Sunday Temperance by A. Delos Westcott

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 41.

Sunday Temperance.

By A. Delos Westcott

In the Christian Statesman of July 4, Secretary J. M. Foster, of the National Reform Association, reveals his temperance principles in the following language:—

“But why allow base-ball, the Sunday newspaper, and the Sunday train, on Sabbath? These have no more right to do business involving common labor on Sabbath than the licensed saloon.”

What kind of a man is he who will place base-ball, newspapers, and railroad trains on the same level with the licensed liquor saloon? Would you call him a temperance man? We never heard any man talk such stuff as that unless he was connected with the whisky business himself. As well might base-ball, newspapers, and trains be classed with murder, horse-thieving, or adultery.

The above is a fair sample of the moral perception of the men who are working to make this a “Christian government.” This is the kind of Christian morality which they desire this nation to incorporate into its laws, as the will of the Almighty. And thousands of people in this country are doing all in their power to help them to succeed.

This statement by Secretary Foster shows, what has often been shown in the SENTINEL, namely, that Sunday laws are not passed in the interests of temperance. It shows that they wish to shut up the saloon on Sunday, not because it is bad in itself, but for the same reason that they wish to prohibit the playing of base-ball, the circulating of newspapers, and the running of trains, viz., because they involve “common labor.”

The only thing that makes the saloon bad on Sunday is the fact that it involves “common labor.” And, as common labor is all right on the other days of the week, it follows that the saloon must be all right too, according to their reasoning. If these people were statesmen, to say nothing of being temperance men, they would make crime to consist, not in the time, but in the character, of the act. As it is, they show that they know nothing either of Christianity or of statesmanship. A. DELOS WESTCOTT.