p. 1 | The American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 35. (9/25/1889)

The American Sentinel

Sep 25, 1889

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 25, 1889

Protestantism and Persecution

In a recent lecture on the question of Home Rule in Ireland, Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, of Dublin University, made a most important distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, which it would be well for all to bear in mind. He had made the statement that Home Rule in Ireland meant Roman Catholic supremacy, and that that meant persecution. He then noticed the charge that Protestantism also has persecuted, which he frankly admitted, stating that those who attempted to deny it did themselves and their cause an injustice; but, said he, “When the Catholic Church persecutes, she persecutes according to her own principles, and when the Protestant persecutes, he persecutes against his own principles.”

This is indeed a most important distinction, from which it follows that when the Protestant persecutes he adopts Catholic principles, and ceases to be Protestant. Now apply this to the National Reform Sunday movement. We find that wherever National Reform principles have been carried out, as in Arkansas and Tennessee, and Sunday laws have been enforced, there has been most bitter, malignant, and wicked persecution. And it is a fact that has never been denied by the leaders of the National Reform movement, that the enforcement of the Sunday laws in those States is strictly in accordance with so-called National Reform principles. No paper published in the interests of legal Sunday observance has ever disavowed one feature of that abominable and un-American persecution. Therefore we are justified in our assertion that the Sunday movement as set forth by the National Reform Association, the American Sabbath Union, etc., is opposed to every principle of Protestantism; that every true Protestant will oppose the movement; and that he who does not oppose it, or at least does not withhold his assent from it, has no right to call himself a Protestant.

“It Is Indeed a Union.”

By A. T. J.

IN the Missouri Sunday-law convention Rev. Mr. Tatlow said:—

“Neither the civil power as God's ordinance, nor the civil ruler as God's minister, within its special province, has any authority as such, to make void any of the ten commandments, whether by neglect in enforcing them or by indifference to their authority and claims. At this point, the party of civil policy protests and cries out that this is uniting Church and State. The Christian replies, it is indeed a union, but only so far as two separate jurisdictions—the one spiritual and primary; and the other secular and secondary—exercise each one its own appropriate authority, within its own individual province, to secure a twofold good to the twofold life of man. This union, therefore, is like the union of the spiritual in man acting conjointly with the body of man, the body being brought under and kept in subjection to the spiritual.”

That is precisely such a union of Church and State as the Papacy advocates. The statement is almost word for word, as is the statement of the papal claims on the same point. The papal claim is, that the two powers in the world are the spiritual and the secular. That the spiritual is the church, and the temporal is the State. That the spiritual is superior to the temporal, and, as in the body man's temporal concern must be subject to the spiritual, so in the world the temporal power must be subject to the spiritual. The State must be subject to the church; and the temporal power, the State, must be brought under and kept in subjection to the spiritual, the church. And therefore, the Pope as head of the spiritual power is superior to kings who are the heads of the temporal. Consequently, all civil rulers must be subject to the Pope.

There is not a shadow of difference between the papal theory and this so distinctly set forth by Mr. Tatlow. It is indeed a union. A union of the most vital sort, a union as close as is the union of the spiritual and the physical in man. And this is the deliberate view set forth in a written essay by a representative speaker in the Missouri State convention which was called to organize, and which did organize, a State Sabbath Union auxiliary to the American Sabbath Union, and at which the field secretary of the American Sabbath Union was present. Mr. Tatlow's view of this relationship, however, is not at all distinct in principle from that stated by the American Sabbath Union himself. He puts it up under the illustration of the two arms of the body, the religious being the right arm and the civil being the left arm. Mr. Tatlow only more clearly expresses how closely and intimately the two arms are expected to act together. And how the left arm is to be guided by the right arm, and kept in subordination to it. And then in the face of these plain statements of their own they will still put on an air of innocence injured almost to holy martyrdom, when we say to the people that the Sunday-law movement bears in itself a union of Church and State, with all that history shows that that term implies.

