p. 599 | THE SUNDAY QUESTION by Warren Smith

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 30, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 38.

THE SUNDAY QUESTION.

By Warren Smith

IN questions of public controversy all sides should be heard. Our republican form of government anticipated the broadest range of individual liberty comfortable with the well-being of society.

Honest religious opinions are as widely diversified as the physical, intellectual, and moral constitutions of men are different, hence every man and woman should be guaranteed by law the full and free enjoyment and practice of his opinions, providing

the same do not interfere with the rights of others.

On account of some necessary work recently done on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia, during Sunday, the clergy, in the pulpit and through the columns of the daily papers, made a bitter and unwarranted attack on those who instigated this Sunday work. This attack reveals the fact that there is a class of narrow-minded beings who speak and act as though the government was instituted, and laws enacted, for their own exclusive benefit. It is about time that this class was authoritatively informed that we live in a republic and not a theocracy. They should also be made to understand that the atrocious code of blue laws, and cruel and outrageous régime of Cotton Mather, are inapplicable to this age.

Sunday is strictly a religious institution, and cannot be rightfully enforced on persons having no respect for it as a holy day. The Roman Catholic Church has the same right to enforce the abstinence from eating meat on Friday as Protestant Christians to enforce observance of Sunday.—Ex-Senator Warren Smith.