The Spirit of Sunday Enforcement
CHICAGO, Boston, and Baltimore are all afflicted just now with the epidemic of enforcement of Sunday observance. At a meeting of the Sabbath Protective League, held in Park Street church, Boston, Sunday evening, January 28, as reported in the Boston Globe the 29th, “Rev. Dr.” John Galbraith declared that “the government can not be perpetuated by this Sabbath-breaking spirit,” and that “lawlessness toward God leads to lawlessness toward man.” This being true, what is the attitude and responsibility of these leaders in the supreme lawlessness of banishing from God’s own law his own appointed Sabbath, and exalting a false one in its stead, and compelling men by all earthly power to accept the false one with no liberty to accept the true? The “Rev.” Reuen Thomas declared: “I had rather have a benevolent despotism than a demoralized democracy; for you can cut off the head of a despot, but you can’t decapitate the democracy.” But what kind of Christianity is it that would wish to cut off anybody’s head, either despot’s or democracy’s? Yet that, in very truth, is, and has ever been, the spirit of Sunday enforcement.