Europe’s Sunday Legislation Movement
THE REV. DR. CHAS. L. THOMPSON, a religious writer of note, points to the present wide-spread movement in Europe for Sunday legislation as one that will greatly help to preserve in America “the Anglo-Saxon idea of Sunday.” In a recent address to the Woman’s National Sabbath Alliance Dr. Thompson said:— The motive of this movement is purely secular, but it has great religious significance. Immigrants who come here in the future will have an idea of Sunday rather different from that of those who have come in the past, and it will not be so hard to get them to keep the day as we do. Up to the present time they have had only half a Sunday in continental Europe. Now the governments are beginning to recognize the economic value of a complete cessation from labor on that day. In Germany the Sunday-train schedule is being cut down all the time. In France and Italy one sees much less Sunday work of all kinds than in former years. In Spain, even, the Sunday bull-fights have been restricted. The sentiment for Sunday legislation is alive in the Old World, and only needs that the American republic should set an example in legislating to compel the conscience in the matter of Sabbath observance, to manifest itself there in the form of active despotism.