The United States as a Persecutor.
By G.
Religious persecution can be carried out in this country through the machinery of a Federal Court. This has been demonstrated in the Indian Territory. A correspondent tells us of such a case in Okmulgee, I. T., in the Commissioner's Court of the Western Judicial District of that territory. The case is entitled, “United States of America vs. J. C. Carlington,” and the offense charged is that of shaving a man on Sunday. Our correspondent says there is an old law of Arkansas forbidding barbers to work at their trade on Sunday, and that the Indian Territory is under the Arkansas statutes. Hence, the persecution of Mr. Carlington on complaint of another barber. Of course it took a prominent member of the Sunday League to set the act in motion by encouraging the prosecuting witness to make the charge. After a tedious proceeding in the matter of selecting a jury, and a hotly-contested trial—able attorneys being engaged on both sides—the jury failed to agree. So the case will be tried again. For years we have been pointing out that the United States would become a persecuting power especially in the way of enforcing Sunday observance. We have done so on the strength of the prophecy of Revelation 13. We have also maintained that the State Sunday laws, being relics of the Colonial Church-and-State system, were but the seeds of Church-and-State government, lying in a measure dormant, until the spirit of intolerance would again become strong enough to set the machinery of the Federal Government in that direction. It is in perfect keeping with recent Congressional legislation on the Sunday question—which, until very recently, could not have been secured—that a State statute can now be invoked in a Federal Court for the persecution of men for doing honest labor on Sunday. And the end is not yet. This case also demonstrates the danger of bad laws. Even tho the people may not respect them, they are at any time a ready weapon for unprincipled men, who desire to compel others to conform their action to the spirit of intolerance. If the people desire liberality of government they should not allow illiberal laws to remain on the statute books; for there will surely come a time when over-zealous men will call them into action. G.