SUNDAY A DAY OF PLEASURE.
Question. What do you think of the religious spirit that seeks to regulate by legislation the manner in which the people of this country shall spend their Sundays?
Answer. The church is not willing to stand alone, not willing to base its influence on reason and on the character of its members. It seeks the aid of the State. The cross is in partnership with the sword. People should spend Sundays as they do other days; that is to say, as they please. No one has the right to do anything on Monday that interferes with the rights of his neighbors, and everyone has the right to do anything he pleases on Sunday that does not interfere with the rights of his neighbors. Sunday is a day of rest, not of religion. We are under obligation to do right on all days.
Nothing can be more absurd than the idea that any particular space of time is sacred. Everything in nature goes on the same on Sunday as on other days, and if beyond nature there be a God, then God works on Sunday as he does on all other days. There is no rest in nature. There is perpetual activity in every possible direction. The old idea that God made the world and then rested, is idiotic. There were two reasons given to the Hebrews for keeping the Sabbath —one because Jehovah rested on that day, the other because the Hebrews were brought out of Egypt. The first reason, we know, is false, and the second reason is good only for the Hebrews. According to the Bible, Sunday, or rather the Sabbath, was not for the world, but for the Hebrews, and the Hebrews alone. Our Sunday is pagan and is the day of the sun, as Monday is the day of the moon. All our day names are pagan. I am opposed to all Sunday legislation.
Question. Why should Sunday be observed otherwise than as a day of recreation?
Answer. Sunday is a day of recreation, or should be; a day for the laboring man to rest, a day to visit museums and libraries, a day to look at pictures, a day to get acquainted with your wife and children, a day for poetry and art, a day on which to read old letters and to meet friends, a day to cultivate the amenities of life, a day for those who live in tenements to feel the soft grass beneath their feet. In short, Sunday should be a day of joy. The church endeavors to fill it with gloom and sadness, with stupid sermons and dyspeptic theology.
Nothing could be more cowardly than the effort to compel the observance of the Sabbath by law. We of America have outgrown the childishness of the last century; we laugh at the superstitions of our fathers. We have made up our minds to be as happy as we can be, knowing that the way to be happy is to make others so, that the time to be happy is now, whether that now is Sunday or any other day in the week.
Question. Under a Federal Constitution guaranteeing civil and religious liberty, are the so-called "Blue Laws" constitutional?
Answer. No, they are not. But the probability is that the Supreme Courts of most of the States would decide the other way. And yet all these laws are clearly contrary to the spirit of the Federal Constitution and the constitutions of most of the States.
I hope to live until all these foolish laws are repealed and until we are in the highest and noblest sense a free people. And by free I mean each having the right to do anything that does not interfere with the rights or with the happiness of another. I want to see the time when we live for this world and when all shall endeavor to increase, by education, by reason, and by persuasion, the sum of human happiness.
—New York Times, July 21, 1893.