p. 118 | Untitled article by J. H. Sargeant

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · April 9, 1891

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 6, No. 15

Religious Persecution.

By J. H. Sargeant

R. M. KING, of Obion county, Tennessee, was arrested in March, 1890, and fined seventy-five dollars for working in his own field on Sunday. The Judge and the prosecuting attorneys, as well as the neighbors, have declared that if Mr. King and his brethren continue to labor on Sunday, they will have to leave the State. Mr. King was arrested the third time last June; he says, “I went out in the morning and hoed six rows of potatoes, working just about one hour, then went to hear the Methodist minister preach, was arrested Monday, and fined five dollars and costs.” In the same neighborhood on the same day, there was a man cutting grain with a binder, working the necessary hands to shock it, but there was no complaint made of his breaking the Sabbath. Mr. King can see from the jail windows men working on Sunday, but there is nothing said about it; of all the prosecutions for Sunday breaking in Dyer County, of which there have been a considerable number in the past eighteen months, not one arrest has been made outside the number of those who are acknowledged conscientious Christian men. If it is true that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, is it not equally true, if we would preserve our own liberties, we must respect the rights of others? If Christians as Christians would leave the civil laws alone, and take the Bible for their creed, the conflict with sin would be shorter, sharper, more conclusive, and glorious.—J. H. Sargeant, in Leader, Long Prairie. Minn.