For instance, in the *Evangelist*, of this city, a Presbyterian paper, whose edi
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For instance, in the Evangelist, of this city, a Presbyterian paper, whose editor speaks of Cardinal Gibbons as “Our Cardinal,” February 9, 1888, a Presbyterian D. D. of Princeton, described the papacy as—
The church of all races, ranks and classes, which gives signs of becoming American as well as Roman, and the only church fitted by its hold upon the working masses, to grapple with that labor problem before which our Protestant Christianity stands baffled to-day.
And in the North American Review for January, 1894, Bishop Doane, of the “Protestant” Episcopal Church, of Albany, in this State, strikes the same key to the following effect:—
The Roman Catholic Church throughout the world is really two or three absolutely distinct and different things. Whatever one may feel about the schism which it is, and the schisms it has caused; or, however deeply one may deplore the novelties with which it has overlaid the old faith (which, like all novelties, being on the top are the things most thought of and most dwelt on by her people), these are not matters for discussion here or now. In spite of these, she is to every intelligent mind an ancient and venerable portion of the Christian Church; and in her discharge of her ecclesiastical and religious duties, is to be protected and respected, teaching other Christians many lessons of devotion, consistency and courage, which we should do well to learn. Beside this, she is a factor in the lives of thousands of people, citizens of our country, who are kept from evil living by her ministrations and control; and when we consider the fact that the enormous majority of the crowded poor belong to her communion, that perhaps the most turbulent element in our citizenship owes at least a faint and nominal allegiance to her authority, that without the control of her priesthood, we should be powerless to deal, except by brute force, with great masses of the workingmen of America; we must certainly be ready to secure to her every opportunity for doing the legitimate work of a great Christian Church. Over and above this—and I say it with no unkindness—since an overwhelming proportion of the inmates of our institutions of reform consist of her people, it seems right to me, provided no money for the support of religious services come from the State funds, that her clergymen should have access to the inmates of these institutions under proper regulations. The Roman Church is also a beneficent institution, with multiplied and manifold orders and agencies of mercy and charity, in the support of which, and in their methods of administration, she is not only to be protected, but greatly admired and imitated by others.
And that such papers as the Independent and the Christian at Work, indorse it all, needs not to be proved by quotations.
THERE is another illustration strictly to the point, and which is fresh in the minds of all the people of the country. Everybody knows that for the greater part of the month of January, 1894, the whole executive authority of the State of Florida, from the governor down, was kept on the alert, and even the authorities of the adjoining State of Georgia—and all in vain, too—to prevent a prize fight, in which one of the principals and a majority of the trainers, etc., were “good” Catholics. And yet not a single official of the Catholic Church said a single word or did a single thing to prevent that fight, when, if any of these claims on behalf of “the church” are true, a single word from any of them could have stopped it. This is not saying that “the church” should42have come to the aid of the State of Florida. But it is to say that if she is of any kind of good to society and civil order, she ought to be able so to instruct and civilize “her children” that they would not want so much to fight that all the power of the State cannot keep them from it. It is also worth remarking in this connection that any one who will read the names in the “sporting” notes of the daily papers, or the “sporting” papers, will have no difficulty in seeing that a “fearfully large proportion” of the prize fighting element, as well as of the saloon element and the “hoodlum element” in general, are “children of the church.”
This claim of the papacy and its admission by Protestants, is worth examination for its own sake, and more in view of the use that is made of it. When viewed in the light of facts of open every day experience, it will be seen to be as void of truth, as perfectly fraudulent, as was ever any claim that was made by the papacy.
Nor do we need to go outside of good Catholic authority for evidence to start with. In the Chicago Catholic Congress, September 6, 1893, Archbishop Ireland said:—
We say this is a glorious church of ours—as, indeed, she is—and yet what a fearfully large proportion of those so-called saloons are held by Catholics; and what a fearfully large proportion who lose in them their souls, are children of the church.
