Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 22, 1906

THE Massachusetts Supreme Court has decided that gathering cranberries on Sunday is a violation of the statute prohibiting any manner of labor, business, or work, except works of necessity and charity, on the Lord’s day. The court declares that it is the purpose of the law “to secure the observance of the Lord’s day in accordance with the views of our ancestors,” and that changes of views or customs since that time are not to be considered in interpreting the law. Thus in Massachusetts a law is upheld as constitutional whose acknowledged purpose is to enforce a religious observance. In France, they are reversing the experience of a century by separating church and state; in America, they are reversing the experience of a century by uniting them. Happy France! Unhappy America!