PENNSYLVANIA SABBATARIANS.
By Editor
Daniel C. Waldo, who is a Seventh-day Baptist living in one of the counties of Pennsylvania, having been prosecuted under the law of 1794 and fined for working on Sunday, recently addressed a memorial to the legislature of the State, asking that the law might be so modified that Sabbatarians who keep Saturday as holy time might be exempt from the penalty against those who do not thus keep Saturday, and yet work on the first day of the week. Senator Jones made the petition the occasion for introducing a bill which provided as follows:— “That every inhabitant of this commonwealth who observes the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, and actually abstains from worldly employment and business on that day (works of necessity and charity excepted), shall be exempted from answering to any process in law or equity, either as defendant, witness, or juror, likewise from executing on said day the duties of any post or office to which he may be appointed or commissioned, except when the interest of the commonwealth may absolutely require it, or from performing any other secular duty which the laws of this commonwealth may enjoin upon other citizens who do not observe the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath; and all such persons who observe the seventh day shall be exempt from the penalties imposed by the Act of April twenty-second, Anno Domini, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-four, for performing worldly employment or business on the Lord’s Day, commonly called Sunday. Provided always that this shall not extend to grant any liberty of opening shops or stores on the first day of the week, nor to the working at the smith’s business, nor any mechanical trade in any compact place.” The next section provided that, if any person is prosecuted for working on Sunday, as above permitted, the fact, if alleged and shown, that he keeps the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, and habitually abstains from his usual occupation or business on that day, shall be a bar to any further prosecution, and secure his discharge, if arrested. The senate rejected the bill by a vote of 14 yeas to 30 nays. The object of this bill was to relieve Sabbatarians in Pennsylvania, whether Seventh-day Baptists, Jews, or Seventh-day Adventists, all of whom keep Saturday as holy time, from the penalties for working on Sunday imposed by the law of 1794, with the qualifications contained in the proviso. These people, as the law now is, are compelled to have two rest-days in every seven, the one enforced by religious considerations and the other by a civil enactment as unjust and oppressive; and we think they are right. Sabbatarians, being so largely in the minority as compared with the whole body of the people, cannot, of course, expect that the State will adopt their sacred day as the day of general secular rest, or that it will appoint two such rest-days; yet they have a right to be relieved from the penalty for working on Sunday, provided that the work and the circumstances be not such as to disturb the general quietude of the day, and thereby prove a serious annoyance to those who observe it as their sacred day. The State has nothing to do with the Sabbath except as a day of rest; and it selects the first day of the week for this purpose because the great body of the people who religiously observe any day observe this day. This doctrine has been repeatedly affirmed by American courts in interpreting and applying Sunday laws, as they are called. New York State has a Sunday law of secular rest. But it expressly provides that those who keep “the last day of the week as holy time, and do not labor or work upon that day,” shall be exempted from the operation of the statute against labor on the first day of the week, with the qualification that “their labor shall not disturb other persons in their observance of the first day of the week as holy time.” There is a further provision that those who keep Saturday “as the Sabbath of rest from labor” shall not on that day “be subject to perform military duty or jury duty in a justice’s court,” or have any process from such court in a civil suit served upon them or made returnable thereon. Similar legislation is found in the Revised Statutes of New Jersey and in the General Statutes of Rhode Island. In two of the manufacturing villages of the latter State about half the people are Seventh-day Baptists, and they work on Sunday and rest on Saturday, under the express sanction of the law. In some fifteen of the States, though chiefly in Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey, seventh-day people are to be found, with whom the observance of Saturday is deemed a religious duty; and it is but just and right that the civil enactment of secular rest on the first day of the week should not apply to them, with the qualification that forms a part of the law of New York State, as above referred to. Sabbatarians should be content with this exemption, since it is all that the State can grant in consistency with the prevalent usages of the people; but to this exemption they are entitled. They are entitled to their conscience as to the sacred day, though, being so largely in the minority, they cannot ask the State to make their day the rest-day. Yet, Saturday being their rest-day, because it is their sacred day, then plainly they ought not to be coerced to rest also on the first day of the week, because the majority of the people observe this day, provided they do not disturb others in their observance of the day. Such coercion is simply oppressive. Whether the bill of Senator Jones was in the best form or not we do not decide; yet the thing at which he aimed is right.—N. Y. Independent.