p. 9 | WHAT YEAR IS THIS?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Sep 23, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 37.

WHAT YEAR IS THIS?

ARE we living in the year of our Lord 1897, or are we again in the beginning of the eighteenth century?

W. H. Armstrong, pastor of the church of the Seventh-day Adventists at West Washington, Pennsylvania, is in jail for desecrating the sabbath. The shameful desecration of which he is guilty is that on a recent Sunday, having changed his boarding-house, he carried through the open streets to his new domicile a box containing a Bible, "Life of Christ," "Hints for Church Librarians," Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," and other books of the same character, about a dozen in all.

What shall be said of the people of Pennsylvania who permit such an infamous law to still appear on the statute-books?

And what shall be said of the Christian people—God save the mark!—who incited the arrest of Mr. Armstrong, and appeared as witnesses against him?

Surely the missionary societies of the various churches should call in their crusaders from the much-abused "heathen lands," and set them to work to inculcate a little of the spirit of true Christianity in the dark corners of Pennsylvania.—Sacramento Bee.

The law of Pennsylvania provides that any person convicted of doing any kind of unnecessary work on Sunday shall be fined not less than $4.00, or go to jail six days. In this case, the victim refused to pay a fine, and was sent to jail. Such laws are the logical outcome of the Sunday-closing movement, now being actively agitated in the State of California, and for years not a Legislature has convened but has been asked to pass its counterpart.—Winters (Cal.) Express.