Why Go So Far from Home.
By Editor
The New York Observer of December 14 has the following:— The martyr's stake and the Inquisition are out of date, but the spirit of persecution still prevails. A correspondent of the Truth, an English religious journal, reports an incident that is in point. In the village of Brockworth feeling has run very high between the High Church and Low Church parties. The vicar and the High Church being in the ascendant, the Protestant Union sent out lay readers to hold private religious meetings. A cottage where such meetings were held was occupied by a woman whose son was a gardener to a lady connected with the High Church party. This son was actually informed that his mother must stop the meetings at her cottage, or he must take lodgings in another house and undertake not to support his mother out of his pay. The young man naturally declined to accept either alternative. As a consequence he was summarily dismissed from his situation. Such a dismissal is a crime against liberty of conscience. This is true; but why should the Observer go so far from home? There have been during the past ten years a score or more of cases where men were prosecuted, imprisoned, or fined simply because they observed the Sabbath of the Lord and worked on Sunday as God gave them the right to do; and further, in all these cases it was shown in courts that these men guilty of "crime" intermeddled with no one, and were in all respects good citizens and good neighbors. Has the Observer noticed these?