American Sentinel, Vol. 8, No. 7
If Congress can do this in one case, can interpret the Bible in one point, it caPage 1
Earlier text: If Congress can do this in one case, can interpret the Bible in one point, it caExtract from the Speech of Mayor Washburne Before the House Committee.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: I was but recently notified that I might be called upon to speak before this committee. The subject is one of such vast interest, touching as it does the welfare of nine-tenths of our population, I do not feel at liberty to decline to speak for want of proper preparation. The issue now raised, in order that it may be intelligently settled, must be clearly drawn and distinctly understood. It is not a question of abstract right or wrong, it is a question touching the absolute right of a vast majority of our entire population, now numbering over sixty millions of people, to enjoy the benefits of this great international Exposition. It is also a question whether the Government of the United States will keep its faith with the nations of the world of all races and religions, which is contained in the invitation to join with us in this great international Exposition. The preamble of the act of Congress passed April 25, 1890, creating the World's Columbian Exposition says: “Whereas such an exhibition should be of a national and international character so that not only the people of our Union and this continent, but those of all nations as well can participate, and should therefore have the sanction of the United States, therefore be it enacted, etc.” When your honorable body used the words, “the people of our Union,” nothing less was meant, nor can these words be made to cover less than the entire people, and if it be our entire people for whom this exhibition has been created you must so legislate as to benefit a majority of those for whom you created this enterprise. You should not now legislate so as to deprive a majority of its benefits. If you legislate in favor of ten millions of those who protest against a Sunday opening, although they may be more numerous in this capital, and their voices may be the loudest in demands, you will not have complied with your obligations and the assurances you have held out, nor met the demands of the less noisy but more numerous fifty millions of people. Moreover this Exhibition created by Congress is in the act of its creation declared to be of international character “so that not only the people of our Nation and this continent, but those of all nations as well can participate.” This Exhibition is to be the work of all the peoples of every race and creed. The Mohammedan, and Hindoo, the people of China and Japan, all of whom know nothing of our Sabbath, the Jews who observe another day, the peoples of Europe who regard Sunday as a day of recreation, people without creed or religion as well as people of every creed and religion, will participate in this Exposition. To keep our faith with all these people, this Exposition must be managed and conducted in all respects as near as may be upon a common ground upon which all may come together. It is not Christian nations or people that you have invited but all nations,53 and it is because all the nations and peoples of the earth are asked to participate that you have declared that this Fair ought to have the sanction of the United States. I submit that good faith requires that the religious views, whether of a part or the whole of our people, in regard to Sunday observance or otherwise, should not be obtruded into the conduct of this Fair and upon the nations thus invited to participate by any act of our own national Government. Another branch of this question touches possibly a constitutional principle. If the demand be that which is commonly accepted as the demand, that the World's Columbian Exposition shall be closed upon the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, in order to testify to the world that this Nation as a Government recognizes the Christian religion as the religion of the land, if this be the ground upon which the closing of this Exposition is demanded, it is not justified by the principles of our Constitution. The Constitution of the United States framed by those whose wisdom has never yet been questioned, provided in Article 1, that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. The fathers of our Constitution appreciated too well the evils and abuses that might result from permitting the Congress of the United States to legislate at all upon matters of religion, or the observance thereof, or upon any question involving the religious beliefs of our people. They were descendants of a heroic people who had been persecuted and driven from the lands of their birth by such abuses of the functions of government. Our Constitution contemplates that so far as Federal legislation is concerned, religious beliefs and religious observances, as well with respect to days as to doctrines, shall be left untouched. You might as well impose upon the management of this Exposition the condition that a Jew, or a Hindoo, or Buddhist, or heathen, should be barred from its gates, as to say that the day of the week which is regarded as the Sabbath by a few of the people who are asked to participate should be observed. One is no less a violation of the spirit of the prohibition of the Constitution with respect to the powers of Congress than the other. If Congress is prohibited by the Constitution from making any law respecting an establishment of religion, if it could not properly impose conditions as to religious creeds or the observance of religious rites or ceremonies, it is, I submit, equally improper in any law to designate any day, season or time, and to compel its observance in obedience to any religion or creed. This would clearly establish a religion by Federal laws. And when you are asked to compel this Fair to close upon the first day of every week in order to recognize the Christian Sabbath, and in obedience to that religion, you are asked to do that which plainly violates the spirit of the Constitution of the United States. This would then be done in national obedience to, and national observance of, a religion. And if you can not close the Fair on Sunday on this ground, namely, as an act of national obedience to, and observance of, a religion which shall thus be recognized and followed in federal law making,—upon what grounds and for what reasons can you shut its gates in the face of fifty millions of our own people and of participating nations who do not know our Sunday, who now demand that it shall be opened? I am only asking of you that the spirit of our Constitution—that the welfare and wishes of a large majority of our common people—that good faith to the nations of this world, be considered and observed. A Candid Statement from the “Political Dissenter.”
