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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 2, 1893

FromAmerican Sentinel, Vol. 8, No. 5

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Sunday Laws in the United States.

By Jas. T. Ringgold

(Concluded.)
The advocates of these laws appreciate their danger, and hence we see in some later cases an invention known as “the holiday theory” of Sunday laws brought to the rescue of a failing cause. Said an Arkansas judge: “The power of the legislature to select a day as a holiday, is everywhere conceded. The State, from the beginning, has appointed Sunday as such.” And he added that the same principle which upholds the right of the State to close its offices on certain days authorizes it “to prescribe a penalty for the violation of the Sunday law.” The extract ante from Mr. Tiedeman sufficiently refutes this parallel so far as it affects the question of the origin and purpose of Sunday laws. Its fallacy is equally apparent from their contents. Whoever heard of such a thing as a compulsory holiday? Whoever heard of a statute which established a public holiday and closed all places of public amusement, and provided a penalty for those who should undertake to amuse themselves in private upon the day in question? Desperately as some are clinging to this last spar, it must share the fate of the other wrecked arguments by which it is sought to support Sunday laws on constitutional grounds.
There are cases, however, which take “a secular view” of such legislation without going so far as to claim that it makes a holiday of Sunday. According to these “the evident object of the statute was to prevent the day from being employed in servile work, which is exhausting to the body, or in merely idle pastime, subversive of that order, thrift and economy, which is necessary to the preservation of society.”
Let us consider these clauses separately. Has it ever been claimed that it is in the power of an American legislature to compel a man to abstain from earning his living by “servile labor,” because the legislature, in its wisdom, considers such labor as “exhausting to the body”—ever claimed, that is, except in connection with Sunday laws? Who made of the legislature a physician to order off a man from any labor, “servile” or otherwise, because of its effect upon his body? Is not the liberty of labor at will, part of the inheritance of every citizen of a free country, which he “comes into” when he attains his majority? The interference with labor on account of its “exhausting the body” is parental, and can never be justified under any other than a parental government. So that if this interference were necessary or even desirable, it would not be practicable in any State whose constitution contains a guaranty of personal liberty. As a matter of fact, however, it is neither necessary nor desirable, though many of the cases assume that it is both, and Sunday-law advocates of every kind are prone to start with the statement, as if it were an axiom of thought, that “we are so constituted physically that the precise portion of time indicated by the Decalogue must be observed as a day of rest and relaxation, and nature, in the punishment inflicted for a violation of our physical laws, adds her sanction to the positive law promulgated at Sinai.” Yet this statement, so often made in substance on the bench and elsewhere in order to justify Sunday laws, is absolutely without any foundation whatever, and is absurd on its face and is contradicted by the most familiar facts. It is absurd on its face. The amount of rest required and the advisable periodicity of it is the result of three factors—the man, his work, and his environment; and, as the first of these is never the same in any two instances the result is never the same. To attempt to lay down a uniform rule on this subject is as preposterous as it would be to require everybody to eat the same amount and the same kind of food every day. What is said above about the punishments of “nature” applies here as it was not intended to apply. The whole matter belongs to her domain and is subject to her laws alone. The time for rest is proclaimed by her when she makes a man tired, and his punishment may safely be left in her hands, if he disobeys her mandate to rest.

NO FACTS TO SUSTAIN THEIR PROPOSITION.

Of course there are no facts adducible which even appear to sustain so monstrous a proposition as that everybody always needs the same amount of rest at the same interval. The facts are all the other way. Preachers who work hard all the time, and do double work on Sundays; doctors who can never rest at any stated interval; lawyers, journalists and others, who frequently work day in and day out for months without a holiday—all these compare favorably for robustness and longevity with that conscientious Sunday-rester, the farmer. Races of men, as the Greeks and Romans of old, the Chinese, Japanese, etc., to whom the idea of resting at stated intervals never occurred, yet have survived and flourished. Not long ago the Methodist bishop, Andrews, gave it out as “something he could not understand” that they had no Sabbath in China, and yet the laboring men lived to old age! Of course the good bishop shut his eyes at home, and opened them in China. He was under that delusion so common with men of his calling that the existence of a law is proof of its enforcement. He did not know, or chose to ignore the fact, that thousands of his fellow-Americans who know no Sabbath are as healthy, long-lived and, at least, as active in the world’s work as the strictest Sabbatarian in his communion.
The second clause of our last citation refers to “merely idle pastimes subversive of that order, thrift and economy, which is necessary to the preservation of society.” This is one of the rare occasions on which any allusion is made to that portion of the contents of every Sunday law which is absolutely fatal to the “holiday theory” of such statutes. It is self-evident that no pastime can be subversive of order on one day, which is not so on every other day; and as to thrift or economy, it is equally evident that these are things with which, in the individual citizen, an American legislature has no authority whatever to meddle. Nevertheless if a law does not contain this combined prohibition of work and play, it is no Sunday law. And there is good ground for the assertion that those who are specially interested in Sunday laws, if they had to part with either, would prefer to have the prohibition of work repealed rather than the prohibition of play—both because they are naturally morose and play tends more than work to make other people unlike them; and also because play would be even more likely than work to keep open the gap between the masses and the collection box.
Besides negativing the arguments by which Sunday laws have been defended, and calling attention to the positive objection to them as the embodiment of a union of Church and State, it may be well to point out another undesirable characteristic of such legislation. Although Sunday laws do not make the day a holiday, yet they have this in common with laws establishing holidays—that they tend to encourage among the people the conception that idleness is a good thing in itself, to be sought for its own sake and that the State is conferring a great boon upon them by allowing them the opportunity of indulging in it. No more immoral or dangerous doctrine could be preached by any legislation than this. Rest is necessary; but its value lies not in itself; it is valuable only in so far as it fits us better for our work. Public holidays may have a historical value; that their general effect on the manners of the mass is demoralizing, few will deny. Leisure is a dangerous possession in the hands of the wisest and best. Let the managers of factories, the heads of schools and the like, be heard to testify to the slipshod character of “Blue Monday’s” work, and we shall appreciate the profundity of that unknown philosopher, who gave it as his decided conviction that the crying need of this country is not more holidays, but more days to get over them.
Industry is a virtue; idleness is a vice. But our Sunday laws make a complete topsy-turvification of this fundamental principle of morals for fifty-two days in the year. On these days, industry is branded as a crime, and idleness is required as a condition of good citizenship. The immoral lesson thus taught bears its fruit in the constant demand for more public holidays, and for limiting the hours of work by the State and other lawswhich are strangely misnamed as “labor legislation,” being, in reality, like the Sunday laws, legislation for the promotion of idleness. And thus we have another illustration of the great principle, and the evil tree of Sunday law brings forth after its kind.

