Religious Liberty Notes
By K. C. RUSSELL
Word from Honolulu says, “Religious teaching is being advocated, and is coming to the front here in Hawaii. Elder Williams is preparing an article for one of our leading dailies, pointing out the wrong in such a movement, and setting forth the logical results if such a thing should come to pass. We raise our voice against the thing early.” On the charge of hunting on Sunday, William Timney was arraigned before Justice John T. Walsh at Pekin, Md., October 28, and on pleading guilty was fined fifty dollars and costs. Timney had been “evading arrest for a week, but was caught” on the date given above. Pekin is near Cumberland, where a Sunday enforcement movement was recently under way. Belgium has a new Sunday law, which is to go into effect next July. Under this law “Sunday labor is forbidden in all industrial and commercial enterprises except sea, car, and river transport, fishing and hawking, and peddling.” “Only members of an employer’s family living with him, or his domestics, may work for him more than six days per week, and the weekly day of rest is Sunday.” Two hundred and sixty-four arrests for Sunday law violations were made in the following seven counties of eastern Pennsylvania during the two months ending September 30: Bradford, Dauphin, Delaware, Lackawanna, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and Snyder. Two hundred and twenty-nine of these arrests were made in Lackawanna County. Among those arrested were three Seventh-day Adventists. “Because two members of the grand jury which returned the indictment had been convicted of violating the Sunday law during the tenure of their service, and had thereby become disqualified,” a murder indictment was ordered quashed by Judge Leche in the district court of Donaldsonville, La., October 27. “There were several motions filed for the quashing of the indictment, but all were overruled except the one relating to the conviction of the two grand jurors for violating the Sunday law. After hearing arguments on this point, Judge Leche ruled that it was well taken, and ordered the indictment quashed.” A meeting of the Pennsylvania Sabbath Association was appointed to be held in Williamsport last week. The Rev. T. T. Mutchler heads a delegation from Philadelphia. “County auxiliaries and county committees, church bodies of all denominations, ministerial conferences, reform associations, congregations, young people’s societies, Women’s Christian Temperance Unions, Young Men’s Christian Associations, and labor unions throughout the State are all represented by regularly appointed delegates.” Should not the friends of religious liberty be aroused to action as they see such activity manifested in behalf of the false sabbath? The following is from chapter 90 of the compiled laws of the State of Kansas, which chapter, it is stated, has been in effect since July 1, 1864: “1. That no person whose religious faith and practise is to keep the seventh day of the week, commonly called Saturday, as a day set apart by divine command as the Sabbath of rest from labor, and dedicated to the worship of God, shall be subject to perform military duty, or to serve as a juryman in a justice’s court, on that day, except that such person shall be subject to perform military duty at any time in case of insurrection, invasion, or time of war. 2. That any person who shall knowingly cause or procure any process, issued from a justice’s court in a civil suit, to be served on that day upon any such person, or who shall serve any such process made returnable on that day, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be subject to a fine of one hundred dollars, or imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding thirty days, or both. 3. That any person who shall, in like manner, procure any such suit, pending in such court, against any person of such religious faith and practise, to be adjourned for trial at that date, shall also be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and be subject to a like punishment.” K. C. RUSSELL.