By Editor
IN its issue of February 1, the Political Dissenter says this, editorially:— The opponents of the act of Congress making the closing of the World's Fair on the Sabbath a condition of the national appropriation for its support, appeal to the Constitution of the United States against that enactment. And this appeal is likely to prove the most effectual method of defeating the operation of that law. It is altogether probable, as we have noted elsewhere, that the Illinois legislature will put itself in direct opposition to Congress by enacting a bill authorizing the keeping of the Fair open on the Sabbath. The general ground for such a State enactment in antagonism to the act of Congress will be that by the very nature of our national Constitution Congress is forbidden to legislate on any subject touching religion. The fathers, it is maintained, framed for the Nation a fundamental law putting all religions on a level, so far as national action is concerned, and leaving the matter of religion entirely to the States. The act of Congress closing the World's Fair on the Sabbath will therefore be held to be unconstitutional, in that it legislates on a matter of religion at all, and specially in that it legislates on such a subject in respect to a Fair to be held within the territory of the State of Illinois. This will at least afford opportunity for the legislature of Illinois to pass its own act authorizing the opening of the Fair on the Sabbath. The directors of the Fair will not be slow to avail themselves of such State authority, in the face of any national opposition. By shrewd legal tactics the Fair will be kept open every day of the week to the end; and whatever may be the final verdict in the courts, the State and the directors of the Fair will thus have won a complete victory over Congress and the American Nation. Such a course is possible; and being possible, it is hardly to be doubted that it will be followed out. And for our own part, we believe that the Commonwealth of Illinois would be able to make out a strong case in its interpretation of the national Constitution, and of the powers of Congress under it. Congressional legislation on behalf of the Christian Sabbath, or any other Christian institution in the life of our Nation, has no adequate legal basis in our written Constitution. And sooner or later practical questions of this very nature will and must be raised as to its correct interpretation. The case in which the Supreme Court of the United States declared, as an obiter dictum, that this is a Christian Nation, did not raise this practical question as to the Constitution at all. But a case such as the Illinois legislature now has the opportunity to bring to an issue would touch this vital point. And even suppose that the State legislature might be defeated in the end; it nevertheless has the power to win a present practical victory. And this arises from the religious defect of the Constitution. If the written Constitution of the United States contained to-day such an acknowledgment of Christ and his law for nations as would furnish an undeniable legal basis for the recent enactment of Congress closing the World's Fair on the Sabbath, the legislature of Illinois would never dream of setting itself in opposition to congressional action so indisputably constitutional as this Sabbath-closing law would in that case be. And this is just the practical value of the proposed amendment. Is not this present argument for it conclusive? We shall still hope that if Illinois raises this issue, the Supreme Court of the Nation may decide that this is a Christian Nation, with an unwritten, vital, historical and providential Constitution that is distinctively and undeniably Christian, although much in our national life is out of harmony with it. Even in that case, the argument will remain in full force, that what is in the historical, vital, and unwritten Constitution, should be formulated in the written organic law. This is a very shrewd forecast of the possible outcome of the Sunday closing contest as it relates to the World's Fair. It is also a candid statement of the unquestionable unconstitutionality of the Sunday closing proviso and all other legislation in behalf of religious institutions or ceremonies. At the same time it is an unhesitating plea for a union of Church and State. If the Dissenter should retain the freedom and candor of expression which marks this editorial it will openly acknowledge very soon, the moment it perceives its wishes certain of being realized in either form, that what had all along been sought was the dominance of the State by the Church, and therefore a union of Church and State. The Rights of Christians.
