The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-04-13
SUNDAY LAWS TEND TO
 HEDGE IN POOR DEVIL. Christian Spirit Shy at Hearing on
 Fisher Bill.

(Hartford Letter in 'Shore Line
 Times.D
 The main contention this session has been over a bill prepared by May or w C. Fisher of Middletown which would change the present law so as to permit any sport that will not dis turb the quiet or religious worship of the day and which prohibits any bus mess not absolutely necessary to the general comfort and convenience of the public It looks harmless enough but it could not have met much more opposition had it proposed to close or burn every church in Connecticut and the principal thought engendered by the hearing is that good, Christian people lose their tempers as quickly and as thoroughly as ordinary un- regenerates. It may be said, with out contra diction. that the objection most urged was that it would permit professional baseball on Sunday and that that would be something like legalizing murder or arson. The writ CT, who never attended a professional game of baseball and never expects to nor wants to, sat through the hearing with metdphorically, his ear to the ground waiting to hear some denun- citation of Sunday golf and automobil- ing but not a whisper was heard re- garding those wickednesses though that low-browed crime, baseball, was
 
 Nor was that all, for, when a. com mittee desiring to get information asked first one minister and then arr- other, if he approved of law which permits a drug store to sell baseball bats and razor strops on Sunday, and forbidS another store from selling ice cream or fruit on the same day, the committee was Immediately stamped as prejudiced and in favor of general reign of wickedness.
 If only Christian people would ap- proach this subject of Sunday legis- lation in Christian spirit it's solution would be easy but they do not h. stead they show a bit of the same . spirit that Christian people showed 400 years ago when they said to here tics-'Because you disagree with us in certain matters of belief we find it necessary to remark that day after tomorrow, we purpose to tie you to a large and husky post in the public square and burn you to death to the glory of God because we have -he power to do so.' It is the same spir- it which prompted our forefathers in New England to say, a matter of 200 years ago to certain others-"Because you believe in immersion and we do not we purpose to tie you to the whipping post day after tomorrow and lift certain strips of hide off your back because we have the power to do so and because the treatmen ought to make you @ better Chris tian." Is there, really, such a great deal of difference between the spir- 1t shown in the burning of heretics and the logging of Baptists and Qua kers and the act of the Danbury au- thorities in fning a Syrian girl $10 and costs because she sold 5 cents worth of peanuts on Sunday? Every thinking man who will read the Sun day law as it now appears in the General Statutes will realize that it exists because it is violated with inn punity and every Christian man who takes the trouble to inquire into the history of the prosecutions brought under its provisions will find, as the writer has to his shame and sorrow, 1 that most of them were based upon hatred and malice rather than upon an honest desire to improve the mor-