The Sabbath in New Jersey.
By Editor
This State has become the field of a prolonged and earnest struggle over the Sabbath question. The law against Sabbath breaking was first enacted December 12, 1704, and, with some revision in 1798 and 1846, has continued in force till the present time. At the close of the session of 1873, however, a supplement to the “Act for the Suppression of Vice and Immorality” was introduced, which made it “lawful for any railroad company in this State to run one passenger train each way over their roads on Sunday for the accommodation of the citizens of this State.” This supplement was first lost in the Assembly, but was afterward reconsidered under strong outside pressure, now understood to have come from the railroad companies, and was passed in hot haste; giving the people no opportunity to be heard, or even to know that such an important law was pending. Since its passage, trains have been run on roads where they were before unknown, and, under its sanction, the Pennsylvania railroad has been running, for three months past, excursion trains from New York City to Philadelphia and the Centennial grounds. These facts have had the effect of arousing the Christian people of the State to earnest action. The Baptist Associations, the Diocesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Methodist Conference, the Classes, Presbyteries, and Synods of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches, passed emphatic resolutions. Several of these bodies appointed standing committees, which have since been consolidated into the “New Jersey Sabbath Union.” Petitions are being circulated by this organization for the repeal of the objectionable law given above, and a stirring address has been issued to the people of the State, in which they say, “This organization stands ready to unite with the New York Sabbath Committee, on the one hand, and with the Philadelphia Sabbath Association on the other, as a co-worker in a great reformation.” We regard this movement among the Christian people of New Jersey with the deepest interest. No State has a larger proportion of earnest and intelligent Christians in its population. Its Sabbath laws are among the earliest of such enactments on American statute books, antedating even those of Pennsylvania. In no State have more explicit or valuable judicial decisions been delivered, in interpretation and defense of these laws. Its compact and homogeneous population can be reached and aroused more easily than in some larger States. If the civil Sabbath cannot be maintained in New Jersey, we may prepare to surrender it everywhere. The friends of the Sabbath in New Jersey are in some sense a forlorn hope. The eyes of the country are upon them. We entreat them to spare no care, sacrifice, or effort to secure the suspension of the “Sunday trains,” which have already wrought such demoralizing results. The present hour is critical, for the evils we now deplore will be multiplied and intensified, if allowed to continue through the period of the Centennial celebration. If not arrested now, there is little hope that they can be arrested in the lifetime of men now living, and probably nothing short of a great social convulsion can ever accomplish the change. But the hour is also auspicious. There are signs of an awakening in the public conscience. More has been said and done in defense of the Sabbath during the last year than in many years gone by. Let the Christian people of New Jersey be true to their history, to their own convictions, and to their divine Master, and let the friends of the Sabbath throughout the whole country remember them in prayer, and we cannot doubt the result. We shall watch the work with care and carefully report its progress.—Christian Statesman.