Defense of Sunday Nonobservance
By L. A. S.
WE have received from Brother W. T. Gibson, of Malden, Mass., a statement of his defense for nonobservance of Sunday, which by the law of that State is made a crime. Brother Gibson was recently summoned into court at Malden, and fined ten dollars because he had performed secular labor on Sunday; namely, painting his barn. He appealed the case, and the district attorney, on investigation, decided to dismiss it, because of an exemption in the law for seventh-day observers, to which class Brother Gibson belongs. Brother Gibson did not plead the exemption clause in his behalf, because, as he says, to do so would be to acknowledge the right of the civil power to enforce a religious observance, and virtually to sanction a union of church and state. To obtain the benefit of the exemption, an individual must religiously observe the seventh day, and there is as much compulsion about this observance as there is in the observance of Sunday, which the law commands. He who does not observe Sunday must observe the seventh day, or take the penalty which the law inflicts. In his case nonobservance of the seventh day is punishable under the law, the same as nonobservance of Sunday in other cases. The civil law should know no distinction between men that is based on religious grounds. It should take cognizance of men, not as Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, or Seventh-day Adventists, not as observers of one or another religious day or institution, but only as citizens. This was the position assumed by Brother Gibson at his trial, and accordingly he did not ask the law to recognize him as a Seventh-day Adventist, but stood before the court as an individual possessing the inalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. No doubt the court and the district attorney were desirous of doing justice in the matter, but justice cannot be done in the enforcement of a law that is itself unjust. Justice demands the abolition of every law that has its origin in the union of church and state. L. A. S.