The Sunday Newspapers Again.
In a recent speech at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, on the “Sabbath Question,” Col. Elliott F. Shepard charged that the Christian people are responsible for the Sunday papers. In proof of his assertion, he stated that the proprietor and editor of a leading daily in New York City, whom he reproaches for issuing a Sunday paper, justifies himself by saying he did not care to set himself “up as more holy than his best Christian neighbors.” This editor was himself a church-going man, but finding that church-members wanted the paper on Sunday, and that by supplying it he could increase his profits about $20,000 a year, he yielded to the demand; so there was another great daily added to those which were printing a Sunday edition. From this showing, it may be necessary to have a law prohibiting the publication of Sunday papers; but we cannot fail to see the parallel between this and the demand made in the fourth century for laws to prevent the Christian people from attending theaters and shows instead of going to church on Sunday. But we presume if people will not do their duty of their own accord, they will have to be coerced, at least this seems to be the view of the matter taken by National Reformers.