Sabbath Keepers Arrested in Maryland
Word was received at our office from Rock Hall, Md., under date of April 11, stating that two members of the company of Sabbath keepers in that place were arrested the preceding Thursday, charged with having violated the Sunday law. Monday, April 14, was the date fixed for their trial. What the outcome has been, we have not yet learned. The Maryland Sunday law decrees that no person shall do any secular work or engage in any pastime or amusement “on the Lord’s day, commonly called Sunday,” under penalty of a fine of five dollars. And any person who engages in trade on this day, as for example a storekeeper who keeps open on Sunday for the sale of goods, is liable to a fine of fifty dollars for the first offense, and for a second offense may be fined five hundred dollars, besides being imprisoned for from ten to thirty days, and suffering revocation of his license as a tradesman for one year. For a third offense this penalty may be doubled. Also, any person who engages in oyster catching on Sunday may be fined three hundred dollars, or sent to jail for a year. This is not the first time this stringent Sunday law has been resorted to in that place by persons opposed to the teaching which upholds the Seventh-day Sabbath. A number of like instances are on the court records in that State, though none are of very recent date, a period of several years having elapsed since the last prosecution of Sabbath keepers for Sunday breaking in Maryland. And now that the dragon spirit of persecution is again seen, we are reminded that this spirit is in the land, and that we are in the days when “the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God.”