p. 20 | Maine Again to the Front by W. A. C.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 9, 1909

Maine Again to the Front

By W. A. C.

THE question of enforced Sunday observance is becoming a live one in the State of Maine. At Rumford Falls a certain druggist recently became convinced that he should close his store on Sunday. The proprietor of another drugstore in the place soon received official notice to close his store. Supposing the order to be general, he complied; but, finding everything else wide open, after the first Sunday he disregarded the order, whereupon he was subjected to repeated fines, and finally to imprisonment.

The indignation of the citizens was aroused at this manifest injustice and partiality in enforcing the law, and on the evening of August 8 held a mass-meeting in the Cheney Opera House. Elder C. S. Longacre was invited to deliver the address. He responded, presenting a very earnest, able, and eloquent argument against religious legislation and its natural and attendant evils. Following the address, a resolution was passed almost unanimously, disparaging all such legislation, and calling for the repeal of the State Sunday laws. The address was published almost in full in one of the daily papers of the place, the Oxford County Citizen, and alongside of it a report of a sermon by Elder A. J. Verrill on the Sabbath question.

This is the third mass-meeting held in the State of Maine during the past few months in which resolutions have been passed calling for the repeal of all Sunday laws on the statute-books of the State. W. A. C.