[The Morning Times, of Oakland, Cal., publishes, editorially, these just and well considered strictures upon the false Christianity so much in vogue. When the Church departs from the example and teachings of Christ, it is no longer Christian.] WITH all deference to Christianity, and even to much which passes for Christianity and is not, we are compelled to note that there is coming to the front a dangerous sentiment which assumes that the rights of Christians as represented by the churches transcend the rights of other people. In other words, the churches, especially the ministry, are becoming unduly arrogant in their demands. The phrases, “This Christian people,” “This Christian Nation,” and others of like import, are paraded with an air that implies, “You stand aside, we are coming; we are entitled to first consideration.” This idea is emphasized by the assumption that to open a theater on Sunday night is an “insult” to a “Christian community,” and ought not to be “tolerated.” Toleration is the language of the autocrat, and implies the authority to coerce at will. Toleration has no place in the definition of the rights of a free people. In this (at least nominally) free country, there is no such doctrine as one class tolerating another. The theory of our Government is that “all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” There is no dictum as to how men shall pursue happiness. So far as the right to do so is concerned, one man has the same right to pursue happiness in the theater that another has to pursue it in the church. The theory of nearly all Christian sects is that man is a free moral agent. The Christian Church never assumed the authority to tolerate or to coerce, until it had so far degenerated from primitive principles as to become a persecutor of opponents. And when Christian ministers talk about a Christian community, as Christians, tolerating or not tolerating in a municipal sense, they assume a prerogative that belongs to the citizen as a citizen, and not as a Christian. Christians are the last people in the world that ought, even if in a majority, to deprive others of their rights as citizens; for in so doing they admit the right of their opponent, if in the majority, to deprive Christians of their God-given rights. They ought to remember how their brethren have been made to suffer in many ages and in many localities by the spirit of disregard for the rights of others. But such a spirit, though called Christian, is not Christian in a proper sense; and many, who are to-day pronounced infidels, are such only because they take for granted that all which passes in the name of Christ is Christian. A Christian is one who is like Christ. Now any one who will take the trouble to read the gospels will learn that Christ never asked the people54 or the law-making power to put down any public enterprise that happened to be inimical to his work. He never resorted to anything like retaliation or coercion, no matter what hindrances came in his way. When he went to a place and could not carry on his work because of the unbelief and hostility of the people, he simply went away and left them to themselves. Neither Christ nor his apostles ever sought either municipal or provincial or imperial enactments for the special benefit of their work; although wherever they went they found the conditions a hundred fold more unfavorable than in any part of California. They boldly proclaimed the gospel where it was treason to uphold any god but such as were recognized by a pagan government; but they asked no special favors, and asked no one to get out of their way. This is Christianity; to strive for the mastery by human right or power, by municipal ordinances or provincial laws, is common politics. If Christian churches would pursue their work in the same spirit as did He whom they profess to follow and proclaim, they would no doubt wield more Christian influence if not so much political power. Are We “a Christian Nation?”
[This comment on the opinion from Justice Brewer that this is “a Christian Nation” is reprinted in the Weekly Review from the St. Louis Republic. A CORRESPONDENT, commenting on the increasing tendency to make religious observance a matter of compulsion by the direct or indirect use of civil enactment, denies that the Supreme Court was sound either in the law or the evidence when it asserted this to be “a Christian Nation.” This, of course, was the language of the demagogue, the hypocrite, the Pharisee. We are not yet free from those who devour the substance of widows and, for a pretense, make long prayers; and whether these are in or out of office, they are the ones who are most urgent for compulsion as the handmaid of religion. These are the ones who always stand ready to appeal to Caesar and to force him, even when he is unwilling, to crucify every Christ who is sent to them. It was never intended that this should be “a Christian Nation.” It was intended that Christians, Jews, heathens, and infidels should live together here in full enjoyment of entire liberty of conscience. It was never intended that any Jew or any heathen should be compelled to ask any Christian or any number of Christians for toleration in America. It was asserted, on the contrary, that liberty of conscience is a matter of every man’s right, and not of the mere toleration of any government or any majority whatever. To a certain class of persons it seems hopeless that the doctrines of Christianity should ever make their way by their own inherent force. Of these, the disciple who cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant and then thrice denied his own Master was the type. They are continually attempting to draw the sword of the State to strike some one whom they regard as an enemy of religion; to cut off the power of some class in the community that they regard as inimical to Christianity. To them there is no meaning in the command, “Put up thy sword into the sheath;” and they can understand nothing of that self-sacrifice which, with power to call “legions of angels,” yet relies solely on the power of truth—on the compulsion that sooner or later truth, if there be no violence to convert it to error, must exert over reason. This is not “a Christian Nation,” and as long as Christianity is perverted into an excuse for using the force of the State it will be slow in becoming a Christian people. The truest Christianity we have is religious liberty. If we maintain it we will finally work out the highest possible type of religion by reaching a clearer and fuller understanding of what Christianity really means. If we lose it we lose everything. Does It Teach Apostolic Doctrines?
