Your ShelfYour Projects

Untitled article

8%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · June 12, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 24

Read the full edition

Thrilled the Audience.

At the fiftieth anniversary of the Philadelphia Sunday Association, Mr. John Wanamaker had quite an important place. He made a speech in behalf of Sunday laws, in which he employed the following allegory, which the Pearl of Days says “thrilled the vast audience:” —
Just this is on my heart. I have an old friend born in another country years ago. He lived in a garden more beautiful than any other in all the world, where there were no cities and no railroads. I’d like my friend to speak to you. He arrived here last night. Listen to what he says:
“Friend, you are very old?”
“Yes, I have lived a great many years and I have traveled a great deal, first in Palestine, then in Europe, and finally to this country in the Mayflower with the Puritans. I have seen strange things and many changes. I’ve been to India and to Africa and I go among the Indians of America.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Day.”
“Large family?”
“No, only seven of us, and I am the oldest. A great many like me best because I am a friend of the poor. I stop the factories and light up the homes.”
“Do they treat you well?”
“The boys laugh at me sometimes, and some men sneer at me. Some call me Sunday and others the Sabbath, but the devout people call me Lord’s Day. I used to be the last in the family, but after the resurrection of Christ they put me first. I want to go all over, not merely to hospitals, but to all people and make them and their homes brighter.”
“Dear old friend, we love you, and we would even kiss your feet. We hope that you may continue to go about the world and fill every land with joy and blessings in the name of Him who sent you.”
That is rather a queer sort of personage indeed! First, he was the youngest in the family, and continued to be so for about four thousand years; then, all of a sudden by virtue of the resurrection of Christ, he became the oldest in the family: and all this without the loss of a single member of the family! Accordingly he has been the oldest now for about eighteen hundred and sixty years. That the resurrection of the Saviour should cause the youngest member of a family to become the oldest while they all remain alive is an “allegory” indeed, or something worse. No wonder the vast audience was thrilled by the relating of such a phenomenon! But when people can be thrilled with such namby-pamby balderdash as that they must be exceedingly impressible.