Sunday Law Vagaries by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 12, 1906

Sunday Law Vagaries

By L. A. S.

THE editor of the Hamilton, Ontario, Herald gives, in a recent issue of his paper, a striking though unintentional exposition of the inconsistencies of Sunday legislation. Discussing the Dominion Parliament, he mentions a petition by Canadian Jews to be exempt from the operation of the proposed law, and says that if this class and Seventh-day Adventists were granted an exemption, there would be a great many people who would profess belief in the seventh-day sabbath to escape the penalty of doing Sunday work, and that “a general conscience clause would go far to make the Lord’s Day act unworkable.”

But he thinks there might be a way out of this difficulty, by a requirement affecting this class, which in his view would be only fair and just. He says:—

But would it be fair to compel the great majority of the people to abstain from labor one day in the week, and not to compel the small privileged minority to do the same?—Assuredly not. There must be equal obligations as well as equal rights. If Jews and Seventh-day Adventists are to be permitted to work on Sunday, they must be obliged by law to abstain from work on Saturday, the sabbath of their choice. The same penalties attached to violation of the Lord’s Day act by ordinary Christians should attach to the violation of the Saturday sabbath by Jews and Seventh-day Adventists.

Think of a law requiring the observance of a certain day of the week, under which a man would be punished for not observing some other day of the week! Think of a law requiring the observance of the Sunday sabbath, which would also at the same time require a class of the people to give allegiance to the institution to which it is the rival! Such a statute would deserve to be set apart by itself as a piece of freak legislation; yet the editor of the Hamilton Herald has only traced out in full the logic of an exemption clause in Sunday legislation. Sunday laws must either be inconsistent by compelling one class of people to observe a different day than the one whose observance the law aims to perpetuate, or they must perpetrate the plain injustice of robbing this class of one day's time in every week. On either hand, the law is self-condemned. It hardly need be added that those who aim by such laws to perpetuate and extend Sunday observance do not desire an arrangement which would promote the observance of any other sabbath through the force of the law.

L. A. S.