But the friend had been telling the minister a story. And as he passed out at the rattling stockade gate, he, too, glanced up at the blue sky. His doubts were gone, if there had been any, his faith was planted in God’s eternal goodness.
“Can such die?” he mused, “such faithfulness, such magnificent courage, such glorious fidelity? Is it possible that such can pass away into eternal torment?”
The soft wind touched his cheek and bore heavenward the prayer he breathed:—
“Forbid it, Almighty God.”
EDITORIAL NOTES.
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE TO-DAY. PERSECUTED FOR CONSCIENCE SAKE.
The decision recently handed down by Judge Hammond, of the United States District Court, in the celebrated case of R. M. King, is rich in lessons of vital importance to thoughtful minds at the present time of unrest, when conservatism is seeking on every hand, even under the cloak of radical movements, to secure statutes and legal constructions of laws which may at an early day be used to fetter thought, crush liberty, and throttle the vanguard of progress. Briefly stated, the important facts in the case in question are as follows: Mr. King is an honest, hard-working farmer. He is charged with no breach of morals; in fact, it appears that he is a remarkably upright man. But he is a Seventh Day Adventist; that is, he does not hold the same religious views as the majority in his State. He stands in the same relation to his countrymen as that occupied by the early disciples of Christ to Roman society when Nero undertook to punish Christians by kindling nightly human fires for the delectation of conservative or majority thought. He is of the minority, even as the Huguenots were in the minority when the Church tortured, racked, and burned them for the glory of God and the good of humanity. He is of the minority, as was Roger Williams when, in 1635, the popular and conventional thought of Salem banished him. Mr. King is not an infidel or even a doubter. On the contrary he is ardently religious, being a zealous and conscientious member of a sect of Christians noted for their piety and faith. The Adventists, of whom he is an honored member, it must be remembered, hold somewhat peculiar views about the second advent of Christ. They believe they find in the Bible commands making it obligatory upon them to keep holy the seventh day of the week, or the Hebrew Sabbath, instead of Sunday, the holiday and rest day observed by most Christian denominations. Now it was shown in the trial that, conforming to his belief, Mr. King strictly observed the Sabbath on Saturday, but being a poor farmer he could not afford to rest two days each week, or over one hundred days in the year, and, therefore, after having kept the Sabbath he plowed in his field on Sunday. This aroused the pious indignation of the narrow-minded and bigoted members of the community who profess to follow that great Leader who taught us to judge not, to resist not evil, and to do unto others as we would have others do unto us. These Christians (?) who, unfortunately for the cause of justice and religious liberty, are in the majority in Tennessee, had this conscientious, God-fearing man arrested as a common felon, and convicted of the heinous crime (?) of Sabbath-breaking by plowing on Sunday. He appealed to the Supreme Court, and the sentence was affirmed. Then the Adventists and the National Secular Association took up the case. Hon. Don M. Dickinson was engaged as counsel, and the case was taken to the Federal Court last November on a writ of habeas corpus, the contention being that the conviction was contrary to the bill of rights of Tennessee and the Constitution of the United States, and that the defendant was held prisoner by the sheriff without due process of law. The application was argued several months ago, and Judge Hammond has had it under advisement until recently, when his decision was given in which the defendant was remanded back to the custody of the sheriff to pay the fine or serve the time according to the sentence. This decision holds that malice, religious or otherwise, may dictate a prosecution, but if the law has been violated this fact does not shield the law-breaker. Neither do the courts require that there shall be some moral obloquy to support a given law before enforcing it, and it is not necessary to maintain that to violate the Sunday observance customs shall be of itself immoral to make it criminal in the eyes of the law.
Suggestive, indeed, are the lessons of this great judicial crime against liberty, justice, and God. In the first place it illustrates the fact which must long since have become apparent to thinking men that the guarantee of the Constitution of the United States, which, more than aught else, has made this Republic the flower of all preceding nations, is yearly becoming less and less regarded by the small men and narrow minds who interpret law and who, instead of showing how unconstitutional any law is which violates the great charter of right, yield to the present craze for Governmental Paternalism, paying no more heed to our Constitution than if it was the ukase of a Czar. In numerous instances during the past decade has this solemn fact been emphasized, until it is evident that with the reaction toward Paternalism and centralization has come the old time spirit of intolerance and moral obloquy on the part of the governing powers which has been one of the chief curses of the ages, entailing indescribable misery on the noblest and best, and holding in subjection the vanguard of progress, which always has been and always will be the minority, regarded by the majority as dangerous innovators or disseminators of false theories and doctrines. In my article on Socialism I noted the case of Mr. King, observing that:—