READ the article on page 34, "Facts vs. Ridicule." It is brief but to the point. "Facts are stubborn things;" true the ones given in this article are not new, but a good many people seem to have forgotten them or overlooked them entirely.
THE Adventist cases soon to be tried in Paris, Henry County, Tenn., will be reported for the SENTINEL by one of the editors who is on the ground for that purpose. These reports will be valuable, and every friend of religious liberty ought to have the papers containing the facts relative to the Tennessee persecution, not only for his own reading but to put into the hands of others. We can not now tell in just what numbers the reports will appear, nor in how many, but the papers will be furnished at the rate of one cent per copy.
BOTH houses of the Illinois legislature recently passed a resolution asking Congress to repeal the Sunday-closing proviso in the World's Fair bill, whereupon the ministers of Springfield called a mass-meeting of the people of that city to protest against the action of the legislature. The meeting was extensively advertised, but only about two hundred persons were present, nevertheless, the resolutions set forth that “we, the citizens of Springfield, assembled in mass-meeting do most respectfully yet earnestly protest,” etc.
AT COIN, Iowa, September 20, 1892, Rev. W. F. Crafts made the statement that “by writing letters twenty ministers in Kentucky made the congressmen from that State believe that the whole State was in favor of the Sunday closing of the World's Fair.” Is not this plan being worked now on a much larger scale? And are not comparatively few people, under the leadership of the Sunday preachers, making congressmen think that the whole United States is in favor of Sunday closing?
THE Mail and Express says that “the World’s Fair Directors are committed to Sunday closing. By every consideration of honor and good faith they are bound to respect and observe the specific condition of the congressional contribution of 5,000,000 of Columbian half dollars to provide for the expenses of the celebration. The condition was that the Fair should be closed on Sunday. They accepted the congressional grant under these conditions, and by consequence they are bound by both moral and legal obligations to either surrender the grant or to acknowledge and enforce the condition.”
Why committed to Sunday closing? If Congress had power to close the Fair has it not also power to open it? If it had power to impose the Sunday-closing condition has it not at least an equal right to release the directors from that condition? Or is it only the Sunday advocates who have a right to ask anything of Congress?
CONCERNING the effort now making to repeal the religious legislation pertaining to the World's Columbian Exposition, the Christian Advocate, of this city, says:—
We believe the American Sabbath to be in great peril, and the crisis at hand. Hence we write at length, in the hope that every lover of God and his country whom we may reach, will be roused to do his utmost to save the day from being dishonored in the face of the world by our Government.
This reveals clearly the real purpose of Sunday closing; it is to exalt the day. “Every lover of God” is exhorted to rally to the support of a day of which God says nothing, except to tell us in his word that he worked upon it and to, inferentially at least, command us to work upon it also. “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work” includes the first day. Is it not blasphemy to thus thrust in the face of the Almighty a day which he has never claimed, and to devote to secular uses the day which he sanctified and blessed and commanded to be kept holy?
“THERE is method,” says the Independent, “in the madness of the Russian Baltic provinces in their persecution of Protestantism. The latest step taken is the appointment of a commission who have made up lists of books which can be read by the youth of the provinces. It has been decided that all books in the school libraries not on these lists are to be removed at once. As the commission consists of members of the orthodox church, they naturally condemn all books that can be considered dangerous to the interests of that church.” And why not? if the empire is Christian it follows that the government must guard its subjects against any taint of heresy.