ARE THE DARK AGES RETURNING?
By R. F. Cottrell
“A VIGOROUS enforcement of Sunday laws is needed. If a Jewish key opens a store, a policeman’s baton should close it.”—Rev. Mr. Coxe, in Christian Statesman. This text is certainly suitable to the “Dark Ages,” when men were persecuted for conscience’ sake. In spirit it harmonizes perfectly with the following, which the Statesman quotes from the Cincinnati Gazette: “Go to the bottom, and enact a law absolutely prohibiting labor on Sundays. It is useless to talk about excepting this class or that class; any law that will make exceptions will prove a failure.” But there is one question to solve. If there are no exceptions to be made for any class, what about policemen going about the streets all day Sunday with their clubs, driving Jews out of their places of business, and conducting them to the lock-up? It is but a few years ago that the editor of the Statesman was silly enough to argue that it was perfectly consistent, and for the interest of seventh-day Sabbatarians, to favor an amendment of our national Constitution that would enforce the observance of the first day of the week, Sunday upon all. He held that it would be inconsistent for us to oppose the measure; pretending, by a bare-faced sophism which he put forth as sober argument, that after such enactment became a national law, we would be left free to settle the question of the particular day of the Sabbath by the Bible. The above sentiments in his columns show just how free we would be left to discuss this question. An Irishman described a free fight with the shillalah, in which he had been engaged, as “a little discussion with sticks;” but in this case the clubs would be only in the hands of the policemen.