November 22, 1894
WHEN Robert R. Whaley, the Seventh-day Adventist now serving a term of ninety days in the county jail at Centreville, Md., for hoeing in his garden on Sunday, was asked at his trial by Judge Robinson whether he would plead “guilty” or “not guilty,” he replied that he would plead “not guilty” to that part of the warrant charging “Sabbath breaking,” as he had not worked on the Sabbath.
THE judge then asked him if he had worked on Sunday, the first day of the week.
Mr. Whaley answered that he had. The judge then replied: “In this State they are the same. The Sabbath and Sunday are the same.”
In the State of Maryland there is a contention between sects that profess the Christian faith as to which day, the first or the seventh, is commanded of God to be observed as the Sabbath. Judge Robinson has adjudged the right of the State of Maryland to manifest a preference for those holding that Sunday, the first day of the week, is the Sabbath, and to attempt to force those who believe that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord” to submit to laws “made in deference” to the Sunday-Sabbath sentiment, and observe the first-day.
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison indorsed and presented petitions to the Virginia legislature, signed by Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers, calling for separation of Church and State in the colony.
THE following is a quotation from the petition:—
It is … impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among various sects that profess the Christian faith, without erecting a claim to infallibility, which would lead us back to Rome.—Baird’s “Religion in America,” Book 5, chap. 3, par. 11.
And now according to the invincible logic of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, the Virginia Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers of 1776, Judge Robinson and the State of Maryland in deciding that Sunday is the Sabbath, have erected a claim to infallibility which is leading back to Rome. [361]