T

HE editor of the El Paso (Tex.) Herald points out in its issue of Dec. 17, 1920, some of the dangers and evil effects of Sunday legislation be cause of the unenforceable absurdities involved in nearly all Sunday laws. We take the following excerpts from this editorial upon religious legislation, which, though written two years ago, is still timely:

'Nearly every State has drastic blue laws,' as they are commonly termed,-laws for the most part a heritage from the distant past and yet upheld by a considerable part of the people, or, to speak more precisely, by the people of some communities.

"These blue laws are in large part disregarded by the majority of citizens everywhere, with the open tolerance of officials, who, after all, cannot be expected to act vigorously in a way counter to the will of the majority.

"There are communities in Texas where the State blue laws are observed and enforced, but such communities are few, and they are not populous. Practically all the larger centers of population have arrived at a sort of compromise under which certain State statutes are commonly regarded as inoperative, and public officials would quickly fall into disfavor and under the political ban if they should attempt to enforce the blue laws literally.

"This is the fact. But it needs no argument to demonstrate that the condition is not a healthy one. Laws are supposed to be put on the books because they represent the will of the people, or at least of a majority. Laws on the books are supposed to be enforced impartially and actively. When certain laws, or certain classes of laws, are permitted to sleep, and officials charged with enforcing the laws are subjected to punishment if they enforce them, there is something wrong with the laws — unless we are willing to concede that the majority ought to be subjected to the will of the minority, which is hardly in accord with American doctrine.

"The question revolves chiefly around the laws for Sunday observance, and proposed laws for censorship of amusements, especially moving pictures.

"It is proposed among other things - that the most rigid Sunday laws existing anywhere in the United States be adopted as national

laws, and enforced by national officers; and further, that moving pictures be subjected to national government censorship.

"Of course any action taken along these lines would be only an entering wedge. There would be no end to the regulations and prohibitions that would be insisted on, if the people of this country yield an inch in this direction. It really amounts to this: that a minority is seeking, is determined, to impose its wil on the majority, and unless the majority takes care, it will be done. . . .

"To put on the books any law that cannot or will not be enforced, or to allow such a law to remain unchanged on the books, is to encourage a spirit of contempt for all law and a tolerance of lawbreaking that inevitably reflects in the conduct of people and brings about loose and even dangerous conditions in a com munity. A law that does not carry with it substantially the support of law-abiding ani right-thinking and well-intentioned folk is not only inoperative, it is a menace to good govern ment. . . .

"The law as it stands is full of absurdities. that are unknown to most people simply be cause nobody tries to observe it literally or to enforce it literally. . . . But if such laws were once to be sanctioned by a national Constitu tional amendment and by national laws, an: put into the hands of fanatics to enforce, ther everybody would find himself rasped contin ually, irritated and harassed to the point of exasperation.

"No good end is to be served by such movaments. For one thing, we have in this country tens of millions of persons of antecedents not altogether Puritanic, and there is a limit be yond which it is not safe to go by way of ex citing hatred and disgust. We speak usual. of law and order in the same breath, but ther are times when law makes for disorder, and te attempt to control the people's disposition of their own time becomes dangerous the momen it passes the bounds of protection of equal rights and takes on the character of arbitrary dictation.

"Reasonable Sunday freedom does not keep people away from church, and no sort of fore applied is going to make people attend church if they don't want to.

"The day is past, or ought to be, when th church can hope to enlist physical force, poli: ical power, military power for that is wha' it would amount to in its efforts to enlarg its sway over men's hearts."

AN old divine uttered a great truth when he said: "There is enough religion in the world to sink it, and I fear not nough Christianity to save it."

THE church that makes an appeal to the force of law in place of the power of love to lead people into the church, should write "Ichabod" above her door.

LIBERTY, Truth, and Justice constitute a trinity of principles which are as eternal as the Godhead, and will ultimately triumph over every tyranny of man over the mind and conscience of man.

LIBERTY, which does not infringe upon another person's rights, is the heritage of each individual, and no majority on earth has a right to invade the possession of this heavenly gift to men. It is the greatest of all our inalienable rights.

A SPIRITUAL reformation can never be effected by the employment of carnal means and methods. A religion that makes an appeal to force certainly cannot be called Christian. Christ did not ordain policemen to promulgate the gospel.

A STATE religion is well named. It is ot God's religion. The only religion hat God accepts is heart religion - a eligion that is dominated by the power f God's love in a heart that has been ubdued by divine grace. All other orms of religion are the veneerings of ypocrisy.

SOME people have an idea that the ivil government has a right to legislate pon every subject under heaven. In merica, at least, the Federal Constituon has placed certain limits upon the owers of Congress and upon our State gislators, abridging their right to enet religious tenets into civil law or to terfere with the free exercise of indidual conscience. Sunday laws are hosle to these Constitutional provisions, and hen enforced, override the Constitution.

SOME Christians want to make men good en masse by state law, because they think God's method of converting by gospel means is too slow. Do our "political preachers" who are substituting the policeman's club for the cross of Christ, realize that one sinner converted by the power of the gospel means one loyal supporter for the cause of right, whereas ten thousand men who are coerced by state law to conform to a church dogma against their own convictions, are ten thousand enemies waiting for an opportunity to destroy both the church and the law? The church must win its adherents by the power of love, not by the force of law, if she hopes to succeed in the end.