We have known all the time that it is indeed a union in which the spiritual is intended to be primary and the secular secondary. We have known all the time that it is indeed a union in which the secular authority is to be brought under and kept in subjection to the spiritual. This is what the SENTINEL has been telling the people for these four years. And now it comes forth plainly in their own words. And yet we doubt not that when we thus print it, and send it forth, that they will again deny that they intend to bring about a union of Church and State, or that their movement has any tendency whatever in that direction. A. T. J.

A Sunday-law Conviction in Georgia.

The following is from the Atlanta Constitution of August 30:—

The conviction in Forsyth County of a man named Conklin, who was charged with chopping wood on Sunday, has created a decided sensation among the Seventh-day Adventists in Georgia.

The announcement of the conviction was made in the Constitution yesterday.

Rev. J. O. Corliss was in Atlanta yesterday and talked at length about the case.

“The witnesses testified,” said he, “that they saw him chopping saplings just back of his house, but did not know what he was chopping them for. On being questioned, one of them said he lived within one hundred and fifty yards of the defendant’s house, but had never seen him work on Sunday before. And yet he was convicted by a jury of twelve men and fined $25 and costs, amounting in all to $46.80.

“Now, in the ordinary course of events it would not be strange to fine a man convicted for violating

the laws of the State. But it seems that this man had done no more than all his neighbors had done, that is, chop a little wood for immediate use, as a necessity. In fact, one of the witnesses it is said, has frequently driven his team all day Sunday to be at the market in Atlanta early Monday morning.”

“What is the reason for the conviction, then?

“Simply this: The poor man happened to have a conscience which led him to observe Saturday, the seventh day of the week, instead of Sunday, the first day of the week. He is a good citizen, pays all his honest debts, and is respected by all as a man. But it seems that the people of that vicinity have a corner on religion and are determined that no one shall indulge in a belief that is not received from them. At least, one would think so from the plea made before the jury by the State’s attorney. They wanted to teach the defendant that he could not come into that county and overturn the Sabbath of their forefathers.

“You may talk about your jute bagging trusts and sugar trusts, but a religious trust is the most dangerous of all, and the more detrimental to the interests of the country, because it is more tyrannical and generates more bad blood. If this man, Conklin, had not actually violated the law of the State, and the State’s witness failed to show that he had, on what principle of right and justice was he thus deprived of his hard earnings, to say nothing of being subjected to the odium of being thus arraigned as a criminal?”

“The State’s attorneys took a religious view of the case,” continued Mr. Corliss. “They contended that the Adventists were trying to displace the Sabbath of our forefathers, and to overturn the religion of all past generations. Colonel T. L. Lewis, of Alpharetta, and Colonel Philipps, of Marietta, argued that it was unjust to punish the man for working on Sunday, as his conscience led him to observe Saturday as the Sabbath, and he had kept it sacred. They also claimed that he was chopping wood for household purposes. But he was convicted; and, to show their appreciation of his condition, as Conklin is very poor, Colonel Philipps and Colonel Lewis each gave him $10 towards paying his fine.”

Christianity Confers No Civil Rights

No man acquires any additional right under civil government by becoming a Christian.

Sunday Laws and Grand Larceny

THE religious legislationists declare that “It is grand larceny to take away the toilers’ weekly rest-day.” Even if that were true, nobody can commit such larceny, because nobody can take away the toilers’ weekly rest-day. Every man can have his rest-day who wants it bad enough to take it; and nobody can take it away from him. So nobody can ever commit any such larceny. But if it be grand larceny to take from the toiler his rest-day which nobody can do, then what is it for the government, under pains and penalties, to take away from the industrious citizen his work day, which these people by their Sunday law propose to do. Because, from the man who has taken his weekly rest-day on another day than Sunday, they intend to have the government to take away one of his work days. They propose under cover of governmental power to rob such a man of one-sixth of his income as a tribute to their ideas of the sacredness of Sunday. This is not only grand larceny in fact, it is so with tyranny added.

An Inadmissible Admission.

