THAT "CHRISTIAN SENTIMENT."
By Editor
It is commonly claimed by Sunday-law preachers that all adherents to the Christian religion are in favor of such laws, and they are wont to class all opposers as infidels, sympathizers with saloons, etc. But the admission of some of the leaders in the movement for closing the World's Fair is decidedly against the theory of unanimous Christian support. Mr. Crafts, speaking of the success of the Sunday-closing measure in Congress, has this to say in Our Day for October:— "Professed friends of the Sabbath who have not helped to secure this victory by petition or letter or both may well hide their faces in shame. Fully 150,000 petitions were sent to pastors in the mails by great labor and at great cost, of which 100,000 should have come back from that number of religious organizations of various kinds, but not 10,000 of these organizations have so petitioned." What then becomes of the claim, made so positively in the lobbies of Congress and elsewhere, that the Christian sentiment of the country was a unit for Sunday closing? It is by such misrepresentations that these men are seeking to secure religious legislation in this country, against the spirit of our much boasted constitutional freedom of conscience. Their success means Church and State union and consequent religious persecution, notwithstanding their stout professions that such is not the design. They have no idea of stopping with merely closing the World's Fair on Sunday, that is but the opening wedge to further church interference in national and State legislation. Their undisguised sympathy with religious persecution in certain parts of the United States, where public officials can be used for such purpose, is proof of their ultimate designs when they shall have secured further political power. Legitimate Christian work can be done only in the power of the Holy Spirit.