renewed.

Prosecution week. This prosecution has been renewed, and three men of families, one fifty-five and another sixty-two years of age, were convicted, and have, during the summer and autumn, been working out their fine, being set to work with criminals at shoveling on the common highway. They refused to pay their fine, declaring that it was unjust, and that they were liable to be arrested again as soon as they were released. We have said before, and we say again, that this is bad law, bad morals, and bad religion."

Position of some Baptists.

Poor policy.

Vicious laws should be repealed.

Present tactics.

Children compelled to testify.

Another religious organ, the Baptist Church Bulletin," gives these suggestive words of warning:

"Let us be careful how we let in the camel's nose of religious legisla tion, lest the brute crowd his bulky form in, and occupy the whole shop. If the law by which these men were legally imprisoned be a righteous law, then may any State, nation, or country set up a religious creed and enforce it; then France treated properly the Huguenots; Russia, the Jews; and early New England and Virginia, the Baptists and Quakers. Protestant America had better be careful how she lays foundations for other men to build upon. Rome has as good a right to build in her way as we have to build in our way.”

As a rule, however, the religious press has been strangely silent.

A nation can sometimes afford to err on the side of mercy, but no nation can afford to be unjust to her lowliest citizen. I am one of those who believe most profoundly that every sin, whether committed by an individual, a State, or a nation, brings its own consequence as inevit ably as the violation of a physical law brings its evil results. I believe that nations commit suicide no less than individuals, and that wrong done by nations will result in evil consequences: and believing this, while loving the great republic, I cannot remain silent when she is unjust or when she wrongs, in the name of law, upright citizens because they do not believe as the majority believe. No State or nation can afford to allow a law not based on justice to remain upon the statute books. And when our republic so far forgets the high ideals of justice, liberty, and human rights, which made her the flower of the ages, as to permit unjust laws to be passed, or cruel, obsolete statutes to be resuscitated in the interests of any class, any sect, or any religion, she makes law-breaking citizens, and plants in her own breast the seeds of disintegration.1

1 After the occurrence of the shameful proceedings which called forth this justly merited condemnation, the grand jury of the same county (Henry county, Tennessee) summoned a score of witnesses, most of them members of the Seventh-day Adventist church at Springville, to testify against their brethren; and as a result ten or more were indicted for performing farm labor on their own premises on Sunday after observ ing the previous day as Sabbath.

Among the witnesses summoned were a number of children; so that children were compelled to testify against their parents and parents against their children. Inquiries were also made as to whether the women worked on Sunday, and what they did. Among those reported to be indicted was a feeble old man nearly eighty years of age.

Nor do these cases appear to be spasmodic, as some would have us think. Cases are multiplying instead of diminishing.

On June 26, 1894, W. B. Capps was locked up in the county jail at Dresden, Weakley County, Tennessee, for performing common labor on his farm on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday. The first time he was seen at work, he was cutting corn-stalks in his own field. The witness's farm is adjoining, and he could see Mr. Capps at work from his house a few hundred yards away. This was on a Sunday, in May, 1892.

Prosecution

frequent.

The case of

In the fall of the same year the same witness went to Mr. Capps's house on Sunday to see him about a note on which he was surety, and found him plowing a piece Capps. of uncultivated land in the middle of a field of grown corn, in which he designed to sow turnips. The witness informed Mr. Capps that his father, the payee, expected him to send the money, though in his testimony the witness denied that he went to see the defendant about the note. This secluded spot in which Mr. Capps was quietly following the leadings of his conscience by tilling the soil on the first day of the week, was not only shut in by full-grown corn, but was three quarters of a mile from any public road.

At another time Mr. Capps was seen on Sunday splitting rails. Before the day was over, two of his neighbors came along, took up the maul and ax, and assisted him for a time. The neighbors were not interfered with in their liberty.

Mr. Capps was arrested June 8, 1893, and at his trial before the Circuit Court of Weakley County, June 27, 1893, he was fined ten dollars and costs, amounting in all to fifty-one dollars and eighty cents. His case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, which affirmed the judgment of the lower court, May 24, 1894, at Jackson, fixing the cost at fifty-eight dollars and sixty-five cents; making as a grand total the outrageous sum of one hundred and ten dollars and forty-five cents, to be served out by the convicted at the paltry rate of twenty-five cents per day. This will necessitate the confinement of the prisoner four hundred and forty-two days, or one year and nearly three months.

