Tragic Consequences of Enforced Sunday Observance
The attempt to enforce Sunday in the island of Raratonga, one of the Cook Group in the South Pacific, has finally led to most tragic consequences. Latest advices from the island received by way of Seattle, Wash., report a general uprising of the natives against the whites, and that fifty of the latter have been killed. The Europeans are retreating to the seaport towns, which they are fortifying in expectation of attack. This uprising of the natives with its terrible loss of life is the direct result of the attempt to enforce Sunday observance upon them, they having been accustomed to observe the seventh day as the Sabbath,—the day observed until recently by all professing Christianity in the island. It has long been known that, owing to its position relative to the day line, the day observed as Sunday in the island was in reality the seventh day; but when it began to be taught that the seventh day is the true Sabbath, an influential party of the whites set about to secure the observance of the first day in place of the seventh, and finally secured from the British governor a law making Sunday observance compulsory. Now scores of people are dead, much property destroyed, and the cause of Christianity in the island indefinitely set back, all because of that most obnoxious thing—a religious law—for which there was no necessity whatever. Every man, civilized or savage, naturally revolts against compulsion in religion; and those who have instituted this in Raratonga are responsible for the situation that is now reported as existing there.