New York Supreme Court (1861) Lindenmuller v. The People, 33 Barbour Reports, 548, 561:
<The decision of the New York Supreme Court, written by Justice William F. Allen, was adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1877 and cited by Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer in his 1905 lecture, "The United States a Christian Nation".)
The plaintiff wanted to restrain New York City police from interfering with theatrical performances on Sunday, claiming that "the Bible, and religion with all its ordinances, including the Sabbath, are as effectually abolished by the Constitution as they were in France during the Revolution, and so effectually abolished that duties may not be enforced as duties to the State because they have been heretofore associated with acts of religious worship or connected with religious duties."
New York's Supreme Court wrote:
"It would be strange that a people, Christian in doctrine and worship, many of whom or whose forefathers had sought these shores for the privilege of worshipping God in simplicity and purity of faith, and who regarded religion as the basis of their civil liberty and the foundation of their rights, should, in their zeal to secure to all the freedom of conscience which they valued so highly, solemnly repudiate and put beyond the pale of the law the religion which was as dear to them as life and dethrone the God, who, they openly and avowedly profess to believe, had been their protector and guide as a people.
Christianity...is in fact, and ever has been, the religion of the people. This fact is everywhere prominent in all our civil and political history, and has been, from the first, recognized and acted upon by the people, as well as by constitutional conventions, by legislatures and by courts of justice."
The Court decided that every act done maliciously tending to bring religion into contempt, may be punished at common law, and the Christian Sabbath, as one of the institutions of religion, may be protected from desecration by such laws as the Legislature in their wisdom may deem necessary to secure. The Court decision firmly established the proposition that, as a civil and political institution, the establishment and regulation of a Sabbath are within the just powers of civil government.> 1861NY001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1861NY001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). New York Supreme Court, 1861, Lindenmuller v. The People, 33 Barbour Reports, 548, 561.