And the same day in the congress Mr. M. T. Elder read a paper, in which he stated this and more, thus:—
When I see how largely Catholicity is represented among our hoodlum element, I feel in no spread-eagle mood. When I note how few Catholics are engaged in honestly tilling the honest soil, and how many Catholics are engaged in the liquor traffic, I cannot talk buncombe to anybody.
AMEN, say we. And yet throughout that whole congress, with the exception of Mr. Elder's paper and one more, there was nothing else than one continuous stream of this same “spread-eagle” stuff and “buncombe” as to “the church” being the “champion of law and order” and “the saviour of society.” And all this, too, in face of the patent and conscious fact that “Catholicity” is so “largely represented” among the “hoodlum element” of the nation; and that a “fearfully large proportion” of saloon keepers and those who patronize them are “Catholics” and “children of the church”—yes, of “this glorious church of ours.”
THESE are only samples of what may be found in almost every Catholic speech and Catholic paper. Thus she sounds her own trumpet before her, and, in this as in other things, “Protestant” preachers and papers toot their little horns behind her, saying, “That is so.” There are many examples of this, and there have been many in recent years.
IN the same congress, September 5, Archbishop Watterson, of Columbus, said:—
If society is to be saved from a condition worse in some respects than that of pagan times, it is from the Vatican the saviour must come. . . . Leo XIII. is recalling to the minds of men those great bedrock truths on which the health and life of nations and society depend. . . . He shows that the papacy is this great social necessity, this universal moral power in the world, the bond of union and the principle of order.
IN taking his seat as temporary chairman of the Catholic Congress at Chicago, September 4, 1893, Morgan J. O'Brien, of the Supreme Court of New York, said:—
That the solution of the present social difficulties is to be found in the Catholic Church, we know; for as has been well said, “That church . . . is recognized as the synonym of authority, the foe to lawlessness, and the champion of law and order.”
OPPORTUNITIES are sought for and even created on every possible occasion by the dignitaries and prominent men of “the church” to proclaim her as the conservator of public order, and that there can be no assured safety without the “benign offices” of “the church.”
THE papacy is posing before the Government and people of the United States as the support of society and the stay of civil order.
Now, if it be in any sense true that “the Catholic Church is the foe to lawlessness,” why does she not antagonize this lawlessness in her own membership? If it be in any sense true that she is “the champion of law and order,” then why does she not champion law and order in her own ranks and inculcate the principles of law and order upon her own “children”? If it be in any sense true that “the solution of the present social difficulties is to be found in the Catholic Church,” then why does she not solve these social difficulties that are so prevalent amongst her own people? If “it is from the Vatican that the saviour must come,” who is to save society from this condition that is fast becoming worse than pagan times, why is it that the Vatican is unable to save its own organization from this condition that is “worse in some respects than pagan times”? If she is in any sense the source of so much good to States and nations, as is proclaimed for her, then why is it that she is not the source of enough good to her own communicants to keep them from overawing the civil authorities and intimidating justice by riotous demonstrations? If it be in any sense true that the Catholic Church is “the synonym of authority,” then why is it that she has not authority enough to check the native deviltry of her own children?
corrupter of society, the disabler of States, and the weakener of nations. It never was, and never will be, and never can be, of any kind of good under the sun. That church is “Babylon the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” The Word of God says so, and it is so.
A. T. J.
**Christ and the Sabbath.**
(Concluded.)
WHOSE POWER SHALL WE ACKNOWLEDGE?
