p. 190 | Why They Demand Them

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 10, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 24.

Why They Demand Them.

THE West End, a paper published in San Francisco, mentions a recent failure to enforce the Sunday law in Chicago, and says that such attempts are criminal, for they work a hardship on a few who are obliged to close, and on the public in general; and also that their enforcement brings other laws into contempt. We do not know that Sunday laws should be condemned because of the difficulty in enforcing them, because there are some other laws which might be condemned for the same reason. But certain it is that Sunday is not a proper subject of legislation, for the reason that it is a religious institution, and were it not, no one would think of demanding that its observance be regulated by law. In fact, no one ever asked that it be so regulated for any other reason until, within the past few years, they have been driven to set up the claim that it is a sanitary measure, for the reason that the people will not submit to religious legislation. The trouble in enforcing Sunday laws is that the majority of the people are not in sympathy with the purpose for which they are passed. And this is one reason why they work a hardship upon a few while they fail to restrain the many. They are only spasmodically enforced, and it is generally the case that they are made effective only against those who will not stoop to such evasions as are commonly practiced by those who find their way into the police courts. Every effort to make Sunday laws effective simply furnishes another argument against them.