Is It Anarchy to Refuse Sunday Laws?
Is it anarchy to refuse obedience and support to Sunday laws? By the following line of reasoning a bishop of the Methodist Church, Rev. J. N. Fitzgerald, attempts to show that it is:— What is an anarchist? It is a man who defies and overrides the law. He says: “This law is not a good one, and consequently it ought not to be obeyed, and I will violate it. It is true it forbids my shooting down the president, but what care I for that? Shoot him down I will.” And the voice of the nation goes up like the voice of one man in denunciation of that man’s act. Now why do we not follow the principle out to its logical conclusion? Why are we not consistent in our denunciation? Why is not the nation consistent? And why are not the authorities of the land consistent in this matter of anarchy? Go into any large city—go there next Sunday; ask what the law is with reference to the traffic in intoxicating drinks, and you will learn that one item of the law is that the saloon shall be closed on the Sabbath. There it is, just as positive and just as plain as it can be. Will the saloons be closed? Were they closed last Sunday? Will the law be executed next Sunday? Was it executed last Sunday? Is there not a large class of people who say, “We defy the law, and we override it; we care nothing for it; and though it forbids us to carry on this traffic on the Lord’s day, we will carry it on, nevertheless”? This is anarchy. Now if anarchy can do that, why can’t it do the other? And, tell me, my friends, where are you going to draw the line? This is suggestive of the line of reasoning that will be used in classing people as anarchists for their religious belief. Quiet, sober, law-abiding people will be classed with those who defy and override law, because of their opposition on conscientious grounds to the legal Sunday. The trouble with the bishop’s reasoning is that it puts the “Lord’s day” in the civil statutes, where no religious institution belongs, brings civil law into the realm of conscience, where it does not belong, and fails to recognize the saloon as a natural outlaw, which it is, and therefore as not entitled to the protection of law on any day of the week.