In the observance of the true Sabbath, we acknowledge the divinity, the authority, the power of God manifested in Jesus Christ,—that is to say, we acknowledge the divinity, the power, the authority of Christ. In the observance of the false Sabbath we acknowledge the pretended claim of the Catholic Church which is but the agency of Satan in this matter; we acknowledge the pretended claim and authority of the Catholic Church to the same thing. In the observance of the true Sabbath we acknowledge that our confidence for salvation is in the living God and his power manifested through Christ. In observing the false Sabbath we acknowledge that our trust and confidence for salvation are in that rival power, that rival authority. And any rival to God in Jesus Christ is simply a manifestation of the working of this spirit of Satan. It is Satan who instigates all opposition to God; it is Satan who urges every individual to reject Jesus Christ. And, in this matter of the false Sabbath, the sign of the pretended power, we see this working of Satan, who would steal away from the true God, and from Jesus Christ, in whom he is represented to the world, the homage, the worship belonging to him.
No one who observes the true Sabbath in the true meaning of it, can ever turn away from Jesus Christ. It is the constant acknowledgment of his belief in the divinity, the authority, the saving power, and saving grace of Jesus Christ. But any one who turns away from the true Sabbath, the sign of the true God in Jesus Christ, and turns to the false Sabbath, a sign of the rival power, has turned his back upon the law of God, and upon the temple of God, and worships with his face toward the east.
THE SABBATH A QUESTION OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE TRUE GOD.
It is not simply an observance of days as such, whether we shall stop work upon Saturday, or stop work upon Sunday, but the question is, What God are we to serve? In what power are we to trust? In whom are we depending for deliverance?
It is a question of allegiance to the true God, or allegiance to some rival or pretended power. That is the thing that is in Sabbath-keeping now; and all the people, everywhere, ought to know it. And they will know it; for we read: “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come; and worship him that made heaven, and43earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” Rev. 14: 6, 7.
The highest form of worship is in obedience. To worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea, and the fountains of waters, is to yield our obedience to him. And this message, given everywhere, calls attention to the worship of the true God, the Creator, and really contains in it the essence of Sabbath reform, in that it calls upon us to worship the true God, the Creator, by obedience to him, and that we observe the day which is a sign, or a mark, of his creative power. So when this scripture began to be proclaimed in a special manner about half a century ago, out of that grew the Sabbath reform, because the message of the Sabbath was in it. That is the sign, or the mark, of the true God, as opposed to any rival of any kind. The observance of the true Sabbath is the sign, or mark, of allegiance to the true God, the Creator of the heaven and the earth.
WHO ARE CHRISTIANS?
Those who knowingly choose the sign of the other power, and who by their lives testify that they accept the mark of the rival power, thereby show that Christ is not dwelling in them, with his sanctifying power, but that they are depending upon some other power for their salvation. It is therefore necessary that the truth in regard to the Sabbath should be proclaimed to all men, that everywhere there might be an understanding choice in this matter; that everywhere men might know what is the sign of the power of God in Christ to save, and might hasten to yield themselves and to put their trust and their confidence in him for salvation, that everywhere it might be proclaimed that a rival power has sought to turn men away from the true God, that a rival power has come in, with the effort to steal away the confidence of men in Jesus Christ as the only Saviour; that they might be shown who the true God is, and what his service really includes.
But the question is asked at once, Are there no Christians except those who keep the seventh day? Have there not been Christians in all ages who never kept the seventh day? Are there not Christians now of every name and denomination who do not keep the seventh day?—Most certainly. Well, then, what difference does it make? and why call attention to this matter now? Notice this; it is the root of the whole matter. He is a true Christian who yields himself to God; he is a true Christian who follows all the light that God causes to shine upon his pathway. We are responsible for the use we make of the light given to us of God. Now when one is a true Christian, he has the desire, he has the disposition, to be conformed to the life of Jesus Christ, and every truth revealed to him concerning the life, the power, the work of Jesus Christ, is what he wants to know. But just as soon as the true Christian receives light which he has not known before, and refuses to obey it, that instant he ceases to be a true Christian. Just as soon as one who is a true Christian, a child of God, receives light, he welcomes that light. The disposition of heart is that he may be perfectly conformed, to the image of God in Christ. But when light comes, and he refuses the light, he turns against God, and is no longer a true Christian; and although up to that moment he may have stood a justified child of God, yet when God reveals to him more light, and says to him, “This is the way, walk ye in it,” and he says, “No,” just then he loses his standing as a justified child of God; just then his Christian experience stops, and it does not make any difference whether the invitation of God to him is to observe the true Sabbath in the true meaning, or whether it is some other duty presented.
