p. 1, para. 1 | Untitled article

Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 25, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 33

This idea of concrete gain, as a premium upon doing right, seems to raise many peculiar questions. It is presented with much fervor in an editorial article of the Mail and Express, of August 6, under the title, “The Sabbath Triumphant,” in which it is said of the act of Congress closing the World’s Fair on Sunday:—

It gives a premium of $2,500,000 on doing right. It proves in a concrete way that “godliness hath great gain.” This appropriation would not have been made except for the Christian generosity of the people who have demanded the observance of the Sabbath by the World’s Fair people, for they labored first in many national, State and county religious bodies throughout the country to form the sentiment in favor of making the grant; and secondly, in many of the State legislatures; and thirdly, in Congress itself. No class of people are equally determined as the Christians to make the Fair a glory to the country, as it is now sure to be.

At the head of the editorial column, in which is the article containing this paragraph, there stands a text of scripture, in clear and conspicuous type, taken from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the sixteenth verse:—

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and He entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.

Is this text intended to emphasize the inconsistency of the editorial utterances which follow, with the custom and teachings of Christ who, in us, is alone our hope of godliness? If that were its intent it could not have been more aptly chosen. The one was the act of Him who was himself incarnate godliness, in observance of that day which he had himself set to be the sign of the mystery of godliness; while the other is an exultation over the legislative success of that other day which is the seal of the mystery of iniquity.