Note 79 — Chapter IV · RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AMONG THE PEOPLE.

“Public institutions are still deeply impregnated with Christianity. Congress, the State legislatures, the navy, the army, the prisons, are all supplied with chaplains; the Bible is still read in a large number of schools. The invocation of God is generally obligatory in an oath in a court of law, and even in an oath of office. In Pennsylvania the Constitution requires that every public employee shall believe in God, and in a future state of reward and punishments. The Constitution of Maryland awards liberty of conscience to deists only. The laws against blasphemy have never been formally abrogated. In certain States, more or less stringent Sunday laws are enforced. In 1880 a court declined to recognize, even as a moral obligation, a debt contracted on Sunday, and a traveller, injured in a railway accident, was refused damages on the ground that he was travelling on the Lord’s Day. And, finally, church property and funds are in a considerable degree exempt from taxation.” (M. Goblet d’Alviella, Évolution religieuse, p. 233.)

Similarly, in Switzerland, in the month of February, 1886, the criminal court of Glaris, the chief place in a canton of 7000 inhabitants, at 130 kilometers from Bern, rendered a singular judgment. A mason named Jacques Schiesser, who was obliged to work in water of an excessively low temperature, shivering with cold, his hands blue, made a movement of impatience at the cold, and uttered irreverential words toward God. A procès-verbal was made out against him. He appeared before the judges, who condemned him for blasphemy to two days’ imprisonment. It is surprising to see Switzerland carried, actually by Protestantism, back to the Middle Ages.