The Rights of the People
A SUBTLE SUBTERFUGE
Professedly this right has always been recognized by both Catholicism and the different sects of Protestantism, but in nearly every instance the profession of recognition of the right has been only a pretense; for, while professing to recognize the right in one way, in another way, and by a sheer subterfuge, it has been denied and attempt made to sweep it entirely away. This subterfuge is for the church to get her dogmas or institutions recognized in the law, and then demand obedience to the law, throwing upon the dissenter the odium of “lawlessness and disrespect for the constituted authorities,” while she poses as the champion of “law and order,” the “conservator of the State, and the stay of society”! ROP 248.1
Of all the hypocritical pretenses that were every employed, this is perhaps the subtlest, and is certainly the meanest. It flourished throughout the Middle Ages, when anything and everything that the church could invent was thus forced upon the people. Its slimy trail can be traced throughout the history of the “Protestant” sects, in thus forcing upon the people such peculiar institutions as were characteristic of the sect that could obtain control of the law. And now it is made to flourish again, by all the sects together, in thus forcing upon the people the one thing in which they are all agreed, and in which they have obtained control of the law, 48 the observance of Sunday, “the Christian sabbath,” supported by such auxiliary organizations, such wheels within wheels, as the National Reform Association, the American Sabbath Union, the “Law and Order Leagues,” the “Civic Federations,” W. C. T. U., Y. M. C A., Y. P. S. C. E., and so on through the rest of the alphabet. ROP 248.2
Sunday, not only according to their own showing, but by every other fair showing that can be made, is a religious institution, a church institution, only. This they all know as well as they know anything. And yet every one of these organizations, principal or auxiliary, is working constantly to get this church institution fixed, and more firmly fixed, in the law, with penalties attached that are more worthy of barbarism than of civilization; and then, when anybody objects to it, they all cry out that “it is not a question of religion, it is simply a question of law. We are not asking any religious observance; all that we ask is respect for law”!! ROP 249.1
The Christian, Protestant, and American answer to all this is that neither the Sunday institution nor any other religious or ecclesiastical institution, has any right to a place in the law. And even when it is put into the law, this does not take away the right of dissent. The divine right of dissent from religious or ecclesiastical institutions abides ever the same; whether the institution is out of the law or in the law. And when the institution is fixed in the law, the right of dissent then extends to that law. The subterfuge cannot destroy the right. ROP 249.2