By Alonzo T. Jones

THE Cumberland Presbyterian Church, at its General Assembly in Kansas City, last May, amongst its resolutions passed the following on the subject of the liquor traffic:—

Resolved, That, admitting that it is a crime, it cannot be legalized without sin. It cannot be licensed without legalizing it. Therefore to vote for license is sin.

This is a fair sample of the predicament into which men get when they undertake to create sins. It is probable that to their own satisfaction, that General Assembly has decided that to vote for license is sin. And, probably, that General Assembly is prepared to deal with the man who votes for a license as with a sinner, and to consign him to the place where all sinners are to go, except they repent.

But, have they proved that to vote for license is sin? The conclusion in a syllogism is always as good as the premises, but it is never any better, and it can't be any better. What then, is the premise in this one? Major: Admitting that it is a crime, it cannot be legalized without sin. Minor: It cannot be licensed without legalizing it. Therefore to vote for license is sin. The whole thing depends upon the major, “admitting that it is a crime.” But suppose that is not admitted, then what? Then neither the minor nor the conclusion follows. So that all that syllogism amounts to, and all that the resolution amounts to in fact is, that if it be admitted that to vote for license is sin, then it is sin. But even that doesn’t follow, because it may be admitted that a certain thing is sin when there may be no sin about it.

More than this. A thing may be admitted to be a crime and yet it be not sin at all. It is a crime in nearly every State in this Union to work on Sunday, and a good many people are doing their best to make it a crime anywhere in all the Nation. But to work on Sunday is not sin. An act may be a crime and yet not in any way a sin. To be a Christian in the days of Paul, in the Roman Empire, was to be guilty of the highest crime—crimen majestatis. But there were multitudes of people who committed that crime and yet were sinless in it.

Crime is a violation of human law—a law of the State. And human laws—laws of the State—may forbid that which is right, as the Roman Empire did when it prohibited the worship of any gods but such as were recognized by the Roman law; and as the different States of this Union do when they prohibit work on Sunday. For the Christians to worship God in the Roman Empire in the first two centuries was a crime, but it was not sin. For people to work on Sunday in nearly all the States is a crime, but it is not sin. Consequently, admitting a thing to be a crime does not at all admit it to be sin. It may be sin. But whether it is does not at all depend upon men's admitting that it is, but upon whether God says it is. If God says a thing is sin, it is sin, whether it be admitted or not, and whether it be a crime or not. And what God does not say is sin is not sin, even though it be admitted to be a crime.

We freely admit that the liquor traffic is sin, whether it is a crime or not depends upon what the State laws say. The liquor traffic is a crime in this country only in Iowa, Kansas, and Maine. In none of the other States is it a crime, because the State does not prohibit it.

Again: This resolution says, “Admitting that it is a crime, it can’t be legalized without sin.” But whether it is a crime or not, depends upon whether it is legal or not. If it is legalized, it is not crime. If it is forbidden, it is crime. Consequently, the admission is not admissible unless the law declares the fact, and if the law declares it, then it is a crime whether it be admitted or not.

This resolution illustrates the absurdities into which men run when they confound crime and sin, and religious with civil things, as the third party prohibition element does. It also shows what the SENTINEL has constantly affirmed, that, if prohibition were secured upon the basis upon which it is demanded by the third party prohibition element, the condition of affairs would actually be worse than they are now. Prohibition, on a civil basis, is right. But prohibition upon a religious basis,—the liquor traffic prohibited because it is irreligious or because it is immoral, or because it is a sin,—would introduce into the body politic such a confusion of elements as would, in a little while, prove the remedy to be ten thousand times worse than the disease. A. T. J.

Senator Douglas and the Clergymen.

By GEORGE A. BATES

In 1854 there were 3,050 ministers in New England, who were practical “National Reformers.” They believed that government was not an institution “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and that governments do not “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;” But they believed all power is of God; and that the ministry, as God’s representative on earth, is the fountain whence flows all power and authority.

Then, as now, they attempted to dictate to Congress, civil policy. They claimed the right to reprove, rebuke, and denounce with all authority and doctrine. So against the “Nebraska bill” they exercised that right thus:—

“To the Hon. Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled—

“The undersigned clergymen of different religious denominations in New England, as ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, hereby in the name of Almighty God, and in his presence, do solemnly protest against the passage of what is known as the Nebraska bill. We protest against it as a great moral wrong, exposing us to the righteous judgments of the Almighty.”

