Sunday Law Infringement on Religious Rights.
WHEN we published our argument on the enforcement of the Sunday law, we were not aware that any one had ever considered the point that the Sunday law is oppressive to the conscience of the Sabbath-keeper, and really amounts to a prohibition of the observance of the Bible Sabbath, because it would compel many to work on the seventh day to gain a livelihood. We find the same presented to the Supreme Court of California in the Brief of Mr. Brandon, as follows:— “Now, in view of the struggle for existence which exists in all civilized countries; in view of the intense competition which exists in all branches of business in the present age, it needs no argument to show, that in that strife and competition, a citizen cannot suspend his business occupations during two consecutive days and yet hope to secure a livelihood for his family, a result, indeed, oftentimes hardly attainable by31the most diligent and assiduous labor during six days. In this condition find themselves numerous citizens of our State, both Israelites and Seventh-day Christians, who are entitled to claim from the State the same paternal care, protection, and consideration vouchsafed to citizens of other religious denominations. Struggling to provide a living for themselves and families, to retain their children as upright, honorable citizens of the Republic, and entitled to have secured to them the elevating and moral influences of the religious observances that pertain to their faith; unable scarcely to earn that hardly-battled-for living in six days’ labor, the compulsory Sunday law requiring them to suspend their labors or business on another day immediately succeeding the one specially enjoined by divine command, presents to these men the alternative of either seeing their families need many of the necessaries of life, or of yielding in their conscientious observance of what they esteem a divine command. Can it be said, I ask, in all candor, in all justice, that an obstacle is not here interposed to the exercise of the religious observance, or worship of their citizens. I think no one but he whose sense of right and truth was blinded by religious zeal for the faith whose predominance was sought, but would answer in the affirmative. “It does present an obstacle; and an obstacle of so serious a nature that thousands, aye, tens of thousands have been compelled to yield in their conscientious observance, because they found it utterly incompatible with the peremptory command of the State. With that sacrifice made, there is lost to these men the elevating, moral, and religious influences conceded by all thinking minds to be due to its setting apart of certain recurring periods for spiritual things—influences the necessity and benefit of which are continually and urgently insisted on by ministers of the Christian faith when advocating the observance of Sunday by the members of their own Churches;—but of which these wronged and oppressed citizens are deprived. For it must be remembered, that to these men it is not a matter of choice or selection what day of religious rest shall be observed. Their religion does not prescribe the setting apart of a seventh part of time, or any recurring seventh day as a day of religious observance, but a special definite day only is enjoined. A day that cannot be supplanted by another. Hence it is, that not observing that day, and no other day having any religious sanctity, they lose all the sanctifying and beneficial influences to be derived therefrom, as the result of the interference of the State, and its attempted enforcement on them of the observance of a religious observance of another creed, under the flimsy device of a sanitary regulation.”