Sunday Then and Now

International Religious Liberty Association · Chicago, Illinois · Jul 19, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 28.

Sunday Then and Now.

“Sunday labor must be stopped,” says “Sunday Reform Leaflets.” “It is undermining our Christian civilization; and, so long as it continues, an immense number will be kept away from religious influences, preparing for that mental and moral state out of which come labor troubles, strikes, and riots; and worse things may be expected under separations from religion.”

This is exactly the argument used in favor of Sunday laws in the fourth century. First Sunday work kept the people away from “religious influences,” that is from the churches, therefore work was forbidden. Then the people being idle, they resorted not to the churches, but to the theaters, which kept them “away from religious influences”; therefore the theaters were prohibited on Sunday. The result was that the people all became so “good” that the empire is called even today the “Holy Roman Empire.”

Those who refused to be “good” were killed, and this order of things continued for many centuries. It is true that the major portion of that time is known as the “Dark Ages,” but there are a good many people who seem anxious to see the history of the “Holy Roman Empire,” the Inquisition, and the Dark Ages generally, repeated in this land and in the twentieth century, soon to dawn upon the world.