Untitled article | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · March 10, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 10

Sunday at the World's Fair.

PETITIONS are going up to Washington from all parts of the country asking Congress to vote no aid to the World's Fair at Chicago unless it is coupled with the restrictive proviso that it shall close up on Sundays. Tennesseans, whose State absolutely refused to contribute a solitary cent to this glorious exhibit of the world, gallantly join the army of petitioners. Church and State in this country—religion and politics—have never been permitted to clash by governmental interference. At this late day Congress can not afford to legislate upon conflicting religious matters, and this attempt to interfere with the municipal regulations of Chicago will fall to the ground, after the right of petition has been received with all due courtesy. The best and brightest works of the accumulated centuries of the world will be on exhibition at this Columbian Fair, and we can not find it in our heart to exclude those whose only chance will be on Sunday. Certainly, we all should remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy—but, by legislation, whose Sabbath? An interesting article in the current Century tells us that in New York City alone, there are two hundred and fifty thousand Jews, whose Sabbath begins on Friday. These American citizens own real estate there valued at $200,000,000, while they have invested in business $207,388,000 more, and this in New York alone. Just think of the others scattered over the United States! Yet, they are not asking that the exhibit be closed on their Sabbath, which they very devoutly believe is the Sabbath of the Bible. It will not do to sneer at these citizens as “foreigners,” for a large proportion of them are native and to the manner born.

Again, there is another religious sect in our country, coming up to the full standard of good citizenship, with all that this phrase implies. They own printing offices and are publishing papers, books, and magazines advocating their sincere conviction that Saturday is the orthodox Sabbath. Their churches and school-houses are beginning to dot free America, and are now heard from through an educated ministry and diplomated professors. These be native born American citizens, and yet you do not hear of the Seventh-day Adventists petitioning Congress to close the World's Fair against the world on their Sabbath. Indeed, this is a great, big world. Narrow gauge roads were all years ago widened into the standard broad gauge, and now, if a person expects to reach his destination in good shape and on time, he must travel on the broad gauge. It’s so in religion, politics, and business. Then, there are in this country legions of quite respectable people, representing largely the wealth, refinement, enterprise, and morality of their various localities, though they belong to no church and may doubt the chronology that fixes the Sabbath of the Bible on Sunday. Are they or their views entitled to no respect or consideration by these worthy petitioners? But, we speak more especially in behalf of that vast and meritorious body of bread-winners to whom Sunday is their only day of rest, devotion and recreation with wife and children. The arts and sciences—the concentrated beauty and glory of all civilized countries—will be to them as nothing if they are excluded on Sunday from this, the grandest and most magnificent exhibit of civilization ever dreamed of by man and carried to perfection by his genius and liberality. It is grand enough for the rich and well-to-do—those who can make any day of the week a season of rest, recreation, and devotion—to join those petitioners who would restrain their less fortunate countrymen from their God-given rights. But to the workingman, to whom the loss of a day represents from one to five dollars, it means utter exclusion for himself and family. In and around Chicago there are hundreds of thousands of respectable, intelligent, clerks and mechanics idle on Sunday. Many of these would, if they could, take their little ones and wives to visit the museums of art and natural history at the World's Fair—the agricultural and mechanical halls, botanical gardens, etc. But the portals of this great institution of education, enjoyment, and recreation, are sought to be barred on the only day when the workers could make use of the opportunities afforded. Plenty of side doors into questionable resorts will be open. But the wide halls in which the wonders of the floral and animal world are displayed—the spacious galleries that hold treasures of art that would linger as a dream of delight in the thoughts of the tired woman whose monotonous life is passed within the narrow limits of the brick walls of a cheap tenement—are now urged to be closed. Public opinion should not allow a privileged class to grow up to curtail the scant privileges of the intelligent, respectable poor. God bless the triune Sabbath of the poor man!—rest, devotion, and recreation. The civil Sabbath of free America has nothing to gain by pushing it to the extreme of personal oppression. —State Gazette, Dyersburg, Tennessee.