By A. Mallett
THE Apostolic Guide, that journal which advocates church unity, and at the same time persecution of those who refuse to keep Sunday, has this, under the heading, “Fighting the Sects:” It is never in order to fight other churches. It is our duty to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The evangelist must have love for truth and love for men in equal proportion. He must endeavor to persuade men of the truth of the gospel. If the Guide, and all others who are clamoring for Sunday laws, would follow this principle, there would be many more Christians than there are, for this is the plan which Jesus and his disciples followed, and which they left for all other believers to follow. It is the Christian’s duty to “persuade men of the truth of the gospel,” and not compel them. Christ taught this, and, if we are Christians, we shall do the same, for we shall be Christlike. Men would turn to the Lord if we went to them in this spirit, but it is impossible to make Christians by compulsion. They will pretend to be good, but the heart will be just as evil as ever. Is this the kind of Christians God requires? “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” It is heart-service that the Lord requires; the State would not make this kind of Christians, but only hypocrites. But one would think to read the foregoing quotation from the Guide that it endeavored to make Christians in the way Christ taught, that is, by persuasion. Does it? Let us see:— The State has the right to whatever is essential to existence. Moral teaching is essential to its existence. Hence, it has the right to moral teaching. No moral teaching can be secured without the observance of the Sabbath, or the Lord’s day. Hence, the State has the right to enact and to enforce laws suspending all unnecessary work upon that day. Certainly no legislation can compel people to be pious. But by proper and wise legislation the State can make it easy for people to do right. It can remove the hindering causes that at present keep an army of men at work upon railways, in post-offices, in express offices and in divers kinds of work which can be postponed without serious injury to any one. No power save that which originates from the weekly observance of the Lord’s day in Sunday-schools, in preaching and other religious training can pluck out immoral tendencies and supply the people with moral strength to resist temptation and equip themselves for the moral battles of life. The abolition of the Sabbath, or the Lord’s day, will abolish moral instruction. The abolition of moral instruction will ruin the State. The issue, therefore, resolves itself into the balancing of the injury inflicted upon a few men who hold to the observance of the Sabbath against that inflicted upon the whole State. It is better for a few Adventists to suffer than for the whole State to break to pieces by the complete desecration of the day. Is not the Guide somewhat inconsistent? It first says that Christians should do this by means of the Sunday-school, the pulpit, the observance of the Sabbath, and other religious training, and then argues that to make men religious the State has the right “to enact and enforce laws suspending all unnecessary work upon Sunday.” It then says, “Certainly no legislation can compel people to be pious.” What are Sunday laws for if they are not to make men religious? If they are not for this purpose, why does the Church interfere in such matters? What has it to do with civil affairs? Its business is to preach the gospel, and not to enforce civil law. The Guide is trying to bring about church unity, but it can not do this until it is more consistent in its teachings; until it stops “fighting the sects.” There can never be church union while one body of Christians is fighting another. It tends to destroy Christianity, and not to upbuild it. What has brought about the disunion that we see to-day? Nothing but a union of Church and State. There can never be church union while the State interferes with religious matters; because persecution of some of “the sects” is the inevitable result of a union of Church and State. The Guide professes to be Christian and to teach apostolic doctrines. Is it Christian? Does it teach these doctrines? It owns that this persecution is wicked in these words:— To “fight the sects” in a pugilistic spirit, with a pugnacious air . . . in the year 1892, is not only a manifestation of the “old Adam,” but a lamentable anachronism of ignorance. And yet it believes that for the good of the State those who believe and act contrary to its teachings should be punished. Is this consistent? This “fighting the sects” does not end with imprisonment, but death has been the penalty for keeping God’s commandments, and is to be, if this persecution is allowed to go on. It was so in the Dark Ages, and always is the case when the State has the interpretation of the law of God. It is not true that the State has a right to enforce moral