But Congress would recognize them only as citizens, and not as judges to pronounce the verdict and dire decrees of Jehovah. For this offense twenty-five ministers, assembled in Chicago, passed resolutions charging Congress with disrespect to man and God. Here is their own statement of their divine prerogative:—

“Resolved first, That the ministry is the divinely-appointed institution for the declaration and enforcement of God’s will upon all points of moral and religious truth; and that as such, it is their duty to reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all authority and doctrine.”

In a letter dated April 6, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas replied:—

“I understand your position to be this: that you are ‘ministers of the gospel;’ that the ‘ministry is the divinely-appointed institution for the declaration and enforcement of God’s will upon all points of moral and religious truth;’ that this ‘divinely-appointed institution’ is empowered ‘to declare’ what questions of a civil, political, judicial, or legislative character, do involve ‘points of moral and religious truth;’ and that, clothed with ‘all authority and doctrine,’ this ‘divinely-appointed institution’ proceeds to issue its mandates to the Congress of the United States ‘in the name of the Almighty God.’ This being your position, I must be permitted to say to you, in all Christian kindness, that I differ with you widely, radically, and fundamentally, in respect to the nature and extent of your rights, duties, and powers, as ministers of the gospel. If the claims of this ‘divinely-appointed institution’ shall be enforced, and the various public functionaries shall yield their judgment to your supervision, and their consciences to your keeping, there will be no limit to your temporal power except your own wise discretion and virtuous forbearance. If your ‘divinely-appointed institution’ has the power to prescribe the mode and the terms for the organization of Nebraska, I see no reason why your authority may not be extended over the whole continent.

“The will of the people, expressed in obedience to the forms and provisions of the Constitution, is the supreme law of the land. But your office as ministers is not provided for in the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution or laws of any of the States, or of the United States, is there to be found a provision constituting or recognizing you

and your brethren the ‘divinely-appointed institution for the declaration and enforcement of God’s will;’ and therefore, in your character as a body of ministers, you cannot claim any political power under our system of government.

“The persecutions of our ancestors were too fresh in the memories of our revolutionary fathers, for them to create, recognize, or even tolerate, a church establishment in this country, clothed with temporal authority. So apprehensive were they of the usurpations of this, most fearful and corrupting of all despotisms, whether viewed with reference to the purity of the church or the happiness of the people, that they provided in the Constitution that ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.’ Still fearful that in a process of time, a spirit of religious fanaticism, or a spirit of ecclesiastical domination (yet more to be dreaded, because cool and calculating) might seize upon some exciting political topic, and in an evil hour surprise or entrap the people into a dangerous concession of political power to the clergy, the first Congress under the Constitution proposed, and the people adopted, an amendment to guard against such a calamity, in the following words: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’

“The doctrine of our fathers was, and the principle of the Constitution is, that every human being has an inalienable, divinely-conferred right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience; and that no earthly institution nor any institution on earth, can rightfully deprive him of that sacred and inestimable privilege.

“I have wandered over distant and extensive portions of the globe, during the past year, where the successor of Mohammed proclaimed and enforced God’s will on earth according to the principles of inspired truth and obligation as recorded in the Koran; and, by the potency of his ‘divinely-appointed institution,’ held in the hollow of his hand and suspended on his breath, the lives, the liberties, and the property, of millions of men, women and children. When within his dominions and surrounded by his bayonets, I had neither the time nor the disposition to argue the question of his right to ‘reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all authority and doctrine,’ in the name of the Almighty! But when I set foot on the shores of my native land, under the broad folds of our national flag, surrounded by the protecting genius of our American institutions, I did not feel like recognizing any such rightful authority of that ‘divinely-appointed institution,’ in temporal affairs, here or elsewhere.