The Supreme Court did not write any opinion, but simply said: "There is no controversy as to the facts in this case [as of course there was not], and we find no error in the record; therefore the judgment of the court below will be affirmed." It gave no reasons, and did not attempt to meet the arguments raised by the defense. Mr. Capps had a wife twenty-four years of age, and four children, the eldest being only six years old, and one of them sick at the time of its father's imprisonment. His family was left all alone in the woods a quarter of a mile from any house. poor man and unable to support his family during his confinement. He did not deny working on Sunday, but worked because he had rested the day before according to the Bible; because he recognized his God-given right to labor six days in the week, beginning on the first, as did his Creator; and because in acceding to the demands of the State to observe Sunday, he believed he would be denying his Lord.

He was a

Hence he refused to pay the fine and costs, regarding them as unjust, since the State was attempting to enforce upon him a dogma of religion, with which it could of right have nothing whatever to do. Therefore he went to jail.

VIEWS OF THE SEVENTH-DAY BAPTISTS.

"The Seventh-day Baptists believe that the Sabbath is purely a religious question, upon which legislatures should make no laws. They believe in absolute freedom of conscience as to what day should be kept, and would oppose legislation in favor of the seventh day as strongly as they do in the matter of the first. Religious liberty was the foundation principle upon which our government was built, and our brethren of other Protestant denominations are quick enough to see and recognize this whenever, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church tries to secure laws in its favor. Why can they not see the injustice of resorting to law to compel weaker denominations to keep Sunday?" Sabbath Recorder," February 13, 1911.

Decision of

the court.

Should be

no Sabbath laws.

The law and Constitution in conflict.

GEORGIA.

The Georgia Sunday law makes the pursuit of one's business or ordinary calling on Sunday a misdemeanor, which is punishable by fine, imprisonment, and work in the chain-gang (see ante page 572); while the Constitution of the State declares that Ino inhabitant of this State shall be molested in person or property count of his religious opinions." See ante page 529. Enforcement of the law, and disregard for the Constitution, have led to a number of prosecutions in the State, which, in reality, have been simply persecutions,

... on ac

First case of its kind.

Taken sick in jail.

SAMUEL MITCHEL.

One of the earliest cases, if not the earliest, in the United States of a Seventh-day Adventist being arrested and imprisoned for laboring on Sunday, was that of Mr. Samuel Mitchel. But it smacks as strongly of the persecuting spirit as do the more recent cases.

Mr. Mitchel was arrested in July, 1878, for plowing in his own field on Sunday, at Quitman, Brooks county, Georgia. For this he was sentenced to be confined in a loathsome prison cell for thirty days. Being in poor health, the confinement in a damp place taxed his physical powers beyond endurance, and after he had been in jail fifteen days, he was taken worse. A doctor was summoned, who told him to pay his fine and come out, to save his life. He replied that he owed the county nothing, as he had committed no offense against his fellow-citizens, and would not pay the fine. A gentleman who later became a member of Congress, offered to pay his fine if he would promise not to work any more on Sunday. This Mr. Mitchel A martyr to Sunday would not do, but served out his time. As a result, his physical powenforcement. ers were broken, and he died February 4, 1879, a martyr to Sunday enforcement.

A good

man.

Prompt and cheerful obedience to God's law.

Mr. Mitchel was regarded in the community in which he lived as a man of spotless integrity. Not the slightest charge was brought against his character except his allegiance to his convictions concerning the Sabbath. Even his persecutors admitted that he was a good man; but they said, "This Saturday-keeping must be stopped."

As an illustration of Mr. Mitchel's prompt and faithful obedience to convictions of right and duty, the following incident in his life may be related: One Saturday, as he had often done before, he took a grist to mill, going a distance of about ten miles. As he entered the village, he learned that a Seventh-day Adventist minister was holding a meeting in the place. While waiting for his grist to be ground, he thought he would go over and hear what the stranger had to say. The subject of the discourse that day chanced to be the Sabbath, and as the claims of the fourth commandment and the teachings of Christ and his apostles were opened before his mind, he was convinced that the seventh day of the week is the true Sabbath, and at once decided

to obey. Instead of returning to the mill, he went directly home, leaving his grist till the next Monday; and from that day to the close of his life he faithfully observed the seventh day. There must be something wrong with laws and with legal proceedings which will treat such a man as a criminal. One who will render such prompt, willing, and cheerful obedience to the law of God, certainly would not knowingly or willfully disregard any proper or legitimate human law.