teaching because it can not exist without it. It can exist without it, because religion and the State are entirely separate things. Irreligion does not necessarily harm men civilly, only morally, therefore the State has no right to interfere with it. The State can punish a man for getting drunk, because he is liable to harm his fellow-man; but if he is irreligious, he does his fellow-man no civil harm by being so. If a man has the love of God in his heart he will do good, no matter how much immorality he sees around him. The Guide argues that if men do not keep Sunday, or keep some other day than Sunday, it is a degradation to society. This alone shows that there is no sacredness in Sunday, because if it were a sacred day those who observe it would keep it from love, and would not turn from it because others do. The non-observance of the Sabbath by others would have no effect upon them. The Guide says: “It is undoubtedly true that the Adventist has the right to live.” How long would they have this right if the State continued to interfere with their religion. Or, in other words, if religious bigots had their way, how long would it be before the Adventist would be shut from society altogether? How long before he would be told to stop preaching his heretical doctrine? Human55 nature has not changed since the apostolic age, not even the Apostolic Guide. There is that same jealous spirit; that same wrong idea that the majority must rule in matters of religion; that same wrong idea that the State should enforce religion. If the Guide is Christian, it ought to be able to see that these are erroneous ideas. Governments are instituted to protect the minority in their rights, but there would be no protection for them if the government were ruled by a majority of religionists. They would be compelled to believe as the majority believed, whether that belief was right or wrong, or else suffer the penalty. Why is it we see so much infidelity in the world to-day? It is only because there is not Church unity; because Christians are not consistent; because one sect persecutes another. How can Christians be the means of converting an infidel when they do not follow the teachings of the Bible; when they say that the first day of the week is the Sabbath and the Bible teaches that the seventh day is; when they teach that the State should enforce religion, and the Bible teaches that it should not, but on the contrary, that they should be entirely separate. When Christians will live and teach consistently with the teachings of the Bible, then men will see that there is a power in the gospel; that Jesus Christ is able to save from sin. This alone will bring Church union. But the Guide does not see this. The Bible and God are nothing; the State is everything, and from thence it seeks its power, and not from God. It does not care how a few good, honest, God-fearing men suffer so long as Sunday is exalted, for it says:— The legislator must decide between the abolition of the Sunday law and the consequent injury inflicted upon public morals, and the enactment and enforcement of Sunday law and the consequent injury inflicted upon a few Adventists. The good of the State is to be weighed against the good of a few men whose religion is a greater anachronism than the Blue Laws. The legislator must decide who are Christians and who are not. The legislator must decide what is sin; not God. The Government must punish these “few Adventists” for this fearful sin of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath when by the law of the land the first day is made the Sabbath. Which is right, to obey the State, or God, in matters of religion? Let the Bible answer: “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.” Commingling of Church and State.
RELATIVE to the ruling of the Supreme Court of the State of Nebraska, dated November 11, 1892, in which the State’s Sunday laws were upheld on the declaration that they were based on divine law, Der Lutheraner says under above heading:— A State acts properly and in a way commendably when enacting Sunday laws, as Luther says, “for reasons of bodily necessity, taught and demanded by nature. And this in the interest of the great multitude, of man and maidservants, who ply their work and handicraft the whole week, so they too may retire a day for rest and recreation,” and for the further purpose of protecting citizens that observe the Sunday, in the exercise of their religion. But, alas! this finds no expression in those laws. And now the Supreme Court of a State decrees with emphasis that its Sunday law is not merely a civil enactment, but a religious one! By no means, therefore, should we tire in our testimony against commingling of Church and State. Der Lutheraner is the official organ of the German Joint Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States, representing upwards of twelve hundred ministers and sixteen hundred congregations. Individual Immortality Dependent upon Sunday-Closing.
