The Uses of a Sunday Law.
By A. Delos Westcott
MRS. J. C. BATEHAM seems to well understand that their much-coveted Sunday law, when they get it, will amount to nothing in the way of securing a satisfactory observance of the day. She says:— “If we get this law, and we must persevere till we do get it, it will be cause for devout thanksgiving; but we shall still find that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and it will still rest with us individually, to so use the day as to obey God and the laws, and reap the fullest benefit from the day for ourselves and our families.” That is it exactly. No one can be compelled by law to serve God, or to change his belief. Get all the Sunday laws you please, and it will still rest with each person “individually, to so use the day as to obey God and the laws.” The only important effects that the law can have are to make hypocrites, and to inaugurate religious persecution. All those who believe in keeping Sunday would keep it without any law,—if their belief was worth believing, they would even keep it in opposition to law. On the other hand, those who observe the day when they do not believe it is right, show by that very act that they are hypocrites; for any language or action which is contrary to moral conviction, is hypocrisy. A man may be a hypocrite to secure worldly applause, or he may do it to escape the penalty of the law. It is therefore certain that any person who is constrained by civil law to keep Sunday, is influenced by that law to be a hypocrite. But what of those who adhere to their own convictions of duty, regardless of the civil power, and refuse to be made hypocrites by law? Only one thing can be done,—the State must inflict the penalty, just as it did upon Daniel and upon his companions. But to inflict temporal punishments upon any person for non-conformity to a religious institution, is persecution. Sunday is a religious institution, else it would not be proper to talk about its religious observance. Therefore, the enforcement of a Sunday law is religious persecution.213 Such are the invariable uses of a Sunday law, if it is used at all. And these conclusions are not based upon theory alone, but upon actual experience. This is the kind of a law of which Mrs. Bateham says, “we must persevere till we do get it,” and which to her “will be cause for devout thanksgiving.” A similar strain of enthusiasm and “devout thanksgiving” appeared a few months ago in the Catholic Banner, the organ of the Papacy in Barcelona, Spain. It said:— “Thank God, we at last have turned towards the times when those who propagated heretical doctrines were punished with exemplary punishment. The re-establishment of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition must soon take place. Its reign will be more glorious and fruitful in results than in the past. Our Catholic heart overflows with faith and enthusiasm; and the immense joy we experience as we begin to reap the fruit of our present campaign exceeds all imagination. What a day of pleasure will that be for us when we see anti-clericals writhing in the flames of the Inquisition!” When we remember the cruel persecutions which have already occurred in some States of this Union by the simple enforcement of strict Sunday laws; when we remember that the majority of the so-called Protestant ministers and their followers in those States experienced such “immense joy” in these persecutions that they almost unanimously remonstrated against the repeal of the laws; and when we remember that these same so-called Protestants are working with might and main to make such persecution general all over this country, looking forward to the time as a “cause for devout thanksgiving,” we confess our inability to discover any very great difference between the Protestant heart of America and the Catholic heart of Spain.