The Reformers and Sunday.
In an address delivered in All Saints' Protestant Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., Justice Gaynor said, in substance, that all the Sunday laws of Europe and in England, are a continuation of the law issued by Emperor Constantine in the third century. Then he said: There are laws against work and for the observance of Sunday in England, but decent and religious observance of Sunday has been enforced more by the good sense and the religious disposition of the English people than by any law. The church to which you belong, the Episcopal Church—the established church in England—has always been sensible and liberal about the observance of Sunday; and that applies very largely to the English people. You will find that in the time of the Reformation the principal ones who took part in it in England were very careful not to impose an excessive burden of silence on the people on Sunday. We read in the life of Calvin that when John Knox visited him on Sunday he found Calvin in the back yard playing ball with his boys. It is a fact that one of the key-notes of the Reformation was liberty of conscience. The protest of the Protestant especially denied the right of the civil government to interfere in matters of religion, as also the right of the church to interfere in the business of the state. Luther said: It is by the Word that we must fight; by the Word overturn and destroy what has been established by violence. I am unwilling to employ force against the superstitious or the unbelieving. Let him who believes approach; let him who believes not stand aloof. None ought to be constrained. Liberty is of the essence of faith.