The Nature of Sunday Legislation
By L. A. S.
The central idea in all Sunday legislation is that Sunday is a sacred day, the divinely appointed weekly rest day of the Christian world. But for this idea, no Sunday legislation would ever have been enacted. But for those who believe this idea to be true—who favor Sunday as a religious day—present-day movements for Sunday legislation would at once fall to the ground, divested of all their support. The most earnest and persistent advocates of such legislation are clergymen, whose business it is as such to advocate Sunday observance as a religious duty, disregard of which will invite the judgments of heaven. At the present time the religious idea is frequently kept in the background, perhaps wholly concealed beneath a secular covering, in Sunday law movements. The present effort for Sunday closing of butchers’ and grocers’ stores in the District of Columbia is an example. But the religious idea is there. The idea of Sunday as a religious institution established and for centuries observed by the Christian church, is the root idea of such as of all Sunday legislation, and by it the real character of such legislation is to be known. There is much in history to enlighten us on this point. Growing out of this idea of the sacred character of Sunday, there has been in past times legislation not only enjoining the observance of Sunday as a day of rest, but prohibiting under severe penalties the observance of the seventh day. On another page of this paper, in the article “Sabbath-keepers in Scandinavia,” some very interesting and instructive quotations are given from historical documents bearing on this point. They reveal the spirit that pertains to the idea that Sunday as the Christian day of rest should be protected by law. They show what was done in that day, and what may be done in this day, under the leading of this deceptive principle. They show another thing also, and that is that the observance of one day of the week as the Sabbath was held to be contrary to, and an interference with, the observance of any other day of the week. It was contrary to Sunday-keeping to allow the keeping of the seventh day, and therefore its observance was strictly forbidden. It was plain enough to the Sunday adherents that Sabbath-keeping permitted of the observance of but one day in the week. Yet seventh-day observers are often told now that a law requiring them to observe Sunday does not interfere with them religiously at all. But we do not have to go beyond recent times to find evidence of the evil character of the spirit of Sunday legislation. Only last winter, in the city of Philadelphia,—that city which, though its notoriety for corruptness in government has reached even to the shores of Europe, is hailed as the “most Christian city in the land” by the Sunday-law party in Pennsylvania on account of its strict Sunday enactments,—in this city there were prosecutions by the Pennsylvania “Sabbath Protective Association,” which were of a character so contrary to the common dictates of humanity and justice that the magistrate before whom the cases were brought finally refused to be a party to such proceedings. The Public Ledger, a reliable journal, published the details of some of these cases. In its issue of January 22 it said:— “I am done,” said Magistrate South yesterday, when the last of the cases against cigar and candy dealers for keeping their places of business open on Sunday was brought before him. “I have seen enough of this persecution, and of the attempts to deprive poor people of their means of support, and I will have no more of it.” “I had no idea when I issued the first warrants,” he said, “that the cases would drag along several months, or I would never have become engaged in them. I have seen evidences of suffering and heard pitiful appeals which are hard to forget. One poor widow came here with nine children. As soon as she entered, I asked her if the children were all hers. She said they were, and I told her to go. I would listen to no evidence against a woman who has a family of that size to support. The very poor have been brought here, and the blind who had to be led into the room. The prosecution of such persons is repugnant to me, and I discharged many of them, when there was positive evidence against them, because I did not think it right to fine them. “The agents of the Sabbath Association attempted to have me issue warrants for dealers who sell ice-cream on Sunday. I told them that ice-cream was as much a food as milk, and that I would issue no warrants of this kind. The curtain has been rung down on the last act, so far as I am concerned, and I am glad of it.” The Sunday trade of some of the very poor who have been made victims of Sunday legislation, is very essential to them, being sometimes their chief dependence for a livelihood. This was illustrated by the case of one poor woman, a widow, who kept a small store in the District of Columbia. Speaking of the prospective Sunday-closing law, she said, “I can not compete with the larger stores; they can underbuy and undersell me, and almost my whole dependence is on my Sunday trade. If they close me up, I don’t know what I am going to do.” For fear that they might lose a trifle from their abundance, by reason of the few small shops that keep open on Sundays in the District, the Sunday-closing tradesmen would compel poor widows with children to support to lose their all. All this legislation, from first to last, was built up around the idea that Sunday is a religious day, and that its observance is obligatory as a religious duty. Out of that idea grew in former times, the legislation prohibiting Saturday observance, and out of the same idea grows the milder legislation of our own time, but they are all branches of the same tree; they have all grown up from the same root; they are all in embryo in the seed which Sunday-law associations are trying to sow. We do not want such seed to be planted and grow up in this land. If it does, it will bear its fruit, and it will be the same that the tree has borne in former times. There are mild and virulent forms of the same disease. History has seen virulent forms of Sunday legislation, and we need not be deceived by the mild forms characteristic of the present time. It is the same thing as of old, with the same nature and spirit that have been manifested in persecution for conscience’ sake. The nature of a disease is to be6judged by its worst forms, and not by its milder ones. There is a great deal of very mild smallpox at the present time, but people know smallpox not by these mild cases, but by what it has been in the past. It is all the same disease, and the mild form is liable at any time to revert to the virulent form. And if Sunday legislation is once begun, however mild the initial forms of it may be, it will revert at some time, sooner or later, into the virulent forms of old, and the most oppressive laws will be enacted. Let the civil power be kept out of the domain of religious controversy. That is the only way to give religious bigotry no chance to re-enact the old-time scenes of religious persecution.