orship or not to worship, cannot afford › be indifferent in this matter.

"If the people could ever have a sayo on these proposed Sunday blue laws hey would thunder back, No! to your evilish attempt to inoculate the body politie with this religious pellagra; No! o your relics of medieval bigotry and Puritan repression to crimson the streams f America with the blood of martyrs; o! to your seething, sizzling, ecclesistical hell by which you want to burn s; No! to your insane endeavor to supersede God's method of persuasion and hackle the soul with another Spanish nquisition; No! to the pernicious design of the Lord's Day Alliance establishing hierarchy in this country and setting tself up as a great pontiff with despotic control over everything relating to law, norals, and religion; No! to your unconcionable plot to crucify liberty on the -ross of Sabbatarianism."

Church Attendance Compulsory or Voluntary

T

HE question of "Religion in Summertime" received attention. in Our Sunday Visitor, July 10. It declares, “The closed season for he churches is the open season for Saan." The Visitor states that the Cathoie churches do not close shop at any ime, but after the congregation has gone o worship in the morning, this "duty lone, it is free to spend the remainder of he day in harmless recreation. NonCatholics, at least those of the old-fashoned stripe, are not so free to use the Lord's day, and some of them are obecting strenuously to any one's so using t. Yet, oddly enough, it is the nonCatholic congregation that shows the nost notable falling off in the matter of church attendance during the summer." When the drawing power of the pulpit ails to fill the church pews, there are ertain political preachers who are empted to substitute the policeman's lub in place of the cross of Christ to

compel church attendance on Sunday.

Since the Catholic Church is the author of Sunday sacredness and Sunday observance, why should the Protestant churches which have accepted this Catholic institution, dictate to the members of the Catholic Church how they shall observe Sunday? Or why should they dictate to nonchurch members! And especially, why should they compel those who still observe the original Sabbath of divine appointment, to observe also a Catholic institution, in which these people have no faith, and which they believe is a denial of their faith and the word of God? Why not let the Catholics observe the day in harmony with their own ideals, and let every other person do the same, so long as they do not violate the provision of our civil regulations which are equally applicable on every day of the week? This, and this only, is religious liberty. Church attendance and religious observances have no value unless the action is voluntary and the motive emanates

from the heart. The church will succeed

much faster in filling the church pews by preaching the power of the love of Christ and the grace of God, than by appealing to the civil magistrate to use the force of law to compel people to conform to the outward show of religion. Such a course makes enemies and hypocrites instead of friends and Christians.

The Right to Work

S is well known, the Christian Statesman is the official organ of the National Reform Association. When it speaks, it is supposed to voice the official opinion of that association. As any other paper or magazine, it sometimes goes outside of its regular contributors for articles, but these must voice the ideas of the organization it represents. At times such publications incorporate certain actions of certain bodies and indorse them as sound.

The March issue of the Statesman prints a resolution recently adopted by

the National Grange. No comment is made for or against the resolution; so it is natural to conclude its sentiments are, to say the least, approved by the editor of the Statesman. This means, if left undisputed, the sentiments of the National Reform Association. Here is the item, as a whole, just as it appeared in the above-named journal:

"The National Grange does hereby express its disapproval of any system which denies to any individual the right to work in any place where his industry is needed at any time and at any wage which is satisfactory to him, or to quit his employment whenever and for whatever reason may be to him controlling, subject only to such contract obligation as he may willingly enter into and as may be enforceable in an American court of justice."

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With these sentiments, the writer of this article is in full accord. The right to work is inalienable. No man should divest himself of it; on the other hand, no one has rightfully the power to deprive another of the privilege of working at any time. . . which is satisfactory to him." Doubtless the Grange in adopting this resolution and the Statesman in indorsing it, had in mind the controversy between the advocates of the open and the closed shop. This does not matter, the principle is the same. Disapproval" should ever and always be expressed of any system which denies to any individual the right to work in any place or at any time where his industry is needed. Let us apply this to Sunday laws. What right has any one to deny to another the privilege of honest work on any day of the week?

