reason, and less to the precedents dictated by bigotry and custom, government will become still more liberal, and Sunday laws, and all other religious laws, will go the way that similar laws have gone.

In order to fulfil the objects of government, every man must be insured "the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the exercise of like liberty by every other man." Discussing the Federal Constitution in the Virginia convention, Patrick Henry said: "You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government. The great and direct end of government is liberty. Secure our liberty and privileges, and the end of government is answered. If this be not effectually done, government is an evil.”1

2

Objects of government.

Departures from funda

ciples.

This is the principle asserted in the Declaration of Independence, when it says, "All men are created equal;" and the repeated departures from it in our religious laws which discriminate against the Sab- mental prinbatarian and the unbeliever are a standing reproach to our government, and a constant travesty on justice. So long as the idea prevails that there must be some legal connection between church and state,that the state cannot exist without religion, nor religion without the state,- we may expect that such laws will remain upon our statute books. So long as men read history so little, or to so little purpose, as not to learn that any union of religion and the state

1 Elliot's "Debates on the Federal Constitution," volume iii, page 43 et seq., 53 et seq., 651. See pages 146, 147.

2" The Jew who is forced to respect the first day of the week when his conscience requires of him the observance of the seventh also, may plausibly urge that the law discriminates against his religion, and by forcing him to keep a second Sabbath in each week, unjustly, though by indirection, punishes him for his belief." Cooley's "Constitutional Limitations," page *476.

Injustice

to Sabba

tarians.

Until lessons of sacred and profane history are learned, in

persecution

will be seen.

any prescribing of men's faith by human laws is a dangerous experiment, and an illicit and contaminating alliance, and, in the end, can result only in evil, we may expect to see a repetition of the bigotry and intolerance which have disgraced the history of past ages. And so long as men who profess to believe the Bible, read it so little, or to so little purpose and tolerance and profit, as not to learn from the record of the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage and oppression, the three Hebrews from the fiery furnace, and Daniel from the lions' den, the lesson that God abhors religious intolerance and oppression; that with religion civil government can of right have nothing whatever to do further than to protect liberty of conscience; and that, as Adam Clarke says, "the church which tolerates, encourages, and practices persecution, under the pretense of concern for the purity of the faith, and zeal for God's glory, is not the church of Christ, and no man can be of such church without endangering his salvation;" so long as this is so, we may expect to see professed Christians making use of the power of the state for the furtherance of their ends, and for the suppression of views not in accordance. with their own.

A perusal of past and present American Sunday laws shows

1

A perusal of the early Sunday laws of the American colonies will demonstrate how little acquainted were the first settlers of this country with the genuine. old error still principles of religious liberty and separation of church

retained.

and state. See Part I. And an examination of the numerous Sunday laws upon our statute books at the present time (see Part V), a list which is constantly increasing, will show how the old error of a union of church and state still clings to the country, and the weapons of persecution still remain for the convenient use of the bigot as occasion may suggest or arise for their wielding.

1 Comments on Luke 14: 23.

PART I.

Colonial Period.

"We speak with great satisfaction of the fact that our ancestors came to this country to establish freedom of religion. Well, if you are to be exact, they came to establish freedom for their own religion, and not the freedom of anybody else's religion. The truth is that in those days such a thing as freedom of religion was not understood."- President Taft.

"Freedom of conscience was, in that age, an idea yet standing on the threshold of the world, waiting to be ushered in; and none but exalted minds - Roger Williams and Penn, Vane, Fox, and Bunyan went forth to welcome it."Bancroft.

EARLY AMERICAN SUNDAY LAWS.'

VIRGINIA.

(America's First Sunday Law, 1610.)

PENALTY OF DEATH FOR NON-ATTENDANCE AT CHURCH ON SUNDAY.2

Every man and woman shall repair in the morning to the divine service and sermons preached upon the Sabbath day, and in the afternoon to divine service, and catechising, upon pain for the first fault to lose their provision and the allowance for the whole week following; for the second, to lose the said allowance and also be whipt; and for the third to suffer death.*

1 These are the real "blue-laws." They are not taken from the "Peter's Code," but from the legal codes and original statute books as indicated by the references given. All of the thirteen original colonies are represented here except South Carolina, and this is represented by duplication, as indicated in note under Georgia. page 47.

See

2" Articles, Laws, and Orders, Divine, Politique, and Martial, for the Colony in Virginia: first established by Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, Lieutenant-General, the 24th of May, 1610. Again exemplified and enlarged by Sir Thomas Dale, Knight, Marshall, and Deputie Governour, the 22d of June, 1611." Reprinted at Hartford, in 1876.

3 This was at the time that the Virginia plantation held all things in common; and if the Sabbath was not observed according to the requirements of the government, all supplies were cut off.

America's first Sunday law, 1610.

Persecution in Vir

4" The first settlers [of Virginia] were emigrants from England, of the English church, just at a point of time when it was flushed with complete victory over the religions of all other persuasions. ginia. Possessed, as they became, of the powers of making, administering, and executing the laws, they showed equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian brethren who had emigrated to the northern government. Several acts of the Virginia Assembly, of 1659, 1662, and 1693, had made it penal in parents to refuse to have their children baptized; had prohibited the unlawful assembling of Quakers; had made it penal for any master of a vessel to bring a Quaker into the State; had ordered those already there, and such