Furthermore, the people who are to be prepared for the coming of Christ, who are to be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, who are to be translated without seeing death, are to have the character of Christ perfectly wrought in them, so that it shall be said of them, “And in their mouth was found no guile; for they are without fault before the throne of God.” Rev. 14: 5. What did Pilate say of Christ?—“I find no fault in him.” What is said of the people who are ready and are translated at the second coming of Christ?—“They are without fault.” That is to say, they are just like Christ; the character of Christ is wrought completely in them. But in order that this should be so, their lives must be in perfect harmony with the character of God, because Christ was a representation to the world of the character of God. He interpreted God to the world. But the law of God is a transcript of the character of God. It is a statement of what God is, and when the life of man is made in harmony with the law of God, it is then that he is without fault; it is then that he is like Christ. It is therefore necessary that the attention of the people who are to be translated should be called to the fact that in disregarding the Sabbath of the Lord they are, in that point, out of harmony with the life of Christ, and so out of harmony with the character of God; and if they are to be translated without seeing death, and if it is to be said of them that they are without fault before the throne of God, that defect in character must be remedied.
THE SABBATH CONTROVERSY.
And so just before the second coming of Christ the Sabbath truth must be preached; just before the second coming of Christ the people must be told what the meaning of Sabbath-keeping really is, and what day is the Lord’s day, and that, in choosing that day, they thereby take upon themselves the mark indicating that they belong to God; that they are trusting in the power of God in Christ for salvation, as against any rival power. So arises the Sabbath controversy, the calling the attention of the nations to the fact that the seventh day is the Lord’s day, the seventh day is Christ’s day, the seventh day is the day that God in Christ blessed and sanctified, that it has been given as a sign of the power of God in Christ.
TO COMPEL IS SATANIC.
It is a characteristic of Satan to compel, and every effort to compel in any way the consciences of men is Satanic. Every effort to compel the consciences of men in any way, whether it be the Sabbath or any other matter at issue, is Satanic. God wins by the power of love; God leaves every one free to choose; Satan tries to compel. And every law of any kind or nature tending to control, to bind men’s consciences in their relation to God, is purely Satanic. And every effort to put laws upon the statute books of this country, compelling any religious observance whatsoever, is an effort gotten up by, controlled by, and in the interest of, Satan. Every one who by vote or by voice helps on this work of compelling the consciences of men by law, is being used as an agent of Satan. It is purely Satanic from first to last, and the results will be Satanic. That is, these efforts will end in utter ruin and destruction; they will end in the utter ruin of any church that takes hold of them; they will end in the utter ruin of any State that is controlled by them; they will end in the utter ruin of every individual who yields obedience to them.
In every country Sunday laws are coming to the front. At the present time the agitation is world-wide. Everywhere the enforcement of Sunday-keeping by law is being agitated. It is the manifestation of a rival power against Jesus Christ, and the question is for every one, To whom shall I yield my allegiance? and the mark of whose power shall I receive?
The conception of a “civil Sabbath,” or the “civil side of the Sabbath,” is a recent invention, adopted under the stress of the situation, in order to open the door for Sunday laws.
Every effort to compel the conscience is Satanic, and the results will be Satanic. But while there is this power now being manifested in the earth, attempting to control the consciences of men in this very matter of the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath, there is an increasing power in the love of Jesus Christ, and it is drawing souls to him. It is drawing true Christians of every name and denomination to rally around the standard of Prince Immanuel. It is drawing everywhere those who hear the truth; they gladly turn to Jesus Christ and his power in salvation. “There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” Our hope can be well founded only when it is founded in Jesus Christ. And the Sabbath of the Lord, the day instituted by Jesus Christ himself, blessed by him, sanctified by him, and hallowed by him, is the sign to every Christian of his power to save. It is the measure of his Christian experience, his growth in grace, and his knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Receive Jesus Christ, the only Saviour, and receive his Sabbath, the sign of what he is to every one who believes in him.