By W. A. Colcord
The Union Signal of January 5, 1893, delivers itself of the following remarkable utterances, staking all, even the hope of heaven itself, upon the closing of the World's Fair on Sunday, and the preservation of what it terms “our American Sabbath” by law:— Open Fairs, museums, etc., on Sunday “for the laboring classes” mean inevitably in the end no Sabbath for the laborers or any one else. Unless we are prepared to accept this alternative of no Sabbath at all, we must never consent to an open Fair on Sunday. To the Christian, the question is of far more serious import, for the annihilation of our day of rest is also the annihilation of our day of worship, and, to many, of almost the sole opportunity for religious development. It is a deadly blow at Christianity, and in Christianity center all the hopes of our Nation's life. . . . Our hope of immortality as a Nation, and our hope of immortality as individuals is the same.—Union Signal, January 5, 1893. In other words, to sum the whole thing up, these Sunday-law fanatics hold that should they fail in compelling every body to keep Sunday they themselves could not keep it, and would therefore stand no show of obtaining eternal life! What wild, what extravagant, what perverse ideas do they hold? The gospel of the Bible teaches that immortality is dependent upon individual acceptance of Christ, with nothing whatever said about keeping Sunday or the “American Sabbath.” Surely the gospel of the Sunday-law people and the gospel of Jesus Christ are not the same. A Peculiar Juxtaposition.
THE Mail and Express, of January 30, and 31, contains editorial texts and news items in such relation to each other as will appear to Seventh-day Adventists both suggestive and strikingly apt, though of course quite unintentional. The scriptural text at the head of the editorial column of the issue of January 30, is:— Deceit is in the heart of them that devise evil; but to the counselors of peace is joy. In the news columns of the same issue is this:— For violating Sunday laws,—Seventh-day Adventists on trial in Tennessee. Eleven Seventh-day Adventists were placed on trial in the Henry County criminal court at Paris this morning for violating the law of Tennessee by working on their farms on Sunday. The day following the scriptural text is this:— He shall not fail nor be discouraged till He have set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law. And the accompanying news item is as follows:— Seventh-day Adventists meet. The Seventh-day Adventist Ministers' Institute is in session here. (Battle Creek, Mich.) Over four hundred ministers are here and about fifty are arriving daily. They represent nearly every portion of America, South Africa, England, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries. This Institute is preparatory to the thirtieth International Conference, which begins here February 17. An application of these texts, to the incidents narrated under them, may be made by the denomination in question, which is not only striking but significant. Certainly, deceit has shown itself to be in the heart of those who desire evil against the Seventh-day observers on trial in Tennessee, but in the heart of the persecuted, whose counsel to all men is peace, is joy. They know their God will not fail nor be discouraged, and that he is now sitting in judgment on the earth, while the isles which have waited for his law are receiving it; and that the convocation and conference noted is another assurance of this. In referring to the work of the AMERICAN SENTINEL the Christian Statesman, of December 24, says:— As we have said before, twenty-six thousand Seventh-day Adventists circulate more millions of papers against the Sabbath than twenty-six million friends of the Sabbath circulate thousands in its behalf. The whole country ought to be sowed knee deep with Sabbath Reform literature, to refute the shallow sophistries of good men and bad as to Sunday opening of the World's Fair and other schemes of infidels and money grabbers thinly disguised as movements for the poor or for “pure religion.” But who will provide funds for a part of them? By “Sabbath” the Statesman means Sunday. By “Sabbath reform” is meant Sunday laws, to promote a stricter observance of the day. But Sunday is not “the Sabbath,” and a reform can not take place on what never was. The only true Sabbath reform is a reform on the only true Sabbath, and that is the seventh day. See Ex. 20:8–10; Isa. 58:13. This reform God has predicted, and seventh-day keepers are now the only ones enlisted in the work for the Sabbath. Every paper, tract, and page circulated for Sunday and Sunday laws is against, not Seventh-day Adventists, but the Lord God of the Bible and his Sabbath. We are glad Adventists are doing so much; they ought to be doing ten times more. The truth and love of the Lord Jesus Christ and precious souls for whom he died, as well as the rapidly passing moments, demand a tenfold deeper consecration and zeal in God's work. But shall we suggest to the Statesman the cause of the apathy of friends of Sunday?—It is this: The majority of them down deep in their hearts believe neither in the day nor the methods to promote it.