Conflicting Sunday Law Petitions
THERE is an item of business that we should like for the field secretary of the American Sabbath Union to explain. In Portland, Oregon, in the First Congregational Church, July 22, there was placed in the slips of the pews, the following petition to be signed:— “To the United States Senate: “The undersigned, adult residents of the United States, twenty-one years of age and more, hereby earnestly petition your honorable body to pass a bill forbidding in the Nation’s mail and military service and in inter-State commerce, and in the District of Columbia and the Territories, all Sunday traffic and work, except works of religion and works of real necessity and mercy.” We picked up in that church one of these blank petitions which we now have. Mr Crafts went from Portland to Puget Sound, and at Tacoma he circulated the following petition:— “The undersigned organizations, and adult residents (21 years of age or more) of the United States, hereby earnestly petition your honorable body to pass a bill forbidding, in the Nation’s mail and military service and inter-State commerce, and in the District of Columbia and the Territories, all Sunday traffic and work, except the works of religion and works of real necessity and mercy, and such private work by those who religiously and regularly observe another day of the week by abstaining from labor and business, as will neither interfere with the general rest nor with public worship.” Now why is this thus? Why do they circulate these two kinds of petitions? Why do they in one petition propose to exempt those who religiously and regularly observe another day of the week, and in the other petition make no sign of any such exemption? Not that we are in favor of such exemption, for we favor no exemption from the workings of Sunday laws unless it be uniform, and exempt everybody who does not want to obey the law. We only ask for information, why do they circulate these two kinds of petitions? And the columns of the SENTINEL are open for the field secretary, or any other one in authority, to answer.