BETRAYED BY THEIR OWN TERMS.

The survey of the subject would not be complete without some reference to the savings of “necessity,” and “charity,” which are made in all Sunday laws.
The very presence of the word “charity” is sufficient to betray the true nature of these laws as religious dogmas enacted into statutes. The interpretation of the word has, of course, to be made accordingly. And hence it is correctly said that “the means which long established and common usage of religious congregations show to be reasonably necessary to advance the cause of religion may be deemed works of charity.” But, apart from its fatal disclosure of the religious character of the statute, the presence of this word, like that of “necessity,” introduces a degree of uncertainty as to the application of the law, which it is safe to say would cause the courts to hold it void altogether if it were anything else but a Sunday law. Well has a learned judge of Vermont observed, “The statute excepts all acts of necessity and charity. These are lawful, and who is to judge what are such? If the jury, it will depend on the religious opinions of each jury, and of course be pregnant with the utmost uncertainty. If the court, as matter of law, then it will nearly convert a bench of laymen into an ecclesiastical council, for ‘necessity’ and charity in connection with the Sabbath must very much depend upon the creed or religious belief of the individual to whom the question is submitted. . . . How ungracious for a court to mark the law upon this duty for all denominations to be governed by and with judges usually belonging to different religious societies. It would be like a synod composed of the dignitaries of several sects.” The uncertainty involved in the use of the word “charity,” apart from the religious aspect of the question, may be illustrated by the preceding case. This held that a contract of subscription towards the erection of a church was valid as an act of charity. If so, on what ground is the actual building of the church on Sunday unlawful? Or the quarrying of the stone for its walls, or the dressing of timber for its interior? In a word, where are we to stop in the degree of closeness of connection between the act in question and “the advancement of the cause of religion”? It does not seem possible that the subtlest judicial ingenuity will succeed any better in the future than it has in the past, in affording a satisfactory answer to this question.
But if an impenetrable cloud is cast over the force and application of the Sunday law by the presence of this word “charity,” on what a bottomless, trackless sea are we launched by the use of that other word “necessity”! The tossings and flounderings, the hopeless “seeking after a sign,” the vain beating toward a harbor which does not exist which we find in the cases on this subject are really painful to a sensitive mind. Among others, the eminent judge and senator, Thurman, of Ohio, once wrestled with this subject in a long opinion. But the outcome of it all is that there is no way of defining “necessity,” though the learned judge does not say this in so many words. In the first place, we do not know whether necessity is a question of law or of fact, or of both combined. And secondly, it is unsettled whether the necessity must be that of the doer of the act or whether it is sufficient if his doing of it was a necessity to somebody else.
It is, however, when we leave these preliminary questions and come to consider the nature of this necessity of which we are to determine the existence or non-existence in any given case—when we study the thing in itself, as some philosophers say, that we most fully appreciate the hopelessness of interpreting or applying a Sunday law with any degree of uniformity or fairness. Only a few points need be mentioned to vindicate this position. We are told that the necessity need not be “absolute,” yet it must be “imperious,” and mere “convenience” is not enough; that it varies with the individual, so that a rich man might be punishable for working on Sunday to save his property from destruction, while a poor man would not be, and also with “the exigencies of trade;” and so on and so forth. Here, as under all of our preceding heads, the illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely without materially strengthening the moral, which is that a “chaos of thought and passion all confused” has inspired the enactment of Sunday laws, stimulates their enforcement, and manifests itself in every judicial attempt to either justify, explain or apply them.