p. 17 | The “Blue-Laws” Defended by William A. Colcord

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 28, 1910

The “Blue-Laws” Defended

By William A. Colcord

A BRIEF editorial in the Washington Star of April 10, headed “Blue-Laws,” runs as follows:—

“A former governor of Connecticut is out in a defense of the so-called blue-laws of that State. His argument is that they were not so very blue for their time. And he is probably right. Too much present-day ridicule of those enactments is based upon an appraisement of them as compared with present-day enactments. They would not answer now. They were none too serviceable then. But they were devised for conditions very different from any that to-day exist, and by lights that have long ceased to guide either lawmakers or executives.”

The growing numbers of defenders of the old-time blue-laws is not a good sign of the times. It is rather an evidence of retrogression and preparation for a return to the “old order of things,” when religion was made a matter of law, and conscience compelled to yield to the will of the majority.

The editor well says that these laws were “none too serviceable” in their day. They did, however, serve the purposes of the narrow-minded and bigoted as means of persecution, as such laws always do. As means of promoting genuine religion they were and always

will be dismal failures.

It is true also that “they were devised for conditions very different from any that to-day exist,” one of the chief of which was the prevailing idea that church and state should be united, and that religion should be regulated by law. And the “lights” under which they were devised were the lights shining from the Dark Ages. It is a sad fact that so many to-day are turning once more to these same “lights,” as is evidenced by the wide-spread demand for Sunday laws and Sunday enforcement. This is an evidence that the days of the blue-laws are returning. W. A. C.