IN our issue of April 18, we noted the aggressive attitude lately assumed by Roman Catholics in the matter of enacting and enforcing Sunday laws. So sudden and general was this new attitude manifested through Roman Catholic press and pulpit, that it was evident that the movement was the result of concerted action emanating from an authoritative source.
There is evidence that this concerted action has its source in the Vatican. The following letter is taken from the Catholic Review of May 11, addressed by the pope to the president of the Sunday Rest Association of France, which has for its object the enactment and enforcement of more rigid Sunday laws:—Beloved Son, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
Very grateful to us have been your letters, especially that which gives us information dear to us concerning the association for the observance of the Sunday’s repose. It is true that France abounds in pious works usefully founded by the generous activity of her sons, but it pleases us to point out that over which you preside among those which are especially distinguished for the nobility and holiness of their aims.
This your association tends directly to cause to be rendered to God, as is just, a due homage by the cessation of work as he himself rigorously ordered even from the beginning of the old law. Hence we commend your work, and all the more readily do we look upon it with love, since contempt for the holiday of the Lord, is, day by day, the cause of new and great evils both for men and nations.
As to you, beloved son, and to our companions, who are so well inspired, we think it just to give you our exhortations. We wish that what so far you have been doing spontaneously, and upon your own initiative, you will continue to do in the future in compliance without invitation.
May God look with complacency upon your [167] organization and the manifold works done by you for this cause, and may you find a pledge of Divine favors in the apostolic blessing which we impart to you, beloved son, and to all those who, with you, devote themselves to so salutary an enterprise.
Given at Saint Peter’s, etc.
LEO XIII., POPE.
NOW that the papacy has officially arrayed itself with popular Protestantism in the crusade for compulsory Sunday observance, what earthly power will be able to withstand this powerful confederation? How literally are the scriptural predictions, made forty years ago by Seventh-day Adventists, now being fulfilled. Reader “how long halt ye between two opinions?” [168]