EQUITY IN SUNDAY LAWS by C. P. B.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 37.

“EQUITY IN SUNDAY LAWS.”

By C. P. B.

“EQUITY in Sunday Laws” is the title of an article by Rev. W. F. Crafts in the Lutheran Observer of August 9, in which the writer says:—

“‘Equity’ should be used as a watchword for the enactment, improvement, and enforcement of our Sunday laws. In the general suspension of Sunday work and business, there are three notorious exceptions in many places. The saloons, the trains, and the newspapers, are allowed to carry on business secretly or publicly in the interests of their rich proprietors, while the peanut stands and little stores of the poor are closed. A few Sabbaths [Sundays] since in New York, when all the rich florists were selling flowers without resistance, contrary to law, a burly policeman arrested an Italian who was selling five-cent button-hole bouquets, and doubtless in five minutes made him an anarchist and all his friends. If such discrimination is made in the law itself, the Legislature perpetrates a crime against equity. Such law is violation of law and cannot long be enforced. The only law that can either be justified or maintained in practice is a law which impartially forbids, in rich and poor, all forms of Sunday work that are not works of mercy or necessity.”

Such law is certainly violation of justice, and the enforcement of it is tyranny, and this is just what every Sunday law and its enforcement is. The iniquity of such laws has been shown time and again, and yet men calling themselves Christians were never so loud in their demands for such laws as now. And this is just what Mr. Crafts himself is doing. He can denounce a gross act of injustice in New York, where the probable agent of some grasping master was the sufferer, but he has no word to say against a hundred times worse acts of injustice in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia, where conscientious, God-fearing Christians, American citizens, were the victims. In the States named, men of this character have been fined and imprisoned, technically for Sunday work, but really for Sabbath rest, while others in the same neighborhood, who did more and noisier work than they on Sunday, were not molested. The spirit of persecution for conscience’ sake is abroad in the land, and the American Sabbath Union, so called, is doing all in its power to stimulate that spirit, and to make its practical manifestation possible not only in a few States but in every State.

C. P. B.