WHO WILL GAIN BY SUNDAY CLOSING?
By Editor
SENTINEL LIBRARY No. 52, entitled, "Jesus, the Church, and the World's Fair," has just been issued from the press, and orders will be filled immediately. This is a very comprehensive though brief presentation of the points involved. It was written by the editor of the Arena, Boston, and was first published as an editorial in the July number, 1892, of that magazine. As the tract (16 pages) only costs two cents, we naturally expect a large circulation, therefore we will not insert any copious extracts here. There is one thought, however, that is somewhat startling. After showing the advantages to the 5,600 saloons of the city of Chicago by having the fair closed, the author says:— "Close the World's Fair, and what will be the inevitable result? The Sabbath Union, the saloon, the brothel, and the gambling hell will have triumphed. There will be hundreds of thousands of strangers in the great city with nothing to do. If it is fair to judge results by those seen in our great cities to-day, it will be easy to say which of the two great powers will reap the richest harvest. The ministry to-day in all great metropolitan centers have so lost their power on the people that they can no longer fill the pews. I received, less than three weeks ago, a letter from a leading orthodox minister of Boston, which contains the following frank but mournful concession:—" "'The churches have all they can do to keep alive. They have no religion to spare. There is scarce any church where religious truth is the central attraction. We ministers must conjure by the social principle, and by amusing, lecturing to the audience in an engaging manner, or we have empty pews. Look at the topics we advertise. I do not believe twenty thousand persons, different individuals, attend morning or evening services on any Sunday in Boston.'" SOME of the Catholic papers will really criticise the high dignitaries of "the church," as the following clippings from one of the papal journals witnesses:— "'The Alumni of the College of Our Lady of Angels gave a dinner at Hartford, Conn., on September 27. 'The clergymen largely predominated,' says The Telegram's report. They had sherry, claret, Roman punch, Pommery Sec and cognac—and 'the clergymen largely predominated'—of course. No wonder but one priest of Hartford is known as a Prohibitionist—and a strange being he must be thought; and the reunion ended by the singing of 'He's a Jolly Good Fellow,' and I guess they all were; but it wasn't the Prohibition priest they sang of.'" "'The Pope said, 'Let priests shine as models of total abstinence.'"" The same editor throws out the following hit at Cardinal Gibbons:— "'Archbishop Carroll once issued a Pastoral to Catholics, asking them 'to take an interest in the lottery for building the cathedral at Baltimore.'" "Now The Mirror, under the direct jurisdiction of the Cardinal, the successor of Archbishop Carroll, could not go in the mail if it published a lottery ad, or even the drawings at a church fair." "But it prints rum ads, and the Cardinal favors licensing saloons if they pay high." "There are some people who think I am a crank for saying that a successor of the Cardinal will present as great a contrast to that course as his attitude on lottery does to Archbishop Carroll's.'"