Invites Malice and Tyranny.
By Rev. C. J. Bartlett
I REGARD the Blair Sunday bill as a distinct attempt to enforce by legislation the observance of Sunday, not merely as a day of rest, but as a day of religious worship. This fact, which is veiled in the opening clause of the bill, becomes apparent in the closing section. It is a piece of religious legislation, and being such is unconstitutional. Even were it designed to secure only the civil observance of the day, it is inexcusably faulty, since it in no adequate way defines what specific acts or classes of acts are violations of the law, but leaves it to the complaining witness to declare whether or not he has been “disturbed.” This invites malice and tyranny. The wording of the bill is so vague as to permit it to be construed most arbitrarily and tyrannously. It is manifestly oppressive upon two142classes of our people, the Jews and the Seventh-day Adventists, whose religious convictions already compel them to observe the seventh day, and who would, by this bill, be obliged to keep two days in the week. The bill will be supported by many well-meaning people who fail to perceive that it is subversive of political and religious liberty, and that it is the opening wedge for countless measures which will tend to recall us from American nineteenth-century freedom, to the intolerance and oppression that more than two centuries ago drove the protesting minority of the Old World to seek an asylum of liberty on the shores of New England. The proposed amendment to the Constitution is an amusing composition, which, in section 1, provides against the establishing of religion in any State, and in section 2 provides for the establishment in each State of free public schools, in which shall be taught “the principles of the Christian religion.” Instead of an established Christian church, we are to have an established Christian school. And who shall decide on what are “the principles of the Christian religion,” when doctors of divinity disagree?—Rev. C. J. Bartlett, in Reason.