dinance enacted by the town council.

The demands for Sunday closing are not authorized by divine authority. They are purely of human origin.

Any institution, or work, or recreation, or amusement which is proper to be carried on during the hours of Monday, cannot justly be prohibited by civil law upon any other day or days of the week. Just civil government protects every man in his rights every day, and does not take any of his natural rights from him.

Proper civil government is ordained to protect the individual as truly as to protect the majority. This is emphatically true of the supreme law of this the greatest of all republics. Our Constitution recognizes no other power than that of persuasion in enforcement of religion or religious institutions. It forbids the greatest law-making body to interfere in religion. All know this to be a basic principle of our nation. If Congress has no legitimate right to enact any religious law, even when asked to do so by the largest majority possible, we ask,

protected by, that wonderful and mighty document.

It may be argued that religious laws are found in many places in this nation. But this does not change the plain teachings of that great instrument framed to be the bulwark of the rights of a free people. Its guaranties, until revoked by the people, still protect the minorities

Who gives the city council the right to enact such a law? Have the city councils greater authority than the Congress of these United States?

Not only has Congress been enjoined from passing any religious law whatsoever, but it is equally true that every lesser law-making body is equally forbidden to pass any law respecting the establishment of religion. Every man, great and small, high and low, and all combinations of men in these United States are equally subject to, and equally

and limit the power of the majority over the minority, particularly in matters of religious beliefs. This cannot be construed to give to any man license to injure his neighbor; and no man who recognizes equal rights of his neighbor, can justly be deprived of the exercise of any of his natural rights by any majority, no matter how great.

Therefore, every man has the fullest right to choose his own religion. Yea, he may choose to be nonreligious; and so long as he conducts himself as a good

citizen, he is amenable to God alone for his choice. This was recognized by our first President, "the father of our country," and the noble men of his day.

Times have changed, but no possible change in times and conditions can make it right for even a majority to trample upon inherent rights. No change in times can make of none effect the law of the Eternal. Changed times and conditions never can change the principles of the golden rule nor make a wrong, unjust law to be righteous and just.

Through Christ only, men are made free from the bondage of sin. The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution recognize and guarantee to citizens of the United States freedom in things earthly.

Let us stand fast in this freedom wherewith we have been made free, and never again become entangled in the yoke of Dark-Age bondage, when superstition ruled. The church then sat upon the judgment seat, having usurped the power of the state.

THE church that gains a standing in politics loses her power in religion.

THE martyrs of the gospel were victims of a union of church and state.

THE church never sank so low in spiritual life as when she influenced the civil scepter.

RELIGIOUS fanatics in the past secured from the state, laws embodying their religious views upon debatable questions. These laws were so intolerant that they made criminals out of honest, conscientious men who dared to stand true to their convictions, and to the word of God.

It was a crown of thorns that human hands placed on the head of Jesus Christ. It was a cup of gall and vinegar that they placed to His parched lips on the cross. If they treated Christ thus while He was here, what but persecution can a true, conscientious Christian expect from sinful man now?

A RELIGION that is not capable of taking care of itself with God's word on its side, is not worth preserving after it has forsaken God and fled to the state for support. The theologian who says the church will perish unless it obtains aid and support from the civil power is leaning upon a broken staff, and knows not the power of the living God.

THE last step in the scheme of religious legislation under a union of church and state is the Inquisition with all its horrors. To prevent the taking of the last step, we must deny the right of the State to take the first step in that direction. A legal acknowledgment of religion and religious obligations on the part of the state at the instigation of the church has constituted the first step in the past.

THE church which seeks to compel all people to observe Sunday, irrespective of belief, under duress of civil law, has not progressed beyond the Jewish church which sought to slay Christ because He refused to conform to their human precepts and traditions which made void the law of God.

A RELIGION which is good enough and pure enough to be called Christianity does not need to seek admission through the gateway of politics in order to be come established in the hearts of the people. It speaks for itself, and will survive when all else fails.

SUNDAY is arbitrarily called the Lord's day. The Bible calls the Sabbath - the seventh day-the Lord's day. Whose word has authority with you - man's word or God's word? Nowhere in the Bible is the first day of the week called the Lord's day.

To make others happy is the joy of living. The person who seeks to relieve the oppressed, who extends a kindly hand to the needy, who exchanges love for hatred, and leaves the world happier and better than he found it, has discovered the secret of a happy life.

THE National Reform Association claims that both secular and religious questions should be decided by the majority. If this be true logic, then it must be admitted that this is not a Christian nation. Governmental statistics show that more than 61 per cent of Americans are non-church members, non-religious, and non-Christian.

THE National Reform Association claims that Christianity and the church cannot survive unless the nation legalizes Christianity, and that the civil government will perish which does not legalize religion. When Rome went down, she had more religious statutes upon her books than at any other time in her history. Germany, under the kaiser; Russia, under the czar; and Mexico, under Huerta, all recognized the God of heaven as the ruler of nations, and Christianity as the legal religion. Their day has passed, but Christianity is still here. A formal, legal recognition of God as the supreme Ruler and Christianity as the genuine religion will save no nation from overthrow. Even the devils have done this much with fear and trembling, but that is no guaranty of salvation. The only thing that saves is Christ in the life.

THE National Reform Association favors majority rule in one breath and denies it in the next. "Their proposal," says the Christian Statesman, "to submit the fourth commandment to local referendums is in principle a proposal to submit the ten commandments to referendums. This is plain, practical atheism, the setting up of the people in the place of God." Yet the Statesman denies the minority any rights of conscience on a religious, controverted question, because it insists that both civil and religious

ACCORDING to the Passaic (N. J.) Daily News of Nov. 5, 1920, the Passaic County grand jury on the previous day refused to find indictments against the five motion picture theater owners in that city for violation of the New Jersey blue laws by keeping their theaters open on Sunday. When grand juries refuse to indict violators of the Sunday blue laws because of the obsolete character of these laws, is it not time for the legis latures to repeal these relics that originated under the old régime of a union of church and state? Christians do not need a state law to make them religious, and non-church members should not be compelled to act as if they were religious when they are not.