“Our fathers held that the people were the only true source of all political power. But what avails this position, if the constituted authorities established by the people are to be controlled and directed—not by their own judgment, not by the will of their constituents, but—by the divinely-constituted power of the clergy?

“Your claims for the supremacy of this ‘divinely-appointed institution’ are subversive of the fundamental principles upon which the whole republican system rests. What the necessity of a Congress, if you can supervise and direct its conduct? Why sustain a vast and complex judicial system, to expound the law and administer justice and determine all disputes in respect to human rights, if your ‘divinely-appointed institution’ is invested with all authority to prescribe the rule of decision in the name of the Deity? If your pretensions be just and valid, why not dispense with all the machinery of human government and subject ourselves, freely and unreservedly, together with all our temporal and spiritual interests and hopes, to the justice and mercy of this divinely-appointed institution?”

The Illinois “Little Giant” tore the whole wicked scheme. Let his words be read everywhere. GEORGE A. BATES.

Green Vale, Jo Daviess Co., Ill.

Religion and the Public Schools.

(Continued.)

Because of its great importance both as a State and National question, I beg permission of the committee to be allowed to present as a part of my argument, a portion of the argument of the Hon. Stanley Matthews, now Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, upon this very question, in the case of Minor et al. vs. Cincinnati School Board et al. I ask further to present this because it would be impossible for me to make an argument as good, and I seriously doubt whether anybody can ever make a better. After referring to the resolution of the Cincinnati School Board which forbade the reading of the Bible at the opening exercises of the city schools, Mr. Matthews said:—

“I do say that the reading of the Holy Bible in the manner repeated by this resolution is the teaching of a dogma in religion, held by only a portion of the religious community, objected to by a large part of the others, and that it is in a just, true and sober sense,—as to all who either reject it, in whole or in part, as a divinely inspired and infallible book, and as to all others, who admitting that to be its character, nevertheless deny that it can properly be understood without the interpreting aid of external authority, as to unbelievers, Jews, and Roman Catholics,—a merely sectarian book. Now, if your honors please, the community is divided, you may say, in a general way, as a matter of fact, of which your honors can take judicial notice, and to which your honors’ notice is addressed specially by the answer in this case, into at least three main divisions of religious belief, throwing out of view all those who have merely a negative position, sometimes called nullifidians—believers in nothing, if you choose, except what they see, and hear, and feel. But I propose to confine myself now only to that division of the community as to their positive religious belief; and I will include under one name all Protestant Christians, including every variety of faith, every sect and denomination, from those who take a merely humanitarian view of the person and the work of our divine Saviour up to those who believe that he was the incarnate God, and embracing every possible shade and variation of religious belief.

“Here are all these varieties of belief. The gentlemen say, What is conscience? It may be a very small matter in their estimation, applied to other people a very small matter, not to be taken notice of; and one gentleman quotes the legal maxim ‘De minimis non curat lex,’ in reference to the supposed conscience of an infidel.

“But this will not do. We may call the eccentricities of conscience vagaries, if we please; but in matters of religious concern we have no right to disregard or despise them, no matter how trivial and absurd we may conceive them to be. In the days of the early Christian martyrs, the Roman lictors and soldiers despised and ridiculed the fanaticism that refused the trifling conformity of a pinch of incense upon the altar erected to the Cæsar that arrogated to himself the title and honor of ‘Divine,’ or of a heathen statue. History is filled with the record of bloody sacrifices which holy men who feared God rather than men have not withheld, on account of what seemed to cruel persecutors but trifling observances and concessions.

“Conscience, if your honors please, is a tender thing, and tenderly to be regarded; and in the same proportion in which a man treasures his own moral integrity, sets up the light of conscience within him as the glory of God shining in him to discover to him the truth, so ought he to regard the conscience of every other man, and apply the cardinal maxim of Christian life and practice, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’

“Now, here is the Christian community. Then there are a large number of the citizens of this community who are not Christians at all, and yet are devout religionists. They are the descendants of the men who crucified Christ; and yet, as old Sir Thomas Browne says, we ought not to bear malice against them for that, for how often since have we, who profess his name, crucified him, too!

