Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · December 17, 1867

THE SUNDAY QUESTION IN PA.

The opinion of Justice Read, of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, reversed the opinion of Judge Strong in the case of Sparhawk et al. vs. the Union Passenger Railroad Company of Philadelphia. The opinion covers the whole ground, and holds that neither the local law of Pennsylvania nor the precepts of Christianity, considered as part of the common law, afford any just ground for prohibiting the Company from running their cars on Sunday as well as on other days.

In reference to the institution of Sunday, the Judge further remarks:—

Sunday, which has been confounded with the Jewish Sabbath, rests on no divine command of any kind, but grew up by usage among the primitive Christians. It was first legally recognized when Christianity became the religion of the Roman States, under Constantine. The English law recognizing holidays and fast days, passed in the reign of Edward the Sixth, rests upon the same principle as the edict of Constantine, that is, it regards Sunday as an ecclesiastical, not as a Scriptural, or divine institution. In ancient times, both Parliament and the Court of Justice sat on Sunday. “Every hamlet,” says Froude, speaking of Henry the Eighth, “had its pair of Butts, and on Sundays and holidays all able-bodied men were required to appear in the fields, to employ their leisure hours ‘as valiant Englishmen ought to do.’” Such was substantially the English law relating to Sunday when the Province of Pennsylvania was founded.

By the law passed at Chester, Pa., in 1682, it was enacted that “according to the example of the primitive Christians, and for the ease of the creation, every first-day of the week, called the Lord’s day, people shall abstain from their usual and common toil and labor.” This act was the basis of all subsequent legislation down to the year 1798, when the existing law was passed, under which the present action was brought.

The act of 1798, passed the year after the city had been devastated with the yellow fever, like the preceding legislation on the subject, forbids all worldly employment or business on the Lord’s day, “works of necessity and charity only excepted.” The sole mission of this law according to a previous decision of the courts, is to inculcate a temporary weekly cessation from labor; but it adds not to this requirement any religious obligation.

Judge Read then proceeds to treat the case as coming fairly within these exceptions of necessity and charity. In this part of his opinion he gives a most interesting and able review of the social and economic progress of the past seventy years, since the Pennsylvania statute was passed. He dwells especially on immense boon which cheap modes of conveyance are to the poor of large cities, and quotes a striking remark of a leading divine of London, “That if the poor people of London could not ride out on Sunday, there would be twenty funerals where there is now but one.” Sunday is the only day when the working classes can enjoy this respite. At the request of many leading citizens, including clergymen, the Pennsylvania Central Railroad has for several years run Sunday trains to Pittsburg, to accommodate persons in the suburbs wishing to attend church. The horse railroad clearly has the same right. On all these grounds, the learned Judge reverses the decree of the lower court.