DAY CONKLIN,

In March, 1889, Day Conklin, of Big Creek, Forsythe county, Georgia, was arrested, tried before a jury, and fined twenty-five dollars and costs, amounting in all to eighty-three dollars. The offense for which he was indicted was cutting wood near his own door on Sunday, November 18, 1888. He had no wood prepared for his stove at this time, and was chopping some to keep his family from suffering. He had conscientiously observed the seventh day as the Sabbath, believing it to be the day required by the fourth commandment to be kept holy.

In his plea before the jury in a similar case at Gainesville, Georgia, February 22, 1894, William F. Findley, prosecuting attorney, who was present at Mr. Conklin's trial, said regarding his case:

'One of these Seventh-day Adventists was tried over here in Forsythe county, and I think there never was a more unrighteous conviction. There was a man named Day Conklin, who was moving on Friday. He got his goods wet on Friday, and it turned off cold. On Saturday he went out and cut enough wood to keep his family from freezing. On Sunday he still hadn't his things dry, and it was still as cold as it had been on Saturday. He still cut enough wood to keep his family warm, and they convicted him for doing this. I say that that was an outrage, an unrighteous conviction, for he was doing the best he could. One of the jurymen told me that they did not convict him for what he had done, but what he said he had a right to do. He said he had a right to work on Sunday."

That the prosecution in this case was simply the result of religious persecution is evident from the fact that others who did not observe the seventh day as the Sabbath, did the same kind of work on Sunday without being molested. One of the jurors who condemned Mr. Conklin, and one of the two witnesses against him, both chopped wood at their own homes on the very next Sunday after the trial, and some of the witnesses for the prosecution, both before and after the trial, traveled twenty-five miles with loads of farm produce or Sunday.

on

In charging the grand jury who found the indictment against Mr. Conklin, the judge said that if it were shown that women had been knitting on Sunday, a true bill should be found against them. When the judge fixed Mr. Conklin's fine, the two lawyers employed

Chopping wood on Sunday to keep family

from suffering costs eighty-three dollars.

A most unrighteous conviction.

Others not molested.

Lawyers give ten dollars each.

as counsel for the defendant, each handed him ten dollars toward the discharge of it.

W. A. MC CUTCHEN AND E. C. KECK.

For completing preparations in a church building for a church A minister school at Gainesville, Georgia, November 19, 1893, Mr. W. A. Mcprosecuted. Cutchen, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, and Mr. Keck were arrested the same day, on the charge of "disorderly conduct." At their trial before the mayor's court, people living on the other side of the town testified that they had been disturbed by the work. Some of them said it was not the nature of the work that disturbed them, but that the doing of it on Sunday was the disturbing element. One acknowledged he was disturbed when he heard that they were working.

A mental disturbance.

Fifty-five dollars each or ninety days on streets.

A travesty on justice.

The mayor a Methodist.

Case dismissed.

Both men were promptly fined by the mayor fifty dollars and costs, amounting to fifty-five dollars in each case, or ninety days' work on the public streets of the city. This they refused to pay, and were locked up in the city jail. After being in jail half a day, friends secured their release on bail, they being bound over to await trial in the county court, on the charge of "Sabbath-breaking."

The leading lawyers in the city stated that the mayor's action was a travesty on justice, since the mayor's court had absolutely no jurisdiction in the case - that whatever there was of it was a State offense, and not one against the city, as the city had no ordinance against Sunday labor; hence the charge of "disorderly conduct." The mayor was a leading member of the Methodist church of the place.

The county court threw the case back into the city court, where it was tried February 22, 1894, the jury, after considering it for seventeen hours, failing to agree.

August 23, 1894, the case was brought up again for trial, when it was dismissed on the ground that the labor performed was not in violation of the statute, as it was not in the line of their ordinary callings," one being a minister and the other a teacher.

MISSOURI.

The following from the Oakland, California, "Daily Times," published in 1890, shows that Missouri is also included in this general campaign for the revival and enforcement of Sunday laws in this country. It also indicates who are the prime movers in it, and very significantly asks why seventh-day observers are specially singled out for attack:

"Until within a few years past there has been little or no attempt to enforce the Sunday laws on the statute books of the States of the Union. Practically, men have been free to labor if they chose, or to