“Back Page” American Sentinel 11, 18, p. 144.

A FORCED religious observance is a sacrifice which God abhors.

ANY power which undertakes to deal by law with an act on the basis of its immorality, assumes the wisdom to measure and the power to adequately punish sin; and thus doing, it assumes to stand in the place of God. Earthly powers can by their laws deal with acts only on the basis of their character as violative or not violative of human rights.

SECTARIAN appropriations of public money should be stopped not because some one sect is getting more than its share, thereby making the other sects jealous; but because it is not just to tax people to support that in which they do not believe, and in which they are prevented by conscience from having any representation.

THE doctrine that Christianity is in this country a part of the common law, is certainly very flattering to the common law, but not so flattering to Christianity. Great indeed must be the common law if Christianity is only a part of it. Christianity—the manifestation of supreme love to God and to our fellowmen—covers the whole individual life. It includes not only justice in dealing, but mercy as well; while the civil law can at most only aim at justice. Christianity is infinitely broader and higher than human law, and is administered by an infinitely higher power and authority. The doctrine that Christianity is a “part of the common law,” is one of the devil’s schemes to degrade Christianity.

WE are told by the advocates of Sunday laws that Sunday rest, being merely the observance of a “civil sabbath,” can be enforced without any interference with the rights of conscience. But those who have most to say on this line are always those who are most zealous for Sunday as a religious institution. Have these persons a clearer insight than others into the nature of things purely civil? or does their religious zeal eclipse their discernment of truth and justice? Why does disregard of the “civil sabbath” “disturb” only those who are zealous for the religious sabbath? Why does honest labor, not objectionable to any upon six days of the week, become a “nuisance” to certain ones upon one particular day of each week, if not upon religious grounds?

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