INCREASING UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
The New York Journal of December 27 gives an account of another instance of “judge-made law,” or judicial perversion of law, on account of religious prejudice. There is an organization of Orthodox Jews in New York called “Agudath Hakehiloth,” which recently decided to incorporate. This society was to hold its regular annual meeting on the second Sunday in January. Justice Roger A. Pryor refused to incorporate it, on the ground that such gatherings were a violation of a sacred custom of Christian law and tradition. The following is his decision as given in the New York Journal of December 27:— I observe that the annual meeting of the proposed corporation is appointed to be held on the second Sunday of each January. It is not a religious corporation, and its annual meetings are for the performance of just such secular business as is transacted by other civil corporations. The question is not whether such meetings on Sundays are legal, but whether they should be approved by a justice of the Supreme Court. A thing may be lawful, and yet not laudable. In the state of New York the Sabbath exists as a day of rest by the common law, and without the necessity of legislation to establish it, and may be protected from desecration by such laws as the Legislature, in its wisdom, may deem necessary to secure to the community the privilege of undisturbed worship, and to the day itself that outward respect and observance which may be deemed essential to the peace and good order of society, and to preserve religion and its ordinances from open reviling and contempt. The Christian Sabbath is one of the civil institutions of the state; and the Legislature, for the purpose of promoting the moral and physical well-being of the people, and the peace, quiet, and good order of society, has authority to regulate its observance and prevent its desecration. The sanctity of the Christian sabbath is sanctioned and secured by repeated acts of legislation, extending from the colonial period to the present year, and as well by the impressive deliverances of the Court of Appeals. As justice of the Supreme Court, I may not approve that which the immemorial and uniform policy of the state condemns. Although not explicitly stated, it is nevertheless an inference from the face of the certificate before me, that the members of the proposed congregation are of a race and religion by which not the first but the seventh day of the week is set apart for religious observance. The fact might be of decisive importance were a desecration of the holy day contemplated, but the act intended is an aggression upon the Christian sabbath. The law which scrupulously protects them in the observance of their ceremonial gives them no license, and I am sure they have no desire to affront the religious susceptibilities of others. True, to a prosecution for work or labor on the first day of the week, the defendant may plead that he uniformly keeps another day as holy, and does not labor on that day, and that such labor complained of did not disturb others in observing the first day of the week as holy, but otherwise the legislation of the state against profanation of the Christian sabbath, is operative and imperative upon all classes of the community. Because the holding of corporate meetings on Sunday is contrary to the public policy of the state, if not to the letter of the law, I decline to approve this certificate. This is a remarkable decision, even under the Dark Ages Sunday law of New York State. Here is a society of people who uniformly keep another day as holy time; they propose to hold their annual meeting on a Sunday, presumably because it will interfere less than any other day with their business intercourse with the world. Certainly it could not be said that their meeting could interfere with public or private worship any more than any church meeting. Judge Pryor’s refusal was not based upon the illegality of such a meeting. His decision rests wholly on the unscriptural supposition that Sunday is sacred, and the utterly un-American assumptions that it is the duty and the right of the state to protect it. He ought to know, as every true Christian does know, that only God can make a day truly sacred or holy, and no legislature or court can protect “from desecration” that which is not sacred, or, for the matter of that, that which is sacred. If the day is truly holy, if it has been made holy by the Lord, no act of man can change its intrinsic character. Jesus was the “Holy One of God.” He was blasphemed by Jews, crucified by Romans, but his essential holiness was in no way affected. If Sunday is the Christian Sabbath by the authority of God, no act of man can change it; neither can any act of man prevent the desecration of that which is in itself moral, and which pertains to purpose and motive, rather than to outward act. Man may compel outward observance, which leads to hatred or hypocrisy, but never can he compel righteousness. The religion “preserved” by acts of legislature is formal, outward, dead. The religion of the Bible needs no such help. Macaulay has truly said:— The ark of God was never taken till it was surrounded by the arms of its earthly defenders. In captivity, its sanctity was sufficient to vindicate it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on the threshold of its own temple. To such a system [Christianity] it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength that it is part and parcel of the common law. The whole history of Christianity shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power than of being crushed by its opposition.—Essay on Southey’s Colloquies. The whole of Judge Pryor’s decision is based upon the old traditional policy of the Dark Ages, of a union of Church and State, and which was interwoven into much of colonial legislation, and of which Sunday laws are a notable example. The question, as we understand it, was not as to what day was selected by the society for its annual meeting, but as to whether it was entitled to incorporation. Judge Pryor arbitrarily decides that it could not be incorporated because it met on a day which he, and presumably a majority, considered religiously “holy.” The decision is certainly new and strange. Nothing could show more conclusively the effect which the religious clamor for Sunday laws is having, even upon the highest courts in the land. It will be but a little while at this rate before every vestige of right, even in the way of so-called toleration, is taken from every one but those who will support the Sunday. In an editorial the next day, the same paper remarks:— This is a novel doctrine in a nation whose birth was due to a desire for religious liberty, and whose Constitution guarantees its citizens against interference with their personal liberty within the law. This is another example of judge-made law, and its encroachment on the rights of the people, concerning which Samuel R. Taylor, Esq., in the New York Independent of Oct. 22, 1896, eloquently protested. It was at one time thought that there never would come a time when the Constitution of the United States, or the Congress of the United States, or the Legislatures of the various states, would enact laws which would virtually constitute a union of Church and State, with all its attendant evils, in this country, but we have not to wait for that. Our courts are anticipating our Legislatures. The Sunday-law people will have much better3and more rapid results by clamoring in the ears of the courts than in the lobbies of the Legislatures.