,” in the general sense, even to a Christian. 5“Practical Christian Sociology,” p. 34. AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.6
These facts answer the question as to the spiritual condition of the churches. “He that loveth not knoweth not God.” 61 John 4:8. “For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” 71 John 4:20. AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.7
According to our author’s own representation, the church is lacking in Christian love, and is therefore without the true knowledge of God. And this is the reason why there is so much seeking after the power of organization and the power of the State. The very federations and confederacies for which Mr. Crafts is laboring are only so many efforts to supply by numbers the lack of power in the church; but the Word of the Lord is, “Say ye not, A confederacy to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” 8Isaiah 8:12, 13. AMS January 9, 1896, page 11.8