"MODERN RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION."
By Editor
Under the above heading the Times of this city recently had the following editorial:— An inoffensive citizen, a Seventh-day Adventist, was recently convicted of a misdemeanor and punished by a Maryland Court for the atrocious offense of husking corn in a barn on Sunday. Some two or three years ago a man was sent to jail in Tennessee for plowing on Sunday. In both Maryland and Tennessee games of baseball and football are played on Sunday, admission being charged to the grounds, and candy, popcorn, and peanuts peddled in the throngs who assemble to see the sport. These "amusements," which are conducted as a business, are not molested by the authorities, but a quiet citizen, who believes that Saturday is the real Sabbath, cannot husk corn in his own barn or plow his field on Sunday without incurring the penalties of the criminal law. That religious bigotry prompted both these prosecutions is quite evident, for both the men arrested and punished were Seventh-day Adventists. It was not claimed that they were lawless or disorderly persons. On the contrary, they were industrious, law-abiding citizens, who provided for their families, paid their taxes and debts, attended to their own affairs, and never meddled with the concerns of their neighbors. Yet these men were picked out for prosecution for violating Sunday laws, and the instigators and promoters of the prosecutions were church-goers, members of other religious sects. It was hatred of the Seventh-day Adventist faith, and not the breaking of the sabbath, that actuated these pious prosecutions. The people who inspired them were not moved to prosecute those who participated in godless sports or sold candy and peanuts on the Lord's day. They wanted to visit their pious reprobation of the Seventh-day Adventist heresy. In other words, the prosecution was persecution, and the inspiration was bigotry and intolerance. Sunday laws should go no farther than preventing disorder and compelling decorum in deference to the religious feelings of the great body of our citizens, but when they become agencies for the punishment as criminals of men who peacefully plow their fields and husk their corn, they take on the intolerant inspiration that kindled the fires of Smithfield and turned the rack and thumbscrew of the Spanish Inquisition.355Purposely noisy pursuits followed ostentatiously on Sunday in the vicinity of public worship, or in such a way as to offend the propriety and religious sentiments of other sects, should be punished, either as disorderly conduct or as disturbances of the peace. But in the name of Him who came teaching charity and toleration for all, as well as for the spirit of civil liberty and religious freedom, it is to be hoped that there will be no prosecutions prompted by fanaticism and directed in the spirit of persecution.