“Quousque patiere, bone Jesu! Judæi te semel, ego sæpius crucifixi; Illi in Asia, ego in Britannica, Gallia, Germania; Bone Jesu, miserere mei, et Judæorum.

“But here they are in this community, devout worshipers of the only living and true God, according to their conscientious convictions; and I will say, if your honors please, in all respects capable of performing every duty of the civil State, and equally entitled to, not toleration—I hate that word, there is no such thing known in this country as toleration—but civil and religious equality, equality because it is right, and a right. Then there is another sect of religionists. . . . They are the Roman Catholics. I know the Protestant prejudices against the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Roman Catholic system of faith, and the Roman Catholic Church. I know, too, from a reading of that history, a part of which has been reproduced in argument upon this occasion, that the Roman Catholic Church has too well deserved that bitter memory at the hands of those whom it persecuted. But it is not to be denied that the victims of persecution, with singular inconsistency, have not always omitted the opportunity, when power was in their hands, to inflict upon their oppressors the same measure of persecution, as if the wrong consisted not in the principle, but only in the person.

“Now, if your honors please, I try to stand impartial and neutral in this argument between these three sets of men. I am bound to look upon them all as citizens, all as entitled to every right, to every privilege that I claim for myself; and further, if your honors please, I do in my heart entertain the charity of believing that they are just as honest and just as sincere in their religious convictions as I am. I will say further, that from the study which I have made, as time and opportunity have been given me, of the doctrinal basis of the Roman Catholic faith, I am bound to say that it is not an ignorant superstition, but a scheme of well-constructed logic, which he is a bold man who says he can easily answer. Give them one proposition, concede to them one single premise, and the whole of their faith follows most legitimately and logically, and that is the

fundamental doctrine, the doctrine of what the church is, what it was intended to be, by whom it was founded, by whom it has been perpetuated, being the casket which contains to-day, shining as brightly as before the ages, the ever-living, actually present body of God, teaching and training men for life here and life hereafter.

“Now, if your honors please, that is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church; that is the doctrine that is believed in by the Roman Catholic people; believed in sincerely, conscientiously, under their responsibilities, as they understand them, to answer to the bar of Almighty God, in the day of Judgment, according to the light which they have received, in their own reason and their own conscience; for you must bear in mind that the process by which a Roman Catholic attains his faith is the same by which your honors do. We seem to make a difference, in that respect, as if the Roman Catholic believed in his church in some other way, by some other organs than those which a Protestant uses when he comes to his convictions. Why, if your honors please, there is no compulsion about it; it is a voluntary matter; they believe it or not, as they choose; there is no external power which forces them to believe. They believe because they are taught; they believe because they are so educated; they believe because they have been trained up to it; just as we believe in the Protestant form of religion, because our fathers and our grandfathers and our grandfather’s fathers were Protestants. They think they have sufficient reason for their belief; it may be an insufficient reason, but that don’t make any difference to you and me; it is their reason, and that is enough. Now, they have—at any rate so far as the impersonal spirit of jurisprudence is concerned; so far as the presiding genius of the civil law is affected with jurisdiction; so far as, your honors, the embodiment of that artificial reason which consists in the collective wisdom of the State can take any notice—civil rights and religious rights, equal to yours and mine. Here are these three great divisions of men and of opinions and of religious faith and worship, all standing before you to-day upon a platform of absolute and perfect equality.

“But it is asked by some, who by asking it betray their want of comprehension of the real question: Have Protestants no rights? Cannot the majority of the community insist upon their consciences? Must the rights of minorities alone be consulted? Are we to be ruled by Catholics, or Jews, or infidels?

“The answer is obvious and easy. Protestants have no rights, as such, which do not at the same time and to the same extent belong to Catholics, as such, to Jews and infidels too. Protestants have a civil right to enjoy their own belief, to worship in their own way, to read the Bible and to teach it as a part of their religion, but they have no right in this respect to any preference from the State, or any of its institutions. They have no right to insist upon Protestant practices at the public expense, or in public buildings, or to turn public schools into seminaries for the dissemination of Protestant ideas. They can claim nothing on the score of conscience, which they cannot concede equally to all others. It is not a question of majorities or minorities, for if the conscience of the majority is to be the standard, then there is no such thing as right of conscience at all. It is against the predominance and power of majorities, that the rights of conscience are protected and have need to be.