SIX boys were recently arrested in Uniontown, Pa., for stealing fruit from the freight cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The judge of the juvenile court sentenced them to compulsory attendance at the Sunday schools. "No excuses, apologies, or requests for leniency will be accepted," said the Court. A weekly Sunday school certificate showing their attendance at Sunday school, was ordered to be presented to the parole officer of the court. The juvenile court, of course, can exercise a wide discretion in meting out judgment in cases of this kind, but we doubt the wisdom of the penalty imposed. Boys resent compulsory religion as much as do full-grown men, and in nine cases out of ten it develops an innate hatred for religion which no counteracting influence can ever eradicate. A father once remarked: "I cannot understand why my children do not take to religion. I have tried my best to make them religious. If they would not bow down at family worship, I would knock them down."

Something Every One Should

S

Know

UNDAY, Nov. 14, 1920, Dr. Wallace Radcliffe, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian church, Washington, D. C., preached from the words, "He . . . set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." Ps. 40: 2.

His theme was the Pilgrims, who, he declared, came to these shores “that they might not cease to be English, and they built into our continental life the habits, language, law, and ideals that were English."

It is difficult properly to characterize such a statement, namely, "She started what is now God's kingdom, and man's ideal of republic." Said the Saviour of men, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36); but according to Dr. Radcliffe, it was set up by the Pilgrims on the shores of Cape Cod Bay, three hundred years ago.

Christ said, "I judge no man " (John 8:15); but the Puritans very soon began to judge and to condemn men, some of them to torture, and later some even to death.

No

This is not to say that the Pilgrims and Puritans were not Christians. doubt they did the best they knew, and so far as establishing a new order of things, "they builded better than they knew." They shook off the shackles that bound them in the Old World, and after a time other men, broader minded and more liberal than themselves, shook off the fetters with which the Puritans sought to restrain them, and undoing what the Puritans had attempted and had in part done, actually aided in establishing in this country a government founded upon the principles of civil and religious liberty.

Now, however, it is sought to again turn us back to the days of Puritan Massachusetts, and to rerivet upon our wrists the fetters cast off a century and a half ago by Baptists and Quakers in New England, by Quakers and Roman Catholics in Maryland, and by Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians in Virginia.

It was Roger Williams, a Baptist, who established the first colony in America, guaranteeing to all men of every faith, full and untrammeled religious liberty; and in Virginia it was Baptists, Presbyterians, and Liberals, who, while Massachusetts still had a union of church and state, established civil and religious freedom for men of all faiths or of no faith at all.

These are facts that ought to be known to all men, and especially to all Americans.

C. P. B.

T

Sunday Crusade

HE Huntington, W. Va., Sunday

law crusade is still raging with all the fervor and fury of Puritan times. It has lasted longer than any Sunday law crusade of modern times. The mayor is a Presbyterian elder and takes much pride in his Puritan proclivities and ancestry. Even newspapers, cigars, and drug stores are under the ban. Traveling men shun the place on Sunday because they are prohibited from obtaining clean laundry and pressed suits for Sunday wear if they happen to arrive late Saturday night. The people are organizing for a change in administration when an opportunity presents itself. It is proper that the Sabbath should be observed in harmony with God's commandment, but it is not proper that the civil authorities should use police power to enforce religious obligations, nor define such obligations by civil enactments.

CCORDING to an Associated

Press dispatch sent out from New York, November 24, and published the following day in the leading papers of the country,

"Enactment of laws calling for strict enforcement of the Christian Sabbath will be urged in the legislatures of at least thirty-five States during 1921,' the Lord's Day Alliance announced here today.

"An effort will be made to stop

commer

cialization" of the Sabbath,' said Dr. Harry L. Bowlby, secretary of the alliance,' with elimination of Sunday professional baseball, motion pictures, and automobiling. All stores would be closed.

"We would not impose a Puritan Sabbath,' said Dr. Bowlby, but we would have more of the spirit of the Puritans in our observance of the Lord's day.'

"A bill has already been prepared for submission to Congress for strict Sunday observance in the District of Columbia, and particular attention will be given to California and Oregon."

This is not the first time that the secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance has

declared in favor of more of the "spirit of the Puritans in our observance of the Lord's day."

Of course, the more of the spirit of true worship any man has in all his religious acts the better, but the very fact that Dr. Bowlby appeals to civil law to enforce Sunday observance proves that what he means by "the spirit of the Puritans" includes at least their dis

position to use the power of the state to enforce upon all men compliance with their practices. The Puritans did this three centuries ago in Massachusetts, and according to Dr. Bowlby, the Puritan spirit is not dead, even though so refuse to keep Sunday unless compelled many of the descendants of the Puritans

so to do.

DR. W. F. CRAFTS is editor of the Twentieth Century Quarterly, official organ of the International Reform Bureau, Inc., of Washington, D. C. In the number of the Quarterly issued in March, 1920, the editor says:

"The imperiled Sabbath, for example, with which the church itself stands or falls, can be defended against the commercialized amusements that are assaulting it all over the land only by united forces of many churches led by experienced reform societies."

While not so stated in this particular paragraph, for years Dr. Crafts has insisted that the Sabbath (Sunday) could not be preserved without civil law. It follows that inasmuch as "the church itself stands or falls " with the Sunday institution, which can be maintained only by the aid of the state, the church cannot be maintained or stand without the aid of the state!