The Monticellonian., 1895-09-27

the Lords vineyard? The homo geniety of Catholic morality can't withstand local diversities of pub- lie sentiment, but it's inability to do so has never resulted in the c'eaving in twaIn of the Catholic Church by sectional line across continent as was the sad luck of the Presbyterian Church between three and four decades ago, when Presbyterian preachers at the South were advocating the re opening of the African slave trade, while those of the North were urg ing their congregations to send ri- fles to Kansas with which to shoot their slave-holding brethren who had gone thither with their "man servants and maid servants" de- string to worship God according to the dictates of their own con. sciences.
 It is astonishing that Judge Mc- Cain should criticise his Catholic brother for the cause he does, hen Tn the very act of doing so, he over and over acknowledges that he himself is always and alto gether ready to let expedience take precedence of his highest con captions of right.
 It would be interesting to ascer- tain whether man of the Judges fine acumen really believes that there is passable plansbility, much less any logical force in the balderdash behind which he seek IS to am bush the fact that our Sun day laws arc for purely religious purposes, of which the following Is d sample:
 "Of course, the civil authorities have nothing to do with how the citizen observes the Sabbath, whether he frowns or frolics on that day, so long ss he forbears to labor and behaves so as not to disturb others. D
 But why is there any more harm in laboring on the first day of the week than on the second or sixth, except that certain religionists think and have induced the Legis- lature to enact that it is wrong? And why (except for the same reason) is 1t any more proper or useful to abstain from labor every seventh day than every third, fifth, ninth or eleventh day2
 Or suppose it were proven be- yond cavil that it is just as unhy. gienic to fail to rest on the Sab. bath of modern Christianity (for It is wefl-known that Sunday was not the Christian Sabbath till well along in the Fourth Century)- just as unhygienic, l say, to fail to rest during the first day of the week as it is to fail to sleep seven or eight hours out of every twenty tour-why is there any more need of the Grand Jury and police com polling people to rest on Sunday than for compelling them to go to bed atnight? The Judge would graciousl y allow us to frolic on the Sabt ath if it didn't disturb others. But why except on religious grounds, should "others" be pro- tected from disturbance during one particular day of the week any more than during the other six?
 If we live lna land of "equal rights for all and special privileges for none," why should not an au- dience at an agnostic lecture on Monday have the same protection from disturbance that a Christian congregation has on Sunday
 Is it becauseit 'disturbs others" that the law of Arkansas inhibits a man from fishing even in his own pond or engaging in game of whist with the members of his own family in the privacy of his own parlor on the first day of the week? Surely if to prevent the dis turbanee of others had been the object of our Sunday statutes, it is hardly conceivable that they would have inhibited Sabbatarian euchre and left the sextons to clang their church bells and the salvation armies to howl and drum as loud and long ns ever they please, regardless of how many brain fever invalids may be relaps- ed or killed thereby.
 The truth and trouble is that people of either Judge MeCain's or Mir. Caliaghan's religious pre-