“If it be said that the Protestant conscience requires that the Bible be read by and to Protestant children, and it is a denial of a right of conscience to forbid it, waiving at present the obvious and conclusive answer that no such right of conscience can require that the State shall provide out of the common taxes for its gratification, it is enough to say, that Catholics then, too, have the same right to have their children taught religion according to their views; not out of the Douay Bible,—if they do not consider that sufficient, but by catechism and in the celebration of the mass, if they choose to insist; that Jews have the same right to have their religion taught in the common schools, not from the English version of the Old Testament, but according to the practice of their synagogues; and infidels have the same right to have their children taught deism, or pantheism, or positivism.

(To be continued.)

Sunday-Law Meetings in Fresno.

By N. J. BOWERS

FRESNO, CAL., August 26, 1889.

EDITOR SENTINEL: Thinking you would like to hear something in reference to Mr. Crafts’ work here, I will send you a few items. Well, he has come and gone. He had two meetings, the first at 8 o’clock, Thursday evening, in the Baptist Church, the other at 3 in the afternoon, Friday, at the same place.

The address Thursday, occupied just an hour and a half. It was the same, I suppose, as he gives everywhere. He appears to have it learned by heart. He paid his usual respects to the AMERICAN SENTINEL, and while claiming that it did not much interfere with his work yet we noticed that he spent no little time trying to counteract its influence in the minds of those present. I should suppose in the three hours, or nearly, covered by both the addresses, he spent about a third of the time noticing the SENTINEL and Seventh-day Adventists. He did not have much to say about the Seventh-day Baptists, mostly about Adventists. Although trying to be pleasant and courteous, there was a vein of ill-disguised spite, and a spirit of retaliation running through his talk on this subject.

It evidently makes him ill-tempered to have his work opposed. He can and does pour out the vials of his wrath upon his opponents, and we who understand this movement know full well what he and his associates will do when they get the power. His meetings here and the spirit he has displayed in them have confirmed all our views of what is really behind and in this whole movement—an intolerant thirst for power, and determination to crush out all opposition.

When the vote was put it was against him. More being against the Sunday law than for it. He remarked that the large opposing vote was due to the Adventists, who were no doubt present in full force; that he could “tell them by their looks,” etc. He was evidently not well pleased, and whether it was another “surprise party” to him I cannot say, but it was evident he was not pleased, and the local clergy seemed chagrined.

Possibly there were four hundred present at the first meeting. The vote on each side was not counted. If it had been, the “noes” would have had it by a nice little majority. The meetings, as regards attendance and enthusiasm, were a flat failure. His points received but faint applause in the audience.

There are eight organized churches here, not counting the Catholics or Adventists. I believe the colored people have two small societies, but I did not see a colored person present. The average membership of these eight societies can, I think, be safely put at four or five hundred. It is safe to say that not more than two hundred of them were present at the largest meeting; so even the churches were poorly represented, so little interest do they take in the work. Two at least of the resident pastors were not present at all, or if so did not “take a front seat.” They may have been out of town. Whether a local union was organized or not I have not been able to learn, but I suppose such was the case. Several sermons have since been preached on the Sunday question, so the preachers, some of them at least, are stirred up.

Well, let the good work go on. Send out the light and the truth, that all men may know the iniquity that lies in the American Sabbath Union’s work.

The second meeting was devoted to answering written questions. About twenty, I should think, were handed in. He had much to say at this meeting also against the SENTINEL and its methods, calling on the Seventh-day Adventists to repudiate it, and telling them that they were being deceived by it, etc., etc. None of the city papers spoke approvingly of Mr. Crafts’ work. They passed it by in silence, as far as I have seen. The two dailies, however, spoke well of Professor Jones’ open air address Wednesday evening.

N. J. BOWERS.

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