Sunday Law Unconstitutional
OREGON has a Sunday law that was passed in 1864, but not many attempts have been made to enforce it. Recently the district attorney of Multnomah County ordered that all places of business be closed in harmony with that law. The proprietor of a cigar store sold a cigar on Sunday, and allowed himself to be arrested, for the purpose of bringing the law into the courts. He was found guilty in the justice court, and fined $25. The case was taken to the circuit court upon appeal, and Judge Morrow declared that the law is not in harmony with the state constitution, and also that it is a violation of the constitution of the United States. In giving his decision, the judge said, “I have been waiting five years to get a knock at this law, and this was my first opportunity.” There is nothing right about any form of a Sunday law. A man is answerable to God alone for his time, and no state has any right to take any part of it or to prescribe how he shall spend it unless he is a criminal. A law-abiding citizen has a perfect right to spend his time as he deems best; and to make honest labor or honest business a crime on one day of the week while it is all right on another day, is something with which the state has nothing to do. Beside all this, there is no sacredness whatever to Sunday. It is not a holy day. There is not one word of authority in the Bible for keeping Sunday. The Bible says that the seventh day is the Sabbath; and God has not sanctioned the change of the day from Saturday, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day. When men undertake to pass Sunday laws, they are not only violating a principle of freedom, but they are also setting up a day in opposition and rivalry to the divinely prescribed rest day of Jehovah. The question is left with the conscience of the reader as to whether or not Jehovah will call men to account for setting aside His holy day of rest, and undertaking to condemn men as criminals for not resting on the rival Sunday-sabbath.