TO OBTAIN a world-wide view of Sabbath observance, Dr. Crafts says he has corresponded with more than two hundred persons residing in nearly every nation of the world. One of the questions which he asked in this correspondence was:—AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.1

“Where have you seen the best Sabbath observance?”AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.2

A San Francisco pastor answered:—AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.3

“Among the Christian people of California.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.4

Now California is the only State that has no Sunday law. Yet this pastor testifies that in this State there is the best Sabbath observance that be has seen. And under the circumstances, it is properly to be, presumed that this pastor has seen Sabbath observance in other States than California. But, the other States have Sunday laws, therefore the Sabbath observance that that pastor saw in other States, must have been under Sunday laws. Consequently, it is demonstrated by Dr. Crafts’s own evidence that there is better Sunday observance where there is no Sunday law than where there are Sunday laws.AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.5

Again. Up to 1883, California had a Sunday law. In 1885, Dr. Crafts published his book. This was nearly two years after California abolished her Sunday law. Yet, in that book, on page 94, Mr. Crafts says:—AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.6

“Both laymen and ministers say that even in California the Sabbath is, on the whole, better observed and Christian services better attended, than five years ago.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.7

Five years goes back three years into the time of the Sunday law, consequently it is once more demonstrated by Dr. Crafts’s own evidence that Sunday is better observed, and Christian services better attended, where there is no Sunday law than where there are Sunday laws. Therefore, Dr. Crafts and all the people who work for Sunday laws are working against the best Sunday observance.AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.8

The reason why there is better Sunday observance and better attendance upon Christian services where there are no Sunday laws than where Sunday laws exist, is plain. Where there are no Sunday laws, the Christian people are thrown upon their own resources for securing the best observance of the day. Thus they work by Christian means, by Christian influences, and by Christian persuasion, to secure the best observance of that which they deem to be a Christian institution. This is right. Such methods will always win. They will always work for good.AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.9

But, on the other hand, when the aid of the civil power is sought, and Sabbath observance is sought to be secured by the enforcement of law, Christians are drawn away from dependence upon Christian methods, men are repelled instead of being won, and Sunday is worse observed, and Christian services more poorly attended.AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.10

By these evidences it is clear that every person who respects Christianity, and who wishes to secure the best Sunday observance, and to have Christian services best attended, ought to oppose Sunday laws with all his might. It is entirely out of respect to Christianity that the AMERICAN SENTINEL opposes all Sabbath laws of civil government.AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.11

Let religious institutions be sustained by religious means. Let Christian duties be maintained by Christian methods. Let attendance at Christian services be secured by Christian influences and Christian persuasion. This is the position of the AMERICAN SENTINEL, and it ought to be the position of every person who lives Jesus Christ.AMS August 14, 1889, page 225.12

A. T. J.

“The Authority for Sunday Laws” The American Sentinel 4, 29, pp. 227, 228.

ATJ

WE believe that every State in the Union, except California, has a Sunday law. And we believe also that in every State in the Union, except California, Sunday laws have always been held to be constitutional. California’s first decision on the question, held the Sunday law to be unconstitutional; but a dissenting opinion held it to be constitutional, and this dissenting opinion was afterward adopted by the Supreme Court, and so held until 1883, when the people, by a majority of nearly eighteen thousand, declared they would have no Sunday law.AMS August 14, 1889, page 227.1

The story of that first and proper decision, in brief, is this: In 1858, the Constitution of California said, in Section 4: “The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference shall forever be allowed in this State.” There was a statute passed by the Legislature enforcing the observance of “the Christian Sabbath,” on the first day of the week. A Jew in Sacramento kept his store open on Sunday; he was arrested, convicted, and sent to jail. He sued out a writ of habeas corpus on the ground of “the illegality of his imprisonment by reason of the unconstitutionality of the law.” The majority of the Court sustained the plea by decisions separately written, whose soundness, both upon constitutional principles and upon the abstract principle of justice itself, can never be successfully controverted. Mr. Stephen J. Field, now Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was then a member of the California Court. He rendered a dissenting opinion, taking the same position as the Supreme Court of Arkansas as to the, omnipotence of the Legislature, and soberly maintaining that the term “Christian Sabbath” in the act was not a discrimination or preference in favor of any religious profession or worship. He declared that “moralists and statesmen,” “men of science and distinguished philosophers,” have pronounced the rule of “one day’s rest in seven” to be “founded upon a law of our race.” But he omitted to state what scientist or philosopher or moralist or statesman has ever pronounced upon what law is founded the rule of two day’s rest in seven for the man who chooses to rest some other day than Sunday!AMS August 14, 1889, page 227.2

