Spirit of the Sunday-law Movement.
We give the following article which appeared in a late Detroit paper to show the spirit with which the Sunday agitation is accompanied, and in which it is fostered. We expect to see still more violent feeling manifested before the question is finally settled. Under the heading of “An Unhappy Discussion,” the paper says:— There is, as every body knows, now going on in Chicago a warm contest over a proposition to repeal the Sunday law. Quite a number of the members of the Common Council of that city are in favor of the repeal of the Sunday law. In fact, a majority of the Councilmen are, or have been, in favor of a repeal; but the Mayor is understood to take the position that he will veto any action, whether to repeal the law or to make it more stringent, unless the proposition is first submitted to the vote of the people. Naturally in such a discussion there has been some hot argument, and much angry talk that might better not have been indulged in. Last Sabbath, the Rev. Dr. Fowler, President of the Northwestern University, preached in the Centenary Methodist church, to a very large congregation, on the “Sunday Question.” His sermon was reported at more or less length in the various city papers. President Fowler appears from these reports to have indulged in a number of decidedly sweeping assertions, and some language that, in his cooler moments, it is to be supposed he will regret. According to the report of the sermon published in the Inter-Ocean, he declared that, “unless the Sabbath law is enforced, it will be better to make all poor men work, and become the victims of capital.” The Chicago Tribune gives this sentence thus: “Unless the Sabbath law is enforced, they had better keep all men at work, and get no rest.” The Inter-Ocean gives the following sentence as the exact words of the preacher:— “In the presence of this congregation and Almighty God I arraign these aldermen as the murderers of the boys that shall be shot or stabbed in the next three months. If that law is repealed, my humble prayer to God is that the murdering, if it must take place, shall come to their own homes. [Applause.]” The Tribune gives its substance only, without pretending to quote exactly, as follows:— “He arraigned those aldermen as the murderers of all the boys shot and stabbed after the law was repealed; and his prayer was that, if murder must begin, it should begin at their homes. [Amen—Applause.]” The painful shock which this language will occasion in every calm mind is a marked comment upon and condemnation of it. It is charity, and doubtless only justice, to ascribe this language to “the heat of eloquence,” the speaker really not meaning all he said. For it is morally impossible to conceive of any sane man actually kneeling down and praying God that the sons of anti-Sunday law aldermen may be murdered within the next three months, if anybody is! And it is almost equally impossible to conceive that any sane man really means, if any body is murdered by any ruffian, to arraign the anti-Sunday law aldermen as the murderers! On the other side of this question, doubtless, there has been similar violence of expression, only, as there have been no set discourses made and reported on that side, the public attention is not attracted so much as in the case of this sermon. It is exceedingly desirable that the discussion of all such questions shall be conducted with calmness, charity, decorum, and sound judgment; but it is the deplorable fact that such discussions very rarely are conducted in a proper temper.