New York Sunday Laws by L. C. Rogers

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 29, 1883

New York Sunday Laws.

By L. C. Rogers

THE Sunday laws of the old statute in their new dress in the Penal Code have, on this dragon’s head, developed two lamb-like horns as follows:—

Sections 272 and 273: “An attempt by means of threats or violence to compel any person to adopt, practice, or profess a particular form of religious belief, is a misdemeanor.” “A person who willfully prevents, by threats, or violence, any person from performing any lawful act enjoined upon, or commended to such person, by the religion which he professes, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

This is the reverse of the ancient fable of the ass in the lion’s skin—it is the dragon in the dress of the lamb. The Sunday laws enforced, commit the very “misdemeanor” here defined, and it looks for all the world as though these two sections were thrust in here as a “blind,” but it is a bungling attempt of the authors of this new Sunday law, the New York Sabbath Committee, to cover their tracks. Notice the following facts:—

First: The old statute was a mere “police regulation,” and as such, even, was sufficiently dangerous to religious liberty, and yet it did not go so far as to call the Sunday the “Sabbath, or holy time.” It did not recognize its “religious uses.” The things which it prohibited were not defined to be interruptions of the “religious liberty of the community.” It did not place the Sunday on religious grounds at all, but the new Penal Code has changed the statute in all these, and in other similar particulars, and leaves no doubt as to what the animus of this charge was, or who are its real authors.

Second: Section 260 says, “A violation of the foregoing prohibition is Sabbath breaking.” The Penal Code makes the first day of the week to be the “Sabbath,” set apart to rest and religious uses and as holy time.

Sections 259 and 264: And “all manner of servile labor, except in works of necessity or charity,” invokes a fine of $10, and imprisonment for five days. What is this but an attempt by means of threats or violence to compel persons to adopt and practice a particular form of religious belief? They are forced to “adopt and practice it,” whether they believe it or not. John, the revelator, saw a “beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.” Rev. 13: 11. Is not this new Sunday law of the Penal Code the very “critter”? But this law is based on an assumption, and that assumption is false.

Section 259 says: “The first day of the week being by general consent set apart for rest and religious uses, the law prohibits,” etc. There is no such “general consent” outside of the churches to “set apart this day for religious uses,” and very little consent by the mass of church-goers, for the greater part of the day is devoted to the novel or the newspaper, to rambling, riding, and visiting to the park, the public library, the beer gardens, or country resorts and recreations, and many of the clergy uphold and patronize some or all of these departures from the “rest and religious uses” of the day. This law then is an attempt on the part of the few advocates of the “Puritan Sunday” to enforce their religious views and practices upon the entire community. How strange it is that the spirit of the nineteenth century should have compelled the bigots of the old world to lay down the weapons of their prosecution and permitted our young and free America to take up and use these very weapons! But the attempt to enforce these Sunday laws of the Penal Code ought to prove a failure, and it will. The very persons who want this law enforced are not willing to sacrifice their convenience to its rigors. They must have their pint of milk and pound of meat on Sunday, if on no other days, and their newspapers as well. But how could they have these and other necessaries and luxuries of life if the law in question was rigidly enforced? “Live and let live.”—L. C. Rogers, in Sabbath Recorder.