p. 16 | One of the Reasons

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 47.

One of the Reasons

One of the Reasons.—One of the contributory causes of Mayor Low’s downfall in New York City, Mr. Gustavus Myers tells us in the Independent, was the enforcing of the “blue laws” in “the closing of stores, such as candy, cigar and stationery stores on Sunday. This policy aroused a blazing popular indignation, which was all the evident merits of Mayor Low’s administration could counterbalance.” Such legislation is worthy of rebuke. Its influence is not to discountenance wrong, but to elevate a religious institution. If it is wrong to sell anything on Sunday, it is wrong to sell it on any other day. The wrong is in the thing, and not in the day. To license a thing on all days but Sunday is a virtual indorsement of it on those days, and to prohibit its sale on Sunday is not a blow on the thing prohibited, but the exaltation of Sunday; and that is religious legislation, pure and simple, an evil in all lands and all ages. It was a dead fly in Mr. Low’s ointment.