ACCORDING to the Baltimore Sun, Justice Alonzo G. Hinkley, of Buffalo, N. Y., scored the defendant who signed a contract with a football player to play football on Sunday and then refused to pay the contract price because the Sunday game rendered the contract illegal. 66 One could not conceive a more unsportsmanlike act," remarked Justice Hinkley. "He took the benefits of the contract, then, after refusing to pay, plays the baby act by invoking the Sunday statute. If he reflects the character of professional football players generally, then another favorite sport requires a house cleaning."

THE mayor of Victoria, British Columbia, recently closed up everything tight on Sundays. He prohibited the sale of Sunday newspapers, the sale of cigars, of ice cream, and proposed that only one drug store in the city should remain open, solely for the sale of drugs. The mayor said that ice cream itself is not a food, but if other food were served in restaurants, the serving of ice cream could not be stopped. The mayor's prohibition makes it a crime to sell ice cream in a drug store, but lawful in a restaurant!

LINCOLN, Nebr., seems to be in the throes of a Puritan campaign, even amateur Sunday baseball being prohibited. The Lincoln Star of April 24 contains an account of the threatened arrest of A. J. Dunlap for playing baseball on a vacant lot with his two small boys. He was just getting ready, he says, to toss a "dewdrop" to one of the boys at bat, when a policeman stepped up and said to him, "I am sorry to interfere, but three ministers have telephoned that you are disturbing the peace and quiet of the Sabbath, so you will have to stop the game." "The Dunlap home," says the Star, "is out away from town, and the nearest neighbor lives about two blocks away. Mr. Dunlap asserts that he and the boys were not disturbing anybody with their play."

THE editor of LIBERTY is in receipt of a newsy letter from C. R. Davisson, of Orlando, Fla., relative to our protest against the passage of the drastic Sunday bill, H. R. 9753, now pending before Congress. The letter reads as follows: "DEAR SIR:

"I will say Amen to law proposed to be passed at Washington, D. C. The world now has settled on the seventh day commonly an adopted it as Sunday, and in union there is strength. I will say in all candor if after 1922 years you are not satisfied, get out of the cour try. You are compared to a small speck on a pound of butter. You can't work on our Sabbath without annoying your neighbor. Get out and let's have peace.

"Yours, etc.,

"C. R. DAVISSON, a Christian." When a Christian writes such a letter to another Christian, relative to the enactment of a drastic Sunday law, it is the best argument that can be presented why such a religious measure should not pass.

66

慌慌慌

THE mayor of Duluth, Minn., at the request of the executive secretary of the Interchurch Council of Duluth, issued an executive order calling upon all the citizens, business men, and theaters to suspend all business on Good Friday "for the solemn observance of the rel gious holiday on April 14," to commemo rate the suffering and sacrifice of Christ." This may seem like an inno cent proceeding on the part of the mayo in conjunction with a high church official But it was just such a procedure as the which led to a union of church and state in the Roman Empire. At firs these religious observances were mad optional under civil proclamations, bu later they resolved themselves into man datory statutes under penalties. It wa exactly on this same plan that Sunday observance first received civil recogni tion, and later became mandatory unde penalty of capital punishment. The tim to take alarm is at the beginning of suc a procedure, and not wait until we ar bound hand and foot.

A

HIGH official of the Lord's Day Alliance is credited with saying, "We believe that if we take away

a man's motor car, his golf sticks, his Sunday newspaper, his horses, his pleasure steamships, amusement houses, and parks, and prohibit him from playing outdoor games or witnessing field sports, he naturally will drift back to church."

When one reads such language, he is led to wonder what conception the author of the above words has of the motives which should inspire church attendance. Not only this, but he is led to view with a feeling little short of amazement the methods by which it is sought to obtain such results.

The writer of this article just now opened a most revered book, and found on a certain page words like these: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is ight." How sweet are the sentiments here expressed! What hope and courage have they brought to struggling souls! Jesus, the young Galilean, appealed to the heart-longing of many men. No vestige of force is used, but an appeal is made to the soul.

Then again, the blessings of the spiritual life are not for the "drifters." Men "drift" to destruction. Should the program of the Lord's Day Alliance be foliowed to its conclusion, the world would not drift to God or the church, but toward the Inquisition, and into the -iarkness of unbelief. Men are no brought to God by a process of eliminaion. The early Christians did not drift to church because they had nothing else to do and no other place to go. At the

risk of their lives they stole away to the catacombs, and in those secret places they sang their songs and offered their prayers while pagan Rome crowded into the theaters or madly cheered the gladiators who butchered each other in the arena. This the early Christians did to satisfy the longing of their souls. These ancient people felt that in so doing they were drawing nearer to God. They were not drifters. They felt the impulse of the divine invitation, and, confiding in it's Author, sought to partake of its promised sweets.

Ringing in their ears were these other words of the Master: "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me." They did not drift into connection with God. It is written of Matthew, the disciple, that "he arose, and followed Ilim." The longings for home and companionship wrung from the prodigal the cry, "I will arise and go to my father." Before this he was a drifter. Drifting and boredom- ennui They are each and What is needed is purpose. “I will

go hand in hand. both a sign of decay. vitality, life, strong not let Thee go, except Thou bless me," is the language of one who prevails.

It sometimes seems that the world is ready, yes, waiting, for men with a message, men whose lips have been touched with fire from the altar; men who can stir the jaded imagination and awaken a longing for things divine. All religious enactments ever written or to be written by any civil or ecclesiastical body or bodies or councils, cannot accomplish the desired end.

Let the Heaven-inspired apostles speak. and men may recognize in them the voice of the Galilean, and hearing, may cast away the pleasures and allurements of the world, and arise and come to Jesus.