In his written opinion, Mr. Field said that he had found that in twenty-five States of the Union, Sunday laws had been held to be constitutional. That this is so there can be no doubt. On this subject, the younger State’s, both in legislation and judicial decisions, have followed the example of the older States; these have followed the decisions of the oldest, and the oldest followed the example and the precedents of the colonies; and every one of the colonies had Sunday laws because every one had an established religion. The colonies not only followed the precedents, but they were a part, of the English system, which is wholly a Church and State system. The Church and State system of England severed itself from the papal rule when Henry VIII. renounced allegiance to the Pope, and “put himself at the head of the Church of England in the place of the Pope. The British system at that time was the papal system; the papal system was established by the mutual craft, flattery, and policy of Constantine and the ambitious bishops of his time, when the first Sunday law was enacted. This, in a word, is the genealogy of the Sunday laws of the United States. They belong with an established religion,—a union of Church and State. And in this country they have been almost universally sustained, either upon the British principle of the omnipotence of Parliament, or upon the Church and State principles of the colonies of the British Government, and of the Papacy.AMS August 14, 1889, page 227.3

The law of Pennsylvania, sustained by a Supreme Court decision, is virtually a colonial law, which was a part of the system in which nobody who did “not confess and acknowledge one Almighty God to be the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world,” could be a citizen.AMS August 14, 1889, page 227.4

The Supreme Court of New York sustains Sunday laws by at once declaring Christianity to be the established religion of that State. This is based upon Chief Justice Kent’s decision, of 1811, which cited a law of the colony which declared that “the profanation of the Lord’s day was ‘the great scandal of the Christian faith.’” That decision of Judge Kent’s made Christianity the established religion of the State of New York, by citing the precedents of the papal institutions of modern Europe and the pagan nations of antiquity.AMS August 14, 1889, page 227.5

This, again, proves Sunday laws to belong with established religions, with the union of Church and State, finding their basis in papal and pagan institutions.AMS August 14, 1889, page 227.6

In every statute book in America, with scarcely an exception, Sunday laws are found under the head of “offenses against religion,” or “offenses against God and religion.” This springs naturally from the colonial legislation, where each colony deemed itself the special guardian of God and of some particular form of religion.AMS August 14, 1889, page 227.7

But according to the word of unrest, the civil power has nothing to do with either God or religion, nor with offenses against God or religion. Religion is defined by Webster as “the recognition of God as an object of worship, love, and obedience.” Another definition, given by the National Reform Association itself, is “man’s personal relation of faith and and obedience to God.” Civil government has nothing to do with a man’s personal relation of faith and obedience to God. If he has no faith at all, and makes no pretensions to obedience to God, that is nothing to the civil government, so long as the man conducts himself civilly. Neither has civil government anything to do with offenses against God; the Lord himself can attend to that. A man is responsible alone to God for the offenses which he commits against God. Civil government has no business to establish a religion, and then make offenses against it criminal; nor has it any business to put itself in the place of God, and presume to declare that an offense against the governmental idea of God is an offense against God. How is the civil government to know whether an act offends God or not? The fact of the matter is, that just as soon as Sunday laws are investigated at all in the light of truth, or justice, or law, it is found that they are inseparable from an established religion,—inseparable from a union of Church and State.AMS August 14, 1889, page 228.1

This is further shown by a mere glance at the British system, as set forth by Blackstone in his chapter on “Offenses against God and Religion.” There “profanation of the Lord’s day” is classed with such things as “apostasy,” “heresy,” “reviling the ordinances of the church,” “non-conformity to the worship of the Church,” “witchcraft,” “conjuration,” “enchantment,” “sorcery,” “religious imposture, such as falsely pretending an extraordinary commission from Heaven,” adultery as an ecclesiastical offense cognizable by the spiritual court, and such confusion of civil and religious ideas as the punishment of drunkenness as an offense against God and religion. This is the company with which Sunday laws belong. The penalty for apostasy was, first, burning to death; this fell into disuse after a while. Then the penalty was that “for the first offense the offender should be rendered incapable to hold any office or place of trust.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 228.2