THERE is an apparent shadow of truth in the observation, that the Catholic Church is better qualified than any other church “to grapple with” the strikes and the consequent riot and violence of “the labor problem” “by her hold upon the working masses.” And this because such “a fearfully large proportion” of the strikers, with their rioting and violence, are members in good and regular standing in that church! This is the hold which she has on the working masses. But here is the question: Having such a hold upon these striking, rioting, violent masses, why is it that she cannot so control them that there will be no danger of any of this evil work, which makes the “labor problem” such a serious and dangerous question to society and to the State? Having already such a hold upon these masses, that she owns the vast majority of them, body and soul, and yet being impotent to prevent any kind of evil or violence from them, what could possibly show more plainly that all this boasting about the Catholic Church being “the champion of law and order,” “the synonym of authority,” the “saviour of society,” etc., etc., is nothing but a downright, huge, and unconscionable fraud?
If there were any truth at all in these claims put forth in behalf of the papacy by Catholics, and sanctioned by “Protestants,” it would prove itself in the quietude and peaceful demeanor of the whole body of the membership of the Catholic Church. There would not be a single saloon keeper, nor a visitor of saloons, nor a user of intoxicants, among all the vast membership of that Church; there would not be a single prize fighter, nor a single rioter, nor a single striker, nor gambler, nor any uncivil person of any kind, among all her children. Instead of this being so, however, everybody knows, and facts of daily experience keep it ever within their knowledge, that the opposite is the truth of the matter, and that all these characters are found, and abide, in her communion for ever and everywhere; and that she has no power to prevent it. This is not saying that there are no characters of other kinds in her communion but these; it is only saying what everybody knows, that these characters are there, and she has no power to cause it to be otherwise. And that as she has no power to cause it to be otherwise; so all the claims put forth in her behalf as being the stay of civil order and the saviour of society are absolutely fraudulent.
THE plain, unvarnished truth is, that the papacy is so entirely the synonym of lawlessness, that the Word of God describes it as the “lawless one” and the very “mystery of lawlessness.” It is the
THREE is another fact in illustration of the point which we are making—that the Catholic Church is not in any sense the champion of law and order—and which is late enough to bear an air of considerable “freshness.” Thursday night, January 18, 1894, in Kansas City, Mo., an ex-priest was making a speech, when the meeting was broken up by a riot. As is always done in such cases, the “police,” instead of quelling the riot and arresting the rioters, arrested the speaker whom the rioters had attacked. Further proceedings are clearly enough described in the following dispatch to the Atlanta Constitution, a Catholic paper, January 21:—
KANSAS CITY, MO., January 20.—Had not the police authorities to-day taken extra precautions to guard the life of J. M. McNamara, the ex-Catholic priest, who lectured last Tuesday night when a riot occurred, he would probably have received rough treatment, if not lynched. At his preliminary hearing to answer to the charges of malicious libel and circulating foul and obscene literature, such a large crowd gathered that the authorities decided to transfer the hearing to the county jail, where McNamara was incarcerated. The news that the hearing was to be held there quickly spread, and a mob numbering fully 4,000 people gathered outside of the jail. A number of extra policemen were detailed to endeavor to keep the crowd in order. When McNamara was brought from his cell his countenance was very white. The court room was packed and the spectators regarded him with anything but friendly glances. When the case was called McNamara’s attorneys moved for a continuance, they not having conferred with him, and it was granted, not only for this reason, but because of the threatening aspect of the mob. The hearing was set for Thursday next.
