October 14, 1897
A DENIAL of the validity of Sunday laws is not at all a denial of the right of any person to a weekly day of rest.
THE rest why a good many “reforms” do not succeed is that it is impossible to reform an evil thing into a good thing.
HE who spends the Sabbath day with God will enjoy a quiet and restful Sabbath, whether any one else around him is at rest or not.
THE right to do that which God commands, can be solely claimed by any individual without reliance upon any other power than God.
THERE is no right more important to mankind, none left more unguarded at the present time, and none so seriously menaced to-day, as that of individual freedom of conscience.
THE civil law cannot undertake to enforce morality, without being forced to turn aside from its legitimate work of preserving human rights, and becoming an instrument of their destruction.
IF the nation if a moral personality, as is claimed, it must have a conscience, and its conscience and must direct the latter in any matter with which it has to do. And this being so, the nation becomes the individual’s god, and nationalism the individual’s religion.
IT is a sure sign of a bad law that it is largely made use of by bad people, or with malicious motives.
THE effectual cure for evil is not repression, but eradication; and the work of eradication must always be done in the heart.
IF it is fitting that the mighty work of creation should be commemorated by the setting apart of a weekly day of rest, what is there fitting about the setting apart of such a day by the State, which never created anything, nor has any power to create even a grain of sand? Is not such an act highly presumptuous?