SENTENCED FOR WORKING ON SUNDAY
By Editor
ON December 15, J. S. Rooker, a Seventh-day Adventist, was tried in a Tennessee court for working on Sunday, was found guilty, and was sentenced to pay a fine. It is said that we are living in an age of great progress and freedom. It is said that in this time we are no longer under the dominance of religious prejudice and religious bigotry. But in the face of these fond affirmations, how is it that every little while a Seventh-day Adventist is haled before court in one state or another in the Union, and fined or sentenced to prison for working on Sunday? When the question is brought up, in connection with such cases, as to the honesty and general character of these men, it is admitted in each and every case that no fault can be found with them from the standpoint of honorable citizenship. The only trouble is that they work on Sunday, and Sunday75is a religious holiday, protected by the state. There are various kinds of technical twists that are made by certain individuals in order to have it appear that they are great patriots, and that they are upholding law and order, when they inflict fines and imprisonments upon people who work on Sunday after conscientiously keeping, in harmony with the Bible teaching, the seventh day of the week. Now if these men were really seeking to uphold law, they would not single out Seventh-day Adventists, but they would arrest every man, woman, and child throughout the country who violates the Sunday laws. Pure patriotism would enforce law impartially. But when those only of differing religion are punished, religious bigotry has stolen into the seat of patriotism, and thereby deceived. But there is a studied plan back of all this, that is much deeper and much more significant than recognized by ordinary human vision. Religious despotism, in all history, has been carried under the guise of the highest form of patriotism. Some of the greatest patriots have been distinguished because of their tyrannies in religious matters. Some of the best emperors that Rome had in the early part of the Christian era, looking at it from the standpoint of patriotism in the Roman state, were those who sought to obliterate Christianity through their persecutions and tortures. The people represented by this paper have taught from the prophecies, for more than half a century, that one of the last acts in this world's history would be the establishment of a world-wide religious despotism, with Sunday as the central plank in the platform. Religious organization after religious organization has arisen to carry out various "reforms," and a leading factor in all of them is the thought of securing and enforcing uniform Sunday observance. These church organizations, both Protestant and Catholic, unite on this central theme. There is yet to be promulgated a universal Sunday law, with universal enforcement, and death to be the penalty. Such is the outline of the prophecy, as we have taught it from the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Revelation. And men who think that religious bigotry has been destroyed, and that such a thing can not exist in this time of great enlightenment, would do well to study carefully such occurrences as the fining of this man for working in his corn field on the back part of his farm on a Sunday — a work that they all admit would have been commendable if done on any other day of the week. The marked tendency of this time is, to unite the whole religious world upon certain dogmas, and sweep everything before it. This is an age of significant combinations, and the most striking of them all is the great ecclesiastical combine that is being formed through the dream of federating Christendom. Occurrences like the fining of Mr. Rooker for working on Sunday are only straws which show the general current. Do not throw these things aside as strange or fanciful, but give them thought and study. Ecclesiastical organizations that have become strong enough to grasp political power, have always caused persecutions, and the thing that lies just before us will be no exception to the general rule.