THOSE who still uphold Sunday laws notwithstanding the use that is made of them to persecute conscientious observers of the seventh day, try to make much out of the fact that no effort is made to interfere with the latter in their seventh-day rest and worship. But, as is evident from the case of the Adventist arrested in San Antonio, Texas, for refusing to do road work, as commanded by the roadmaster on the seventh day, the same spirit which endeavors to force these people to rest on Sunday, also seeks to compel them to labor on the day which they regard as the Sabbath. It is in both cases simply the spirit of disregard of the consciences and rights of a class politically insignificant, and holding an unpopular religion. It is simply a fortuitous circumstance that determines how this disregard shall be expressed,—whether by compelling the Adventists to rest on the first day, or compelling them to work on the seventh.
THE fact that Sunday is not kept by a part of the people, is regarded by certain others who do keep it, and with whose liberty to keep it no one thinks of interfering, as a “ruthless invasion of the very sanctuary of God by the destroying foot of the Philistine.” These are the words of a Paulist priest, Rev. Alexander Dole, but they voice the sentiment of those who are pushing the Sunday crusade. Yet these same ones, when the persecution of Seventh-day Adventists is under consideration, say that the religion of the Adventists is not interfered with at all by the Sunday laws, since they are left perfectly free to rest and worship on the seventh day. The Sunday-law advocates must not only be left perfectly free in the matter of their own Sunday observance, but others who do not believe as they do must observe it also, else there is “a ruthless invasion” of that which Sunday-keepers hold sacred; but a law which leaves everybody free to disregard the seventh day, and furthermore puts those who do observe it in the chain-gang for working on the first day, is no invasion whatever of that which is held sacred by the Adventists! If this be consistency, then consistency is not a jewel.