and that any legislation making the observance of the day compulsory is simply civil, and not religious.

If this claim were true, it would be within the purview of Congress to enact Sunday laws, for the sphere of the nation is to deal with civil questions. But if Sunday is a religious institution, such legislation is religious, and is therefore not within the rightful province of the

government, for the First Amendment to our national Constitution forbids such measures, in the words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The United States Congress in 1829 and 1830 regarded Sunday legislation as religious. Between the years 1810 and 1829, Congress was repeatedly petitioned to stop the Sunday mail. Numerous petitions and remonstrances were presented. Finally in 1829 the Senate Committee gave consideration to the question and decided against Sunday legislation. The

committee assigned as a reason that to pass the Sunday bill asked for would be to enter the theological realm and decide a religious controversy, a question which belongs to ecclesiastical councils, but not to legislative assemblies. This famous report says:

"Should Congress in legislative capacity adopt the sentiment, it would establish the principle that the legislature is a proper tribunal to determine what are the laws of God. It would involve a legislative decision on a religious controversy, and on a point in which good citizens may honestly differ in opinion without disturbing the peace of society or endangering its liberties. If this principle is once introduced, it will be impossible to define its bounds.

"Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy,

day, should be regarded as civil and observed as are those civil holidays? If not, why not? Why make a distinction between one civil day and another? Why permit labor and amusements on the Fourth of July or Washington's birthday, but fine or imprison those who perform honest labor on Sunday, if all stand on a civil footing? To close up, under penalty, places of business or amusement on a civil holiday, is not characteristic of civil legislation. Such closing is left optional with the individuals concerned. If only a civil observance of Sunday is intended, why should it not be the same on this day?

and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge of the fairest portions of the Old World."- Senate Report, 1829.

This same question was considered and a similar report was adopted by the House of Representatives in 1830. The statesmen of 1829 and 1830 wisely decided that such legislation was religious, and not civil, and that Congress could not rightfully enact a Sunday law. It is to be hoped that the statesmen of our own day will concur in this decision.

If the claim were true that only the civil observance of Sunday is intended in the ceaseless clamor for Sunday laws, then the day should stand on the same footing as other civil days. The Fourth of July, Washington's birthday, and Memorial Day are civil institutions. But are those who are asking for Sunday laws willing that the civil Sabbath, or Sun

There is nothing

in nature which indicates a weekly day or rest. The earth revolves on its axis seven days in the week. A daily period of rest is indicated by the darkness of night, but no Sabbath law is seen in nature. We must go to revelation for the origin of Sabbath rest. Here we find a divine precept, handed down from Mt. Sinai, which says, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God in it thou shalt not do any work." This command, spoken by Jehovah himself and written with His own finger upon stone, enjoins the observ ance of the seventh day upon all men. While Sunday is not the Bible Sabbath. but a human institution, the fact remains that the origin of the Sabbath is divine. not secular; religious, not civil; its foundation is in the decalogue, not in any human statutes. Its observance is therefore religious, not civil. A law, therefore, enforcing its observance is in the

interest of the church, not of the State. Sunday is an institution of the church, not of the state. Anciently it was observed by the heathen in honor of their god, the sun. The observance of either the first or the seventh day, has always been regarded, not as civil, but as religious. Members of all churches, and believers in the Christian religion everywhere, observe the day for religious rather than civil reasons. Its nonobservance is not uncivil, for it interferes with no human right. The secularist who observes no day may be just as good and civil

a citizen as the man who keeps

the Bible tells us that "the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord." This is as plain as the command respecting the Sabbath. But would those favoring a compulsory Sunday law favor a law compelling all

Sunday "after the most straitest sect of the Pharisees, so to speak.

The Sabbath is not civil but a religious institution, for it rests on a divine precept. Its observance is a duty which man owes to his Creator, and its desecration is a spiritual and not a civil offense; a sin and not a crime. But a spiritual offense can never rightfully be punished under civil laws, and any attempt to do so involves a union of church and state. All the dreary history of the terrible Inquisition and the Dark Ages, in which savages were made to shudder at the name of Christianity, was only the result of the church's seeking, by the power of the state, to mete out punishment for religious offenses.

The Sabbath command is only one of the precepts of the Bible. Why single out "Sabbath observance as a subject for legislation, and neglect other things that the Bible commands? For instance,

to give a tenth of their income for religious purposes? Quite a general protest would doubtless be raised against such a law. But why should the state be asked to pass a law requiring a person to give one seventh of his time for religion, any more than to give one tenth of his income for religious purposes? One is no more out of place than the other.

Not infrequently those demanding Sunday legislation deny that Sunday laws are religious, or that there is any intention of enforcing a religious observance of the day by means of such law. But all such denials are false, and contrary to fact. Back of every Sunday law is the Sunday Sabbath institution, and this institution, both in its origin and in its history, is purely religious. This point was well made by Hon. Charles R. Pratt, in an address delivered Oct. 31, 1906, at Elmira, N. Y., before the New He York State Sabbath Association. said:

"The most common form of legal interference in the matter of religion is that which requires the observance of Sunday as a holy day. In these days, the legal requirements do not usually extend beyond the compulsory cessation of labor, the maintenance of quiet upon the streets, and the closing of all places of amusements; but the public spirit which calls for a compulsory observance of these regulations is the same which in the colonial days of (Continued on page 94)