AND now it is in Montana that the dragon of religious persecution rears one of his hydra heads. August 3, in Butte, a Hebrew was arrested for selling goods without a license, and being too poor to pay his fine, was put into the chain-gang to work it out. Refusing to work on the Sabbath (Saturday), he was put into a dungeon, into which water was pumped so that he could not sit down. Two Seventh-day Adventists called on the mayor to learn the reasons for such treatment, and were told that it did not matter whether a man kept the seventh day or not, if he was in the chain-gang and refused to work on Saturday, he would have to take the consequences. This only shows very clearly that religious intolerance in this country is not sectional, and will be just as bad in those parts supposed to be possessed of a liberal spirit, as in any others.
ACCORDING to recent advices, Turkish atrocities still continue in Armenia. The purpose of this modern persecution is thus stated by a correspondent of the New York World:—
Ask yourselves if the Christian world is to sit idly by and witness this crusade of persecution which will not end until 2,000,000 Armenian Christians have been wiped out—wiped out because they will not abandon Christianity and worship in the Moslem mosques of the Turks.
It is impossible to describe the outrages committed by the Kurds and Turkish soldiers. To robbery, arson, torture and murder in the most fiendish forms is added still more revolting crimes against girls and women. Not one is safe, and but few have escaped insult and violence at the hands of Turkish hirelings.
The Armenian persecution is due to the same spirit of bigotry and intolerance that in the Dark Ages manifested itself in the horrors of the Inquisition and the Albigensean and Waldensean crusades; and it is the same spirit that is to-day manifesting itself in the persecution of Sabbatarians by means of Sunday statutes. The Armenians are slaughtered because they will not “worship in the Moslem mosques of the Turks.” The seventh-day Christians of the world are fined, imprisoned, and driven in chain-gangs because they will not honor the false sabbath of their “Protestant” neighbors. The difference between persecuting to the death and persecuting to the chain-gang, is in degree only; the principle is the same.