p. 9 | A BAPTIST EXPRESSION

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 25, 1897

A BAPTIST EXPRESSION.

We have before noted the decision of Judge Pryor, of New York, refusing to incorporate a Jewish society because the articles specified that the annual meetings should be held on Sunday. Here is what the Watchman, the leading Baptist paper, says about it:—

“That may be good law, but for a number of reasons it is not good policy. The Hebrew association should have its rights to incorporate determined by fairly-defined conditions, and not by the personal opinions of a judge. Justice Pryor’s labored argument to show that to hold this special business meeting on Sunday is a desecration of the day, will commend itself to many people; but Baptists, who believe in the separation of Church and State, will repudiate the justice’s sophistry. This Hebrew association does not interrupt or disturb other persons in their observance of Sunday, which is the ground upon which the application could be rightly denied. The decision is contrary to the spirit of our institutions, and is an instance of petty persecution. We hope that the Hebrew association will carry the case, if that is possible, to the Court of Appeals. They will find that Baptists all over the country will sustain them.”

We are informed that Judge Pryor has since carried his judicial ideas of Sunday observance still further, even denying the privilege of incorporation to a society because its annual meeting was to be held on December 31, which in some years would fall on Sunday.