p. 18 | Sunday Law Crusade by S. B. HORTON

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Aug 13, 1914

Sunday Law Crusade

By S. B. HORTON

THERE is a very interesting situation developing in the State of Pennsylvania at the present time in connection with the enforcement of the Sunday blue law. Two cities of the Keystone State, Norristown and Altoona, are being treated to a system of espionage which would be in keeping with medievalism or the celebrated “holy” Inquisition of the Dark Ages. Norristown is noted as the largest borough in the United States, having a population of 30,000, and yet unincorporated as a municipal commonwealth.

At the behest of the Welfare League the burgess of Norristown, who is the committing magistrate of that community, was called upon to arraign four business men before the public as criminals, the charge against them being violation of the Sunday law, the celebrated blue law of 1794. Of these men, two were obliged to pay fines and the costs of prosecution, one was discharged, and one was held to await a further hearing. The

vice president of the Welfare League, a prominent church worker, appeared as the prosecutor in all the cases, and Mr. William F. Dannehower, a local attorney, represented the defendants.

A great deal of feeling has been engendered because of the fact that the burgess has discriminated in prosecutions for Sunday law violations, having said on one occasion, “I am the burgess, and I will use my own judgment as to who shall be prosecuted and who shall not be.” The Business Men’s Association is interesting itself, and further developments are looked for in the near future.

The Situation in Altoona

Following a meeting of the Altoona ministerium a crusade against so-called Sunday law violators has begun. The ministerium is employing sleuth methods to make Altoona a newspaperless center. The news agents are preparing to defeat the ministerial sleuths. Officials of all the Philadelphia and New York newspapers, as well as the Pittsburgh papers, previously informed the local news agents that they would assist in fighting the preachers if their business is interfered with; and once the fight is taken up, these men declare they will remain in the thick of it until the ministers are made ridiculous throughout the entire country.

Several court decisions have been handed down setting forth that Sunday newspapers are not luxuries; but the local sleuths have been informed by an attorney that the blue laws, if enforced, will prohibit the sale of the papers.

The rector of St. John’s Catholic Church is evidently not in sympathy with the Altoona ministerium’s effort to have a blue law Sunday. He took occasion recently to denounce the activities of the minister who spent a portion of Sunday scouring the city to find hapless violators of the archaic blue laws.

He took issue with the ministers on two points: First, that the first day of the week, Sunday, was never divinely ordained as the Sabbath, and, as a matter of fact, was first designated as the rest day by the Catholic Church; second, that the Scriptures designate Sunday as a day of rest, and that rest does not imply the same rest as is found in a graveyard, but rather a healthful and stimulating rest that does not interfere with the rights and liberty of others.

He pointed out that “under the old Hebraic law the seventh day of the week was set aside as Sabbath, but that early in its history, the Catholic Church, on account of many leading events in the life of Christ that occurred on the first day of the week, made the first day Sunday [sabbath], and that this has since been followed by the Christian world.”

The rector maintained that it was not the prerogative of any clique of men to dictate to individuals the day they should observe as the Sabbath, and that any individual would have the same right to designate a day in the middle of the week as his sabbath as the ministerial sleuths have to say that the city shall close up tight on the first day of the week.

This Catholic priest’s comments are certainly to the point; and we commend them to our erstwhile National Reformers who have for years been endeavoring to establish a blue law system of government in America, and whose home address has been and continues to be the great State of Pennsylvania.

We shall furnish further interesting items from the Pennsylvania campaign in due course of time.

S. B. HORTON.