The Sunday law proponents are doing all in their power to take this right away from all men. Why does the National Reform Association array itself on one side of this question of rights regarding the open shop, and on the other side when it comes to Sunday laws? It is hard to be on both sides of the fence and still be consistent. No fault can be found with the declaration of the National Grange and no censure is due the Statesman for indorsing it, but to be consistent, the magazine should take the

same stand as regards Sunday legisl tion. It is a species of tyranny to forbi an honest man's doing honest work on a day of the week. Such laws breed co tempt for law. Christians, wheth statesmen or not, should learn this less and heed it. and heed it. Such measures are n born of real statesmanship, and are f removed from the teachings of the A thor of the golden rule, our Lord an Saviour Jesus Christ. They are ind fensible from the standpoint of eith church of state.

W. F. M.

Good Reasons Why Congress Ha Tabooed Sunday Laws

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BY LEON A. SMITH

XAMINED from any possible poi of view, Sunday laws are seen be without justification.

They promote idleness, at a time whe there is far too much idleness in the cour try, and when constructive work w never so urgently in demand.

They stir up religious animosity, a time when there is the greatest need more peace and good will among a classes of the people.

They put a weapon in the hands men actuated by spite against peop because they practise a different kin of religion.

Representing compulsion only, the have no place in the religious contr versy which exists over the question Sabbath observance.

They have never conferred any visib benefit upon a community or upon

state.

They have long remained as dead-lette legislation upon the statute books nearly all the States, being inconsisten impractical, and unenforceable, becaus out of harmony with American prine ples, ideals, and institutions.

Being wrong in principle, they ca never be right in fact, however mild i their demands and however innocent i appearance.

Need of Vigilance

THE political, social, industrial, and ommercial worlds are in a highly feverh state. Revolution is in the very air. oman Catholics claim that this state affairs is the result of the Reformaon of the sixteenth century and the Detrines of Protestantism, which, they aintain, undermine respect for authory. The remedy they propose is the storation of the temporal power of the ope and a general return to the bosom the Catholic Church.

Protestants, on the other hand, while eploring the situation, dissent from e proposed remedy, and in effect, ggest that relief can be found only by knowledging God's right to rule, and making His law the supreme politilaw, to be enforced by legislative, dicial, and executive action.

The only practical difference, therere, between the Roman Catholic and e Protestant position is as to who shall cide what the law of God is. In the st instance, the Pope would, of course, arbiter of all such questions. In the her, the consensus of Protestant opinI would be the supreme law, unless deed the Pope and the preachers might ree on certain fundamental doctrines, ch, for example, as the utility of stateforced Sunday rest. Indeed, it looks if something of this kind might sily grow out of the present situation, which case the dissenter would receive ant consideration. Notwithstanding r boasted twentieth century civilizan, there is still need of that eternal zilance which is, as it always has been, e price of liberty.

B.

Blue Law Traps Boys "LINCOLN, NEBR., August 17.- Eight ys caught pitching horseshoes on a Pant lot at University Place, a LinIn suburb, last Sunday, were found ilty of violating the law and fined $5 d costs each in justice court of the town

MARTIN RYAN and Eldridge Trippe, of Baltimore, Md., were both arrested for

working on Sunday." They were brought before the magistrate's court at Central Police Station. Martin Ryan, an employee of the Independent Ice Company, testified that he received a tele

phone call from a woman who said she was sick and wanted a small piece of ice, and that he asked Eldridge Trippe to take the piece of ice to the home of this sick woman in his small express wagon as he was running along the street. The magistrate at the central station told Trippe that he sympathized with him, but that he could not do anything, the law would have to take its course. shows that the blueness has not yet been taken out of the Maryland Sunday blue law. All this happened during the extremely hot weather of last June, and yet our professional reformers dare tell us that there never were any "blue" laws.

This