Nobody will have any difficulty in deciding who these rioters were. Everybody knows well enough that this whole mob was made up of the “children” of “this glorious church,” which is confessedly so “largely represented” in the “hoodlum element” of the Nation. The despatch further states that a local paper declares that Mr. McNamara in his speech “said nothing that would warrant his arrest on the charges preferred against him.” This, however, is evident enough on the face of the report.
Proclaim Liberty Anew.
For twenty-five years the Christian Statesman labored arduously, hand-in-glove with the papacy, for “amendments to the Constitution,” and religious legislation to designate us as a “Christian nation,” as if religion could be legislated into human character, and consisted in empty words instead of earnest deeds.
Religion, like love or like death is a power uncontrolled by human laws.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”—Which is pure religion.
“For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness44of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” Rom. 8: 35-39; 10: 3, 4.
Religion is the power of God unto salvation, the supreme spirit of love, and is superior to all written instruments; and so let it remain. Christ's gospel was a proclamation of absolute liberty. Come every one that will. Choose ye. But the perfect freedom to accept exists alone upon the same freedom to reject. Therefore the wisdom of the framers of our great Constitution should be commended, declaring that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” showing conclusively that no State could give or force its citizens to receive its prescribed religion under penalty of imprisonment, with even the shadow of justice or of liberty of conscience.
Why do the heathen Romans rage and their people imagine a vain thing?—That Americans will become papal slaves, without liberty of conscience, or freedom of worship. Proclaim anew the law of liberty throughout the land!—Welcome Tidings.
The Cloven Hoof of the “Sabbath” Satan.
[The following article from the Truth Seeker is recommended to the careful consideration of the Boston Investigator and of Dr. Westbrook, late president of the American Secular Union. The “liberals” of the country are evidently getting their eyes open to the sophistry of the “civil Sabbath” plea. In this article the Truth Seeker errs only in applying the name “Christian” to things essentially antichristian. There are, properly speaking, no “Christian persecutors;” and Sunday, instead of being Christian, is essentially pagan and papal.]
THOSE who have kept themselves informed on the Sunday observance question know that nearly all the leaders in the movement are very restive when it is charged that they wish to compel the people to observe Sunday as a holy day. They make it their business to declaim against the union of Church and State and they are sharp enough to see that they will lay themselves open to the accusation of favoring such union if they advocate Sunday laws in the name of religion. They have invented several specious catchwords with which to deceive such of the people as might dangerously antagonize them should they frankly avow their purpose to make Christianity the State religion. They talk glibly and delusively of a “civil” Sabbath which shall be enforced in order to allow everybody (except preachers, church organists, sextons, ushers, choirs, et al.) to “rest” on Sunday, and they vary this siren’s song with considerable illogical and nauseating talk about the “morality” of Sunday reverence. But this pious pretense cannot be kept up all the time; not all the Sunday worshipers can be induced to talk discreetly—some will persist in making “unguarded statements” and thereby getting the whole Sabbatarian happy family into hot water. The latest to do this are some Boston clergymen, who have assembled themselves together and adopted these resolutions:—
We, the Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist ministers of Boston and vicinity, assembled in our Monday meeting, October 2, 1893, cordially unite with the Massachusetts Sunday Protective League in the following expression:—
In view of the deplorable increase in the issue of Sunday newspapers in Boston, we are constrained to renew our earnest protest against the Sunday newspaper, and our strong condemnation of it, as one of the chief agencies of evil in hindering our work.
Because it preoccupies the minds of its readers on the Lord’s day with secular things, from the contemplation of which the higher needs of human nature and the beneficent divine requirement prompt man then to rest;
Because it thus beguiles its readers to neglect and exclude from their thought those religious considerations on which all right character depends;
Because it thus indisposes its readers for public worship in the house of God, disqualifies them for it, and detains them from it to a degree that is rapidly changing the habits of large sections of our population, far and near;
Because in thus becoming a main instrument in breaking down the habit of public worship in our land it weakens the religious restraints which are indispensable to the stability of society, and thus becomes a foe to good order and a menace to our civilization.
