Sunday Closing of Ellis Island

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 27, 1906

Sunday Closing of Ellis Island

There are those who criticize the President for his recent order reopening the Ellis Island Immigrant Station on Sundays. Advocates of Sunday sacredness and Sunday laws had secured an order closing the station on Sunday, and compelling the immigrants, many of whom were sick from their long voyage, to remain another day in their stuffy quarters on shipboard. Concerning this matter the editor of The Interior says:—

Upholders of the Sabbath can hardly count in the list of Sabbath-observance gains the recent order prohibiting the landing and examination of immigrants on Sunday. . . . The Sabbath-closing order is in this instance scarcely of the Christian spirit.

The Interior takes a sensible view of the matter in this particular. But when it comes to the matter of enforcing the observance of a day upon a people who do not see any sacredness in it, and do not wish to act what they do not feel—this, too, is “scarcely of the Christian spirit,” and the matter of true-hearted Sabbath observance gains nothing by the effort.