Untitled article | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 8, 1894

The Cloven Hoof of the “Sabbath” Satan.

[The following article from the Truth Seeker is recommended to the careful consideration of the Boston Investigator and of Dr. Westbrook, late president of the American Secular Union. The “liberals” of the country are evidently getting their eyes open to the sophistry of the “civil Sabbath” plea. In this article the Truth Seeker errs only in applying the name “Christian” to things essentially antichristian. There are, properly speaking, no “Christian persecutors;” and Sunday, instead of being Christian, is essentially pagan and papal.]

THOSE who have kept themselves informed on the Sunday observance question know that nearly all the leaders in the movement are very restive when it is charged that they wish to compel the people to observe Sunday as a holy day. They make it their business to declaim against the union of Church and State and they are sharp enough to see that they will lay themselves open to the accusation of favoring such union if they advocate Sunday laws in the name of religion. They have invented several specious catchwords with which to deceive such of the people as might dangerously antagonize them should they frankly avow their purpose to make Christianity the State religion. They talk glibly and delusively of a “civil” Sabbath which shall be enforced in order to allow everybody (except preachers, church organists, sextons, ushers, choirs, et al.) to “rest” on Sunday, and they vary this siren’s song with considerable illogical and nauseating talk about the “morality” of Sunday reverence. But this pious pretense cannot be kept up all the time; not all the Sunday worshipers can be induced to talk discreetly—some will persist in making “unguarded statements” and thereby getting the whole Sabbatarian happy family into hot water. The latest to do this are some Boston clergymen, who have assembled themselves together and adopted these resolutions:—

We, the Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist ministers of Boston and vicinity, assembled in our Monday meeting, October 2, 1893, cordially unite with the Massachusetts Sunday Protective League in the following expression:— In view of the deplorable increase in the issue of Sunday newspapers in Boston, we are constrained to renew our earnest protest against the Sunday newspaper, and our strong condemnation of it, as one of the chief agencies of evil in hindering our work.

Because it preoccupies the minds of its readers on the Lord’s day with secular things, from the contemplation of which the higher needs of human nature and the beneficent divine requirement prompt man then to rest;

Because it thus beguiles its readers to neglect and exclude from their thought those religious considerations on which all right character depends;

Because it thus indisposes its readers for public worship in the house of God, disqualifies them for it, and detains them from it to a degree that is rapidly changing the habits of large sections of our population, far and near;

Because in thus becoming a main instrument in breaking down the habit of public worship in our land it weakens the religious restraints which are indispensable to the stability of society, and thus becomes a foe to good order and a menace to our civilization.

We look with the deepest sorrow upon the unscrupulous and unpatriotic greed, and the inhumanity exhibited in the publication, distribution, and sale of the Sunday newspaper, trespassing upon the civic rest day of large numbers of railroad employés, newsdealers, and especially youthful carriers; and in view of the hearing now in progress before the railroad commissioners of this State in regard to special Sunday newspaper trains, we respectfully represent to that honorable board that it seems to us against public policy to grant special favor to any one line of business on Sunday.

Now, here are five reasons why these clergymen are opposed to the Sunday newspaper. Four of these reasons relate entirely to the religious aspects of the matter and only one bears upon the “rest” question. Then which is of the most importance in the eyes of the clergymen, and, consequently, which will most influence their actions in the attempt to secure the suppression by law of these papers, the religious or the secular relations of the problem? Is it not perfectly plain that the Sunday law advocates are working in the interest of religion, that they want to enforce the observance of Sunday because such observance will, in their opinion, advance the cause of religion, and that their talk about securing a day of “rest” for helpless workingmen is the sheerest humbuggery? No foe of the Sunday tyranny could have more clearly and succinctly stated the case for the opponents of Sunday laws than have these ministers in the foregoing resolutions, especially in the third and fourth. They are opposed to the Sunday paper, as they are to Sunday amusements and Sunday work, primarily and chiefly because such publications, recreations, and labor interfere with their work on their particular work-day. All these secular agencies help to curtail their influence and authority in the community and lessen their means of livelihood.

In the last resolution an “anchor is cast to windward;” a saving clause in regard to the “civil rest day of large numbers of railroad employés, newsdealers, and especially youthful carriers,” is introduced, but it is evidently very much of an afterthought, a secondary consideration which it was necessary to recognize somewhere in order to draw, if possible, some support from the so-called laboring classes. But labor is benefited, not injured, by the Sunday paper. There are always more men than there are places, and there can be no doubt that where superstition does not dominate, a sufficient number can be found who will gladly do this Sunday work, thus giving the “week-day” employés a chance to rest. As for the “youthful carriers,” meaning, without doubt, the newsboys, the Sunday paper is an immense assistance to them. Suppose that a daily journal issues one hundred thousand copies of its Sunday edition, which sells for five cents per copy, and that the newsboys get one and one-half cents of each five paid by the reader. This gives the boys fifteen hundred dollars in wages each Sunday for the one paper of one hundred thousand circulation. Then a good portion of the remaining three and a half cents finds its way into the workingmen’s pockets, being distributed in the composing room, stereotyping room, press room, paper mill, ink manufactory, and various other places. Of course much of this, in the absence of the Sunday paper, would have been drawn into the coffers of the church, but we cannot afford to weep with the ministers because of this diversion. . . . The daily newspaper proprietors are often cowardly and mean, loudly defending their own right to engage in business on Sunday, but joining with the Christian persecutors in hounding men engaged in less popular enterprises who try to earn a dollar on that day. But actions are more important than words, and hence the example of the Sunday papers is one making for the widening of the bounds of free and just action, spite of their verbal lapses at times.

The clergymen are right in their denunciation of the granting of special favors to one line of business, therefore we can never consent to give the preachers, a monopoly of Sunday. Let them take their chances with men and women engaged in all other occupations. Let each person select his or her own rest days and rest weeks and rest months and rest years. The hand of the Church must be kept off the helm of State. The priests must not be permitted to subvert and degrade justice in the name of physiology. We thank the Boston ministers for letting in the light of day upon the sinister designs of their junto. It is not the rest-day but the “Christian” Sunday for which they clamor and scheme. We know what they want and where they are. We shall have only ourselves to blame if we are ultimately beaten.