1894

May 17, 1894

“The True Reason” American Sentinel 9, 20.

E. J. Waggoner

The Supreme Court of the State of Michigan, U.S.A., has decided that a law compelling barbers’ shops to be closed on Sunday is within the police power of the State. It holds that “the best reason for maintaining the police power of the State to prohibit citizens from engaging in secular work on Sunday, is that experience has shown that one day’s rest in seven is necessary to the physical welfare of the individual.”AMS May 17, 1894, page 159.1

But the fact is that experience has shown nothing of the kind. There have never been any better specimens of manhood, physically, than the ancient Greeks and Romans, who knew nothing of a weekly recurring rest day. In a time when nations existed only by the power of the sword, and fighting was little more than an athletic contest between the individual soldiers of two armies, the physical welfare of citizens was the chief concern of governments; yet no pagan nation has ever known any such thing as a weekly rest day. That is sufficient to disprove the fallacy so widely spread, that the physical welfare of man is the chief object of the Sabbath rest.AMS May 17, 1894, page 159.2

But even suppose it were, why should the State interfere in the matter? It is certain that regular nightly rest is far more necessary to one’s physical welfare than a weekly rest, yet no nation thinks of enacting laws requiring that all the people shall sleep from 10 P.M. till 6 A.M., or from midnight till eight o’clock in the morning. If any legislative body in the world should presume to pass such a law, there would be a general protest against such an arbitrary exercise of power.AMS May 17, 1894, page 159.3

But no such law will ever be passed, because, although the securing of a sufficient amount of sleep every night is very essential to the health of the body, it has nothing to do with any system of religion; while Sunday laws are in the interest of religion. The claim that they are a physical necessity is nothing but an excuse that has been devised in America to conceal the fact that Church and State are united there as well as in the Old World.—Present Truth, London, Eng.AMS May 17, 1894, page 159.4