p. 238 | Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 4, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 30

A Fulfillment of Prophetic Word.

COMMENTING on the action of the Senate in passing the proviso for the Sunday closing of the World's Fair, the Signs of the Times, Oakland, Cal., pertinently says:—

That the amendment of Senator Quay was unconstitutional did not seem to affect these grave senators in the least. Religious sentiment and rank hypocrisy triumphed. It was fitting that such an amendment should be introduced by a man the malodor of whose reputation has scented the whole country, and smelled even to the world beyond the sea—a man who has been charged by reputable papers with almost every crime which circles around “Thou shalt not steal,” yet who has never dared to compel these papers to prove their allegations by libel suit against them. No wonder that when he read the fourth commandment, in advocating his amendment, Senators Morgan and Harris called for the reading of the entire Decalogue. It is by just such unscriptural, unconstitutional, sentimental, and religio-hypocritical methods that Sunday laws and their consequent persecution will be brought about in this country. We do not hope to stem the progress of the work which is thus soon to culminate; God has declared in his word that it will come, and soon come. The Signs does not care whether the World's Fair gates are open Sunday or not; but we do wish faithfully to point out the certain indications of that spirit now controlling politics, which will crystallize itself in a repetition of the persecutions of the Dark Ages, around the Sunday observance question. It is simply a fulfillment of the prophetic Word.

This is an accurate view of the matter. As so forcibly said here, the vital question is not, Shall the Fair be open or shall it be shut? but, Shall the Congress of the United States go beyond the sanction of its Constitution and outside the legitimate limits of civil legislation to establish a union of religion and the State? It is against that that THE SENTINEL has made its earnest protest. The advocates of Sunday closing by congressional act have lacked either the intelligence or the candor to understand and acknowledge this. Indeed the acknowledgment of even the existence of such a position would be fatal to their views. They dare not permit its consideration.