At such legal nonsense as this the United States Constitution struck a death blow in the clause which declares that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this Government.” And by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, this Government utterly separates itself from the whole system of offenses against God and religion so long maintained by the British Government, by the colonies, and, even yet by many of the States, and which is characteristic of all Church and State governments—governments of established religion—by declaring that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is sound American principle, and accords with the word of Jesus Christ. And the effort ought to be, throughout this whole nation, to lift the Constitutions, the legislation, and the jurisprudence of the States up to the level of that of the National Constitution. But instead of doing that, and so carrying this whole Nation bodily onward in the march of liberty, enlightenment, and progress, these people go about to bring down our national system of Constitution and laws to the level of that of the States, which is the level of that of the colonies, which is the level of that of the British system, which is the level of that of the Papacy, which is the system of paganism under cover of the Christian name.AMS August 14, 1889, page 228.3

At the hearing before the Senate Committee last December, on the Sunday bill, Dr. Elliott cited Edgar, Athelstan, and Alfred; and Dr. Crafts cites Alfred, Charlemagne, and Justinian; in support of Sunday laws. To be sure! And with equal force they can cite these and many others of the Dark Ages in support of tithes to the clergy, the supremacy of the monks in civil affairs, the “holy anointing” of kings by the Pope, and for any and every other thing that belongs with the papal system. They can carry Sunday-law precedents farther back than that: they can go back to the time of Theodosius and Constantine. They can find, and so can anybody else, that as Pontifex Maximus of the old pagan system, Constantine “had the plenary power of appointing holy days;” they can find that by virtue of this power, Constantine established the first. Sunday law of all time, in honor of the “venerable day of the sun,” whose special devotee he was; and also that as “bishop of externals” of the new pagan system,—the papal,—which office he assumed by virtue of his political conversion to the political Christianity of his time, he played into the hands of the ambitious bishops by giving them in that Sunday law their coveted “use of the power of the State for the furtherance of their aims” to compel men to accept the decrees, and submit to the dictates, of the church. He, and all others, will find that this is the literal truth of the origin of Sunday laws.AMS August 14, 1889, page 228.4

All this is supported by abundance of testimony of undoubted authority. So eminent a divine as Dean Stanley declares plainly that the retention of the old pagan name of “dies Solis,” or Sunday, for the weekly Christian festival, “is owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiment with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects, pagan and Christian alike, as the ‘venerable day of the sun.’ ... It was his mode of harmonizing the discordant religions of the empire under one common institution.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 228.5

This same mode of harmonizing paganism with Christianity was further illustrated by his imperial coins, bearing on one side the name of Christ, and on the other the figure of the sun-god, with the inscription, “the unconquerable sun.” This confusion of pagan and Christian ideas and practices is what made the papacy, the union of Church and State, and the confusion of civil and religious things from which, with the exception of the Government of the United States, the nations have not even yet freed themselves. That is the authority, and the only authority, for Sunday laws. Sunday has no basis whatever as a civil institution; it never had any. And the only basis it has, or ever had, as a religious institution is in that confusion of paganism and Christianity which made the papacy, with all that it is or ever was. A. T. JAMS August 14, 1889, page 228.6

“Who Is on the Constitutions Side?” The American Sentinel 4, 29, pp. 229, 230.

ATJ

IN the words, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the United States Constitution guarantees perfect religious liberty to every soul in this Nation. A great many people appear to dread the encroachments of the Roman Catholic power. But, so long as the United States Constitution shall be kept as it is, and legislation in harmony with it, such fears are groundless. Cardinal Gibbons might be elected president, Archbishop Corrigan, vice-president, every seat in the Senate might be filled with bishops, and every seat in the House of Representatives might be filled with priests, yet so long as they should respect the Constitution they could not pass a single law affecting Protestantism in any way, because the Constitution says that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And under this Constitution, the Roman Catholic, in the exercise of his religion, is just as free from any interference by Protestants as Protestants are from the interference which they profess to fear from Catholics.AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.1

Much is said of the hatred of infidels toward Christianity; but with the Constitution as it is, and with legislation and public sentiment in harmony with it, infidels might hate Christianity as heartily as many persons think they do, and yet they could do Christianity no harm. Colonel Ingersoll might be elected president and every seat in Congress filled with infidels as outspoken as he, yet so long as the Constitution should be respected, they could not make a single law affecting Christianity in any way, even if they wanted to, because the Constitution says that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.2

