Proceedings of the Anti-Sabbath Convention, Held in the Melodeon, March 23d and 24th (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: kgal to compel us, must do so for seven days. Think of us, with our aching heads, our weary hands, our eyes, with every nerve pierced with a needle's point, our starving children, our tasks harder than the slave's in the rice-fields, and remember that the Law is a terror to evil-doers. The good need no law, it is not for them. Leave them the only sign that man, yes and woman, have souls as well as bodies. Leave us the pause when the wheels of labor stop, or we must die. Do not blot out the promises of a better future. A Seampstress. With the wish and aspiration of this letter for sacred rest, I have full sympathy; but I see no such consequences to result from the abolition of the Sunday law, as the writer sees. I see that law to exist as a proposition of false theology and bigoted religion, which comes down upon our souls with the might of power, and says, regard this day as holy, and observe it as a holy day in distinction from other days, or I will punish you as a criminal. I say, then, let the law be struck from the statute book, so far as it compels a religious and theological rest. Then, if that be desirable, let there be a law for the protection of labor, that capital may not work up human bodies into profits and dividends, on the same ground as now the law protects children in factories against work more than ten hours in the day, and requires that they shall have schooling at least three months in a year. Let the law of rest from labor stand upon its true foundation. Let it establish rest-days for the sake of man, and not for the sake of theology and dogmatic religion. It seems to me there is no such danger in the result of our wishes, as is anticipated in this letter. I believe those who come to this convention, are the friends of all working souls and bodies; and t...