Blair Sunday-Rest Bill’s Religious Purpose
According to the Christian Statesman of July 4, “one chief purpose of the Blair Sunday-Rest bill is to set the Government itself, in its Post-office Department and at other points, in a right attitude toward the Sabbath?” Ah! we thought—no, we did not think, but it has been very persistently claimed, that the main object of the bill was to give the men employed in inter-state commerce and in the mail service a weekly day of rest for their health. The Statesman is neither as wise as a serpent nor as harmless as a dove, for it is trying to secure religious legislation and has not the wisdom to disguise the fact. The American Sabbath Union is working for the same thing, but tries to conceal its real purpose, and proposes to give the people a sort of a religious pill so sugar-coated with “civil sabbath” arguments that they won’t know what they are taking till they have swallowed it.