Partial Report of Hearing on Johnston Sunday Bill, S. 404

Do Sunday Laws Preserve a Nation?

It is claimed that we must have this law to save the nation, to preserve the gentlemen of the Committee, one single fact annihilates that whole theory: If Sunday legislation were for the salvation of the state or the preservation of the nation, the Roman empire should be standing to-day intact; for no people, no nation, ever had more Sunday legislation, or more stringent Sunday laws outside of New England in the truest “blue” Puritan days and laws. Therefore when Rome had the most Sunday legislation ever in the world, and the most stringent and the most thoroughly enforced Sunday legislation, if there be any virtue at all Rome ought to be standing to-day. But all that Sunday legislation only helped the more to sink the Roman state forever; and so it is ever with this sort of legislation. “There is no relish of salvation in it.” RJSB 14.4