Sunday Laws and Baseball Suppression
By Editor
THE Christian Statesman, of September 12, refers with the highest approbation to the published report of the suppression of a base-ball game at Hamilton, Ohio, on Sunday, August 25. It says, “The good example should be widely published and everywhere imitated.” We should like for some of the people who favor such actions as this to point out what there is about a base-ball game that is uncivil on Sunday any more than on any other day. No one pretends that the playing of a game of base-ball is uncivil in any sense. It cannot be shown that it is in any way uncivil on Sunday, and it is not because of any incivility in it that they propose to suppress it on Sunday. Nor is this all; the playing of a base-ball is not even irreligious. It is true that men who are not religious play base-ball. It is equally true that men who are religious, and strictly so, can play base-ball and still be religious. Then it is not because the playing of base-ball is either uncivil or irreligious that they propose to suppress it on Sunday; it is solely because Sunday is held by certain people to be a religious day, and that it is to be devoted to religious exercises; and as the playing of base-ball is not a religious exercise, therefore it is not consistent with the religious observance of a day. Consequently the only purpose of the enactment and enforcement of Sunday laws is to enforce the observance of it as a religious day. It is to compel people who are not religious to pay religious tribute to those who pretend to be religious. But if the government is to do this in one thing when it is demanded, why not in everything else as it may be demanded, and have a thorough-going union of Church and State at once. That will be the inevitable outcome of a national Sunday law.