We look with the deepest sorrow upon the unscrupulous and unpatriotic greed, and the inhumanity exhibited in the publication, distribution, and sale of the Sunday newspaper, trespassing upon the civic rest day of large numbers of railroad employés, newsdealers, and especially youthful carriers; and in view of the hearing now in progress before the railroad commissioners of this State in regard to special Sunday newspaper trains, we respectfully represent to that honorable board that it seems to us against public policy to grant special favor to any one line of business on Sunday.
Now, here are five reasons why these clergymen are opposed to the Sunday newspaper. Four of these reasons relate entirely to the religious aspects of the matter and only one bears upon the “rest” question. Then which is of the most importance in the eyes of the clergymen, and, consequently, which will most influence their actions in the attempt to secure the suppression by law of these papers, the religious or the secular relations of the problem? Is it not perfectly plain that the Sunday law advocates are working in the interest of religion, that they want to enforce the observance of Sunday because such observance will, in their opinion, advance the cause of religion, and that their talk about securing a day of “rest” for helpless workingmen is the sheerest humbuggery? No foe of the Sunday tyranny could have more clearly and succinctly stated the case for the opponents of Sunday laws than have these ministers in the foregoing resolutions, especially in the third and fourth. They are opposed to the Sunday paper, as they are to Sunday amusements and Sunday work, primarily and chiefly because such publications, recreations, and labor interfere with their work on their particular work-day. All these secular agencies help to curtail their influence and authority in the community and lessen their means of livelihood.
In the last resolution an “anchor is cast to windward;” a saving clause in regard to the “civil rest day of large numbers of railroad employés, newsdealers, and especially youthful carriers,” is introduced, but it is evidently very much of an afterthought, a secondary consideration which it was necessary to recognize somewhere in order to draw, if possible, some support from the so-called laboring classes. But labor is benefited, not injured, by the Sunday paper. There are always more men than there are places, and there can be no doubt that where superstition does not dominate, a sufficient number can be found who will gladly do this Sunday work, thus giving the “week-day” employés a chance to rest. As for the “youthful carriers,” meaning, without doubt, the newsboys, the Sunday paper is an immense assistance to them. Suppose that a daily journal issues one hundred thousand copies of its Sunday edition, which sells for five cents per copy, and that the newsboys get one and one-half cents of each five paid by the reader. This gives the boys fifteen hundred dollars in wages each Sunday for the one paper of one hundred thousand circulation. Then a good portion of the remaining three and a half cents finds its way into the workingmen’s pockets, being distributed in the composing room, stereotyping room, press room, paper mill, ink manufactory, and various other places. Of course much of this, in the absence of the Sunday paper, would have been drawn into the coffers of the church, but we cannot afford to weep with the ministers because of this diversion. . . . The daily newspaper proprietors are often cowardly and mean, loudly defending their own right to engage in business on Sunday, but joining with the Christian persecutors in hounding men engaged in less popular enterprises who try to earn a dollar on that day. But actions are more important than words, and hence the example of the Sunday papers is one making for the widening of the bounds of free and just action, spite of their verbal lapses at times.
The clergymen are right in their denunciation of the granting of special favors to one line of business, therefore we can never consent to give the preachers, a monopoly of Sunday. Let them take their chances with men and women engaged in all other occupations. Let each person select his or her own rest days and rest weeks and rest months and rest years. The hand of the Church must be kept off the helm of State. The priests must not be permitted to subvert and degrade justice in the name of physiology. We thank the Boston ministers for letting in the light of day upon the sinister designs of their junto. It is not the rest-day but the “Christian” Sunday for which they clamor and scheme. We know what they want and where they are. We shall have only ourselves to blame if we are ultimately beaten.