AWAY FROM ORIGINAL PRINCIPLES.
By Editor
CONGRESS has settled the question of whether the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Ore., shall be opened or closed on Sunday. It had it in its power to offer a big "inducement" to the exposition managers to keep the fair closed on that day, and it has done it. It was a large amount to pay to one institution to induce it to act religiously for a succession of some twenty-six Sundays. To be specific, Congress will pay the exposition the snug sum of $76,923.07 for each and every Sunday that it keeps. There is many a humble resident of the United States who would keep Sunday for a much smaller sum; but we are not bidding for an offer from the government along this line. On the other hand, we believe there are quite a number of people in the land who would not keep Sunday at any price—nay, who would suffer imprisonment and confiscation of goods rather than yield obedience to a man-made religious law, set up in opposition to the law of God, even if a bounty of $76,923.07 were offered for each such obedience. To us there seems a great similarity between these bounties on Sunday-keeping and the national support of religious schools, against which Congress some years ago resolutely and wisely set itself. If it is right to pay out the people's money in bonuses on religious observances, it is certainly right to pay out the people's money in support of religious schools. But we believe that neither is right. It was not the design of the founders of this government that the people be taxed for religious purposes or for the support of religious institutions or usages; but in such appropriations as those made by Congress to the Chicago Exposition, the St. Louis Exposition, and that to be held at Portland in 1905, each of which is given with a Sunday-closing proviso, the people are taxed for the support of a religious institution, which is directly contrary to the basic principles of our government. If the expositions named were worthy of the appropriations made, they should have been given without the proviso which makes of them simply bounties for the performance of a religious form. In taking such action, our statesmen have wandered far from the principles upon which our government was founded, the principles of right and justice, the separation of Church and State.