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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 4, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 30

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NATIONAL RELIGIOUS LIBERTY ASSOCIATION.

THE Park Board has signified its intention to open the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan Square, this city, on Sundays.
THE Lake Michigan Chautauqua Assembly publishes a Sunday edition of its Chautauquan, and is meeting with the displeasure of the religious press accordingly.
THE New York Herald says: “If Congress wishes to aid the Fair and maintain its self respect it must blot out the obnoxious proviso, and make the $5,000,000 appropriation an unconditional offering.”
THE Brooklyn Citizen says the Sunday-closing provision in the World's Fair appropriation is an insult to the intelligence of the public. It might have added, as well, that congressmen have also stultified their own intelligence.
THE International Sunday Association has recently held a general gathering at Stuttgart, Germany. They have there a contest between themselves as to the liberal Lutheran idea of Sunday-keeping, and the Puritan strict observance.
THE New York Herald points out the fact that while the Sunday closing of the World's Fair will permit the attaches of the Fair to go to church it will compel the policemen to be on duty who might go to church if the Fair were open. What are the Sunday closers going to do about the policemen?
THE Brooklyn Eagle very properly thinks that, “It does not fall within the function of Congress to make Sabbatarian ordinances for the government of any State, or for any part of the community comprising the State. If the Managers of the Exposition can consistently call on Congress for the desired aid, they are entitled to have it, without submitting to conditions which involve the religious or conscientious scruples of anybody.”
THE Rochester Advertiser speaks, although not the whole truth, yet nothing but the truth, when it declares that, “The laws of the State of Illinois are the supreme authority in Chicago with regard to Sunday observance, inside as well as outside the Fair grounds, and the Managers of the Fair, under those laws, are the persons who alone have, as they should have, power of discretionary action.” The whole truth is that neither the United States, nor the State of Illinois, nor the World's Fair Managers, nor any other human authority, can rightfully have any control over the religious observance of Sunday, or any other day.
THE political bearing of this Sunday question in Congress, is very clearly shown in the correspondence of the Chicago Tribune, when it said: “It is further urged on the leaders of the House that in the present political conditions, with the German vote drifting away from the Republicans in Illinois and the Northwest, it will be the best party policy for the Democrats to defeat Sunday closing. The reply is the profane one that Congress isn't run for the benefit of Illinois Democrats, and that members from other sections are not going to sacrifice their chances of re-election for the sake of somebody in the West.”
That is it, the religio-political boycott has got in its work.
THE speeches of senators and congressmen in favor of legislation for Sunday closing of the Fair, all go to show that the American Sabbath Union may now drop its theory of a civil Sabbath as a veil for which they have no longer any use. Senator Hawley gave them all their cue when he said of Sunday observance and the laws of the different States for its enforcement, “Everybody knows the foundation. It is founded in religious belief.”
Has Senator Hawley, and those who supported the Sunday-closing proviso in the Senate and House, ever heard of the First Amendment to the Constitution?
AN editorial item in the Age, of Boulder, Mont., expresses, in words which can not be misunderstood, a clear understanding of the import of the action of Congress in reference to Sunday at the World's Fair. The Age says:—
The Senate of the United States has passed a World's Fair appropriation bill, but attached to it a proviso that the Fair must be closed on Sundays. This is a practical recognition of a State Church, and shows how insidiously but how surely the enemies of the liberties of man are gaining control of a Government whose founders declared that there should be no union of Church and State, their experience as well as their study of history having taught them that where Church and State were combined, the Church became the practical ruler, and a most cruel and despotic one at that. The aphorism that “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” should be kept constantly in mind by the American people if they would preserve their liberties.
This action of Congress, together with late judicial decisions, make it already too late for anything more than protest. The legal authority of religious dogma in civil affairs is now fully recognized. All who do not uphold this evil thing should protest, as does the Age.
THE New York Commercial Advertiser said of the action of the Senate in passing the Sunday-closing proviso:—
There was something decidedly cheap and small in the action taken by the Senate yesterday. Receivers of presents have the benefit of an old and wise saw for their guidance. One must not look a gift horse in the mouth. But if it be bad form to scrutinize and weigh a gift under the very eye of the giver, it is not less so to fix limitations upon the uses to which a gift may be put. Even a tramp would question the delicacy of a hint not to expend for drink a piece of silver given to pay for a night's lodging, but the people of the great city of Chicago have been treated in just this shabby fashion by the Senate of the United States. Millions are voted to them. But this munificence is handicapped with the condition that the people of Chicago are not to be trusted to make a seemly use of it. We are willing to help you with your Fair, the Senate says in substance, but we have no intention of giving you a chance to be wicked. You Chicago people and the stranger within your gates should go to church Sunday, and go nowhere else. If you are unwilling to do so, at any rate, you shall not spend the time that good people should spend in listening to sermons in wandering through exhibition halls surveying the triumphs of man in art, science, manufactures. You are not very good, we fear, but the Senate of the United States will not loan your Fair a cent unless you shut it up Sunday.
We do not think it is going too far to say that this attitude of the Senate is in contravention of the spirit, at least, of the Constitution. It can not be denied that it constitutes an intermeddling on the part of the State with matters religious. Under the ægis of that instrument the Jew, for instance, has every right of conscience possessed by the Christian. Had the Chicago management decided of its own volition to close the doors of the Exposition Sunday and shut out the people, their course would have been regrettable because of its narrowness, its intolerance, and especially because of its discourtesy to the foreign visitors, who during their sojourn amongst us will be, in some sort, the guests of the Nation.
But it is a far more serious matter when the Senate of the United States says to Jews, Seventh-day Baptists, Adventists, and all that innumerable host of people of other denominations or no denomination who have their own views on the Sabbatarian question, that they shall, whether they will or no, bow their wills to those of an arrogant minority of their fellow citizens and be compelled to observe Sunday as a Puritan Sabbath. Such a decree, even if made by a majority, would be tyranny. But as the ukase of a minority, it is simply intolerable.
But let the Senate be comforted. Their inopportune piety will extort a hymn of praise from a large and influential body of the Chicago people. Not all of them will grumble. Our Upper House has won the unanimous applause and heartfelt gratitude of every liquor dealer in the city. It isno secret that every rum seller in Chicago has been holding his breath while this question remained undecided and pulling all available wires to bring about so desirable a consummation. They at any rate are happy, for they now know that all day long throughout every Sunday during the holding of the Fair, their palaces will be crowded by citizens and strangers alike, pouring into their coffers an unbroken stream of silver, of gold, and of greenbacks—money that was designed to swell the receipts of the Fair, but which senatorial piety diverted into a very different channel.
But what a queer chorus of praise will salute the ears of our Solons—a chorus in which the grateful voices of Sabbatarians will mingle with the swelling paeans of triumphant dispensers of Bourbon and of rye—with a grim chuckle, obligato, of Mephistopheles, to give color to the score!
These are truthful words, and especially applicable now that the House has followed in the footsteps of the Senate, and Congress has made for the Nation this hypocritical profession of religion.