16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



enforcement of the law, be urged upon grounds of policy and expedi- 

 ency, each man instantly claims the right to judge for himself as to 

 what is expedient or necessary. Divine authority alone can give a 

 Sabbath. Human authority can give no more than a holiday. 



The results which confront us indicate an underlying philosophy 

 against which it is useless to fight. They show that the pagan con- 

 ception, which makes the state the source of authority in religious 

 matters, the arbiter of disputes, or the regulator of acts, is not only 

 foreign to the true Christian conception, but is destructive of it. The 

 Christianity of the fourth century was widely removed from the 

 Christianity of the apostles. No one element did more to create this 

 degeneracy than the interference by the state in matters of religion. 

 No form of interference affected the life of the people more than 

 legislation concerning holy-days and religious festivals. The effort 

 which Puritanism made to lift the whole question to a higher level 

 has failed because it persisted in the fundamental error that the state 

 may justly legislate concerning religious duties. Religious sabbatiz- 

 ing is a duty which men owe to God alone. Civil law can make a 

 holiday, can institute a day on which business and labor will cease ; 

 it can never make a Sabbath any more than it can make an honest 

 man. All appeal to civil law concerning Sabbath-keeping is neces- 

 sarily degrading, and opposed to the genius of Christianity. The 

 Sunday laws have not become obsolete because men are comparatively 

 more wicked than before, but because men have steadily risen above 

 the pagan conception which permits the state thus to interfere. He 

 who complains of the decline in regard for Sunday laws complains of 

 an unavoidable fruitage which has always appeared and always will 

 appear when the state interferes with religious matters. 



Another result has developed in connection with our Sunday laws 

 whereby the vilest and most nefarious business known to our civili- 

 zation has intrenched itself behind them, and at the same time defies 

 them. The enforced leisure which the Sunday laws and the customs 

 concerning Sunday have brought about make Sunday the great har- 

 vest-day for the saloons and their associate evils. The Sunday laws 

 prohibit many forms of legitimate business which our Christian civili- 

 zation has come to allow, and any persistent effort to enforce the Sun- 

 day laws against the saloon is met by the saloonist with the counter- 

 effort to enforce the laws against legitimate business. In the absence 

 of any struggle with the saloon, nobody thinks of enforcing the laws 

 against legitimate business, or against popular amusements. Mean- 

 while the rum-traffic, content to close the front door, if that be really 

 insisted upon, goes forward, and will continue to go forward, un- 

 checked. Legitimate business can not afford to be interfered with, 

 and the liquor power, holding the club in its own hand, says, "Permit 

 me to go forward, through the side-door at least, or I will give you 

 endless trouble through the same law whereby you seek to interfere 