Under this Constitution religious profession and worship are absolutely free. And so long as public sentiment shall see to it that the Constitution remains as it is, and legislation in harmony with it, every man’s religious profession and worship will remain free. Constitutional safeguards are such only so long as there is “an enlightened public opinion based on individual intelligence.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.3

There is, however, an already large, and constantly increasing element demanding that the Constitution shall be so amended as to empower Congress to legislate in behalf of Christianity. And a great many are even calling for religious legislation without any such amendment. May 21, 1888, Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, introduced a bill to “promote” the observance of the Lord’s day “as a day of religious worship,” and to secure the “religious observance of the Sabbath day.” Four days afterward, May 25, the same Senator introduced a “joint-resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, respecting establishments of religion and free public schools;” providing for instruction in “the principles of the Christian religion” in all public schools of the Nation; and empowering Congress to “enforce this article by legislation when necessary;” which only proposes to empower congress to legislate in regard to the principles of the Christian religion. During the last session of the Fiftieth Congress, there were repeated visits of large and influential delegations to the Senate committee having these items in charge, pleading strongly for the passage of both. The adoption of either would be but the establishment of a national religion, and the establishment of a national religion is but the establishment of a national despotism, even though it be under the name of Christianity. True Christianity never can be made a national religion. To make it national is to pervert it. Christianity is universal. It embraces all the world, having its head in Heaven and not on earth.AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.4

Jesus Christ separated forever civil government from his religion when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Cesar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s.” Bancroft, the historian of the United States, says: “No one thought of vindicating religion fire the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity, by establishing a pure, spiritual, and universal religion for all mankind, enjoined to render to Caesar only that which is Caesar’s. The rule was upheld during the infancy of the gospel for all men.” “The new Nation when it came to establish a government for the United States refused to treat faith as a matter to be regulated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a State. Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion above all, the new Nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained of God in Judea.” The United States Constitution as it is, upon the subject of religion, is in exact harmony with the principles and the word of Jesus Christ. Therefore, any effort to change that Constitution, respecting religion, even though it be professedly done in behalf of Christianity, is directly opposed to the word of Jesus Christ.AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.5

Again the Declaration of Independence declares that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is the fundamental principle of American institutions, and it is in harmony with the word of God. Yet, at a convention held in Sedalia, Mo., May 23 and 24, in behalf of the proposed National Sunday law, Mr. W. P. Gray, the secretary of the convention, who was made secretary of the State Sabbath Union, said:—AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.6

“I for one, do not believe that as a political maxim, governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And I believe with Mr. Gault on this, I think. And so the object of this movement is an effort to change that feature in our fundamental law.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.7

This statement is quoted and endorsed by the Christian Statesman, which is the official organ of the National Association for securing such an Amendment to the United States Constitution as Senator Blair proposed. Therefore, it stands proved by their own words that, those who favor the resolution and the bill introduced by Senator Blair on the subject of religion, are, through these, aiming at the subversion of the fundamental principles of American institutions, the destruction of the rights and liberties of men; and that their work is directly opposed to the principles and the word of Jesus Christ.AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.8

It is true that both these pieces of proposed legislation died when the Fiftieth Congress expired, March 4, 1889. But it is also true that all those who favor them are preparing to do their utmost to have them introduced as soon as the next Congress convenes, and also to do their utmost to secure their adoption.AMS August 14, 1889, page 229.9

Do you respect the word of Christ? Do you love liberty, civil and religious? Do you respect the rights of men? Do you appreciate the liberty asserted in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States? If you do any one of these, then you should be willing to let your voice be known in the endorsement and your name in the signing of the following petition:—AMS August 14, 1889, page 230.1

“To the Honorable, the Senate of the United States, (duplicate also to the House):—AMS August 14, 1889, page 230.2

“We, the undersigned, adult residents of the United States, twenty-one years of age or more, hereby respectfully but earnestly petition your Honorable Body not to pass any bill in regard to the observance of the Sabbath, or Lord’s day, or any other religious or ecclesiastical institution or rite; nor to favor in any way the adoption of any resolution for the amendment of the National Constitution that would in any way give preference to the principles of any one religion above another, or that will in any way sanction legislation upon the subject of religion. But that the total separation between religion and the State assured by our National Constitution as it now is, may forever remain as our fathers established it.”AMS August 14, 1889, page 230.3

The lines are being drawn. On which side will you stand? A. T. J.AMS August 14, 1889, page 230.4

August 7, 1889

August 21, 1889