—Signs of the Times. PERSONAL responsibility to God ought to be a principle which should enter into every transaction of life. That “every man must give account of himself to God” is a solemn truth of Scripture. We are therefore personally responsible to God. No society or organization or body politic of which we may be a part has any claim upon us which ought for a moment to transcend this obligation. In mere matters of opinion, where moral principles are not involved, in matters where our duties lie in the same lines and are based on the same principles as these organizations, it is good to have company, and in union there is strength. But where moral principle is involved, we should not follow a multitude to sin. Let personal responsibility to God rule. Acting as in his sight, for his sake who bought us, will but unite us in God’s own better way with all the good in the universe. Although under the power of the enemy this may seem to leave us alone, leave it with God, and endure “as seeing Him who is invisible.”—Signs of the Times. PROSECUTIONS for working on Sunday are gradually becoming the recognized order of the day,—the arraignment of six men for violation of the Sunday law, on February 5, in this city, is recorded as follows:— Louis Prague, of Prague Bros., shirt manufacturers, No. 474 Broadway, and Philip Krulewitch, a clothing manufacturer, No. 524 Broadway, were arraigned in the Tombs Police Court yesterday, charged with working on Sunday. Prague had thirty hands working and Krulewitch three. They swore that they observed Saturday as a holiday, and were discharged. Three Sabbath-breakers were also arraigned in the Jefferson Market Police Court, viz.: Max Krouse, No. 20 Sixth Avenue; Joseph Leventhan, No. 64 Sixth Avenue, and Bernard Pellstickers, of No. 116 Sixth Avenue. The last named keeps a saloon and was charged with violating the excise law. The others are clothing dealers. Justice Koch held all in $100 each for trial in the Court of Special Sessions. Patrick Shea, of No. 511 Pearl Street, a foreman in the employ of F. M. Hausling, was in the Tombs Police Court yesterday, charged with violating the Sunday law in continuing the work of tearing down the buildings Nos. 64 to 68 Broadway. Shea was held in $300 for examination by Justice Ryan. Those who obtained their discharge by swearing that they were observers of the seventh day were subjected to civil surveillance of their religion precisely the same in character, though not in kind, as they would have been forced to submit to in Russia. And as to those who were held, where is the distinction between the unwarrantable authority exercised over them here and similar arrests, for the sake of religion, in the dominion of the Czar? In its issue of January 29, the New York Sun said in reference to the Sunday opening of the World's Fair:— No, Congress must insist, whether in the interests of religion and reverence or in obedience to the custom and sentiment of the American people, that the Chicago Fair shall be closed on Sunday if it is to receive pecuniary aid and official recognition from the Government of the United States. Close the Chicago Fair on Sunday! Close it tight! The Sun said in an editorial paragraph, on October 7, 1892. The Woman Suffragists have resolved in favor of opening the Chicago Fair on Sundays. The Fair grounds are already open to visitors, and the attendance is increasing. On a recent Sunday fifteen thousand persons passed through the turnstile. During the week the average daily attendance was three thousand. Most of the visitors to the park on Sunday are laboring men and their families. The worthy Col. Elliott F. Shepard is in Chicago working—yea striving with the brethren—to keep the Fair closed against the workingman. Colonel Shepard is a good man. What becomes of the keen edge of the Sun’s irony in this paragraph when compared with its editorial shout in January—“Close the Chicago Fair on Sunday” against the workingmen! “Close it tight!” The Sun once itemized its editorial views about the efforts of the Barbers’ International Union to obtain Sunday laws, forbidding Sunday work in barber shops, thus:— Why should the Barbers’ International Union ask the State legislature to enact laws prohibiting all the barbers of the United States from plying their razors on Sunday? There is no law in any State requiring barbers to engage in Sunday shaving. Every barber in the country is at liberty to refuse to shave anybody, or trim anybody’s beard, or cut anybody’s locks on Sunday. Any barber has the right to close and bar his shop every Sunday of the year. The International Barbers’ Union had better let the legislatures of the States attend to public affairs while its members regulate their own business. This is sound doctrine. The Sun should have applied the same doctrine to legislation for the Sunday closing of the World’s Fair, and, realizing the fact that there is no law in Illinois requiring exhibitors at the World’s Fair to exhibit on Sunday, been willing that every exhibitor should exercise his individual right to close his exhibit every Sunday if he saw fit. Has the Sun forgotten to apply its own injunction and let Congress attend to public affairs, while the exhibitors at the World’s Fair attend to their own business?