Untitled article

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

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 30

THE San Francisco Examiner gives a column and a half to short interviews with clergymen of the city on the subject of the Sunday closing of the Fair. One declared that “of course the clergy is a unit on this proposition;” and so they would have been but for the sensible utterances of Rev. C. I. Miel, editor of the Pacific Churchman, who said:—

“The question, after all, is one of Sunday observance. It is well to remember that Sunday in the United States has a civil as well as a religious character. A large class of our citizens observe the day solely from a religious standpoint. Holding rigidly to the letter of the fourth commandment, they apply every jot and tittle of it to the Christian Sunday. Their observance of Sunday is strictly and solely ecclesiastical. They have a perfect right to hold their opinions, and to practice them. They have, however, no moral right to compel others who do not share those opinions to act as if they did. Another and a larger class of citizens do not mark their Sundays by any religious observance; they regard and observe Sunday simply as a civil holiday. They, like the former class, have perfect right to do so, provided their observance is within the law. They have, however, no moral right to compel the former to close their churches and spend their Sunday as a civil holiday. But there is a third, and by far, the largest class of citizens, who observe Sunday in both characters, religious and civil, as a holy day and a holiday. They believe that the day is one of recreation of soul and body. They re-create the soul by public observance of prescribed religious duties. They re-create the body in whatever decent, healthful, agreeable way they may choose. They, like the others, have a perfect right to do so. They, like the others, have no moral right to enforce their practices upon those who differ with them. This is a free country, and in nothing more free than this liberty of religious opinion and practice. To open the World’s Fair on Sunday is not to compel those who do not believe in Sunday opening to enter its gates and perambulate its grounds. But to close the World’s Fair on Sunday is, in no slight sense, to compel an observance of the day which a majority of our citizens do not believe in. As no one is under compulsion to go to the Fair on Sunday, so, also, no one should be under compulsion not to go. The question of attendance or non-attendance is purely a question of individual conscience. As to the question of opening or closing, I do not believe in denying to two large classes of people the privilege of attending the Fair on Sunday, because a minority, however respectable and well intentioned, desires the gates closed on that day. Beyond this there remains the fact that to many Sunday is the only day when they can attend the Fair without a loss in wages, which they can ill afford, or not afford at all. I am now, as I have been from the first, in favor of opening the Fair on Sundays.”