JUDGE RITCHIE, of Ohio, in opening the Court of Common Pleas, of Putnam County, in that State, recently charged the grand jury that they “should disabuse their minds of the idea that Sunday has any connection with the Christian Sabbath.” He proceeded to shoe how “Sunday was first adopted by Constantine, A. D. 321, who “took it from paganism rather than from Christianity;” and declared that Sunday observance is but a police regulation, and not a matter of moral obligation at all.
This moved a believer in Sunday sacredness, who heard the judge’s charge, to reply at length to the judge in the local paper, endeavoring to refute the idea that Sunday is not a sacred day.
The judge doubtless delivered his charge with a view to the enforcement of the Sunday law, believing that the law could not be enforced if construed as applying to a sacred institution. To put it on an enforceable basis in the minds of the grand jury and of the people, he was [99] obliged to divest it in their minds of all claim to any higher nature than that of a police regulation. It can well be imagined what the preachers and church people of the country would think of having the judges in general make such statements about Sunday as a regular part of the proceedings of opening court.
The only logical way out of the dilemma in which Sunday is thus placed, lies in an open confession that Sunday laws are to enforce a religious institution. That is the real ground on which they are demanded by the preachers; and to this basis they will have to come in the public view. On that basis, and not as a matter of police regulation, the public must accept or reject them.