p. 384 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 24. (4/17/1893)

TO THE WORLD'S FAIR.

Weekly Excursions.

ARE you going? If so, it will be to your interest to call on, or write to, the undersigned before arranging for your trip.

The "Santa Fe Route" being the only line under one management from California to Chicago, we can offer you advantages, for a safe and pleasant journey, unsurpassed by other lines.

It is the only line running Pullman Palace and Tourist sleeping cars through to Chicago, every day, without change, on the same train.

Select Overland Excursions leave every Tuesday, with manager in charge through to Boston. Baggage checked to destination. Steamship tickets sold to and from all European points, via all the popular steamship lines. J. J. Warner, Agent, 972 Broadway, Oakland, Cal., or W. A. Bissell, G. P. A., 650 Market Street, Chronicle Building, San Francisco, Cal.

What Is Sunday Worth to Religion?

By Editor

"What Is Sunday Worth to Religion?" was the subject of a Boston Monday lecture by Rev. Joseph Cook some three weeks ago. Well, Sunday is worth just as much as any other of the secular days of the week. It is just twenty-four hours of probationary time allotted to men in which to repent, seek pardon, and prepare to meet their God in the Judgment. It is twenty-four hours of time in which the disciples of Christ may labor for their Master in the salvation of souls. It is twenty-four hours of opportunity for which all will have to render account for the manner in which the time is employed. Twenty-four hours may decide the fate of a soul; it may decide the wages of a lifetime. "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

The friends of the "American Sabbath" (as Sunday is now boastfully styled) claim that it has gained a "great victory" in the matter of the World's Fair at Chicago. So has alcohol, according to the same authorities. The "American Sabbath" gained a "great victory" at Washington in connection with the inaugural ceremonies—and so did alcohol. During the Sunday-closing contest in Congress several prominent political schemers plastered their unsavory records with a hollow reverence for Sunday, and already they have their reward in the fulsome praise of fawning churchmen. A vote or a speech in behalf of Sunday becomes the cure-all for political corruption. And this is just what some of the "reform" satellites that dance around the Sunday orb have been counting upon for years. As far back as 1874, in a convention at Pittsburg, Dr. Robert Audley Browne uttered these prophetic words:—

There is no more persistent man alive than the typical representative American office seeker. Of that class, the most of those who have not yet found whether they are for Christ or not, or who are openly decrying this movement, are ready to be its firm friends as soon as they acquire wisdom to discern the signs of the times, and are assured of its speedy success. They may pull back now at the hind axle, or scotch the wheels of the car of progress; but when they see it move, they will quickly jump in to get front seats, and avow they "always thought it was a good thing."

And now that the men who were thus prophetically pictured as designing hypocrites have done the work expected of them, the self-styled reformers show their own hypocrisy by lauding the virtues of those same "typical representative office seekers." They expected to win through the scheming duplicity of politicians, and, having won, they are ready to extol that duplicity as a crowning virtue.

The ex-queen of Hawaii makes quite a significant reply to the charges of Rev. Sereno Bishop that she still practices idolatry. From her printed explanation we clip the following paragraph:—

Old Hawaiian customs are dear to me, even if associated with a religion that to me most certainly is gone. When good American people decorate their houses and their churches with evergreen at Christmas would it be fair to say that they are at heart Druids? And yet everybody knows that the custom of hanging boughs and twigs at Christmas originated in the idea that certain gods could only live in the boughs of trees and would perish of cold if left in the bitter winter air. Is every girl that receives, or every man that sends, a valentine open to the charge of the idolatry of ancient Rome? And yet the custom of sending what we now call valentines is distinctly pagan in its inception.

As a recriminative retort, the ex-queen's parallel is pertinent, yet the observance of idolatrous customs—be they Hawaiian, German, or Roman—is idolatry; and it is none the less so because practiced by "good Americans" under the guise of Christian ceremony.

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.

By Editor

ON a recent Sunday evening the assistant pastor of the First Congregational Church of this city delivered a lecture on Sunday observance. The published report shows about as many incongruous things as could well be packed into a discourse. We give a few specimens:—

Mr. Rader dwelt upon the origin of the Jewish Sabbath, which meant rest, and the Christian Sunday, which meant worship.

As the "Jewish Sabbath" and the "Christian Sunday" are both creatures of the imagination, having no place in the Scriptures, he has a right to apply any explanation he chooses. But neither institution ever had any existence in fact. The Sabbath is not and never was "Jewish," and Sunday is not and never was "Christian." As to "the Sabbath of the Lord thy God" (see fourth commandment), which was "made for man," not merely for the Jews, and which Mr. Rader is pleased to call Jewish, it was under the Mosaic economy decidedly a day of worship, as anyone may know by reading the directions for its observance. It was always to be observed by a "holy convocation" and extraordinary sacrificial offerings. As to Sunday, it would be hard to tell, by the example of its votaries, especially in the church that claims its authorship, whether it is a day of worship or a day of pleasure. They are generally more concerned about compelling other people to observe the day than they are about their own observance of it.

Mr. Rader also explained why the Christian Sunday was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week.

This will be news to most people, as it is not generally known that "the Christian Sunday" ever occurred on the seventh day of the week. Such a claim certainly needs explanation.

After deploring the fact that California has no Sunday law, we are told by some who were present that he said he did not know for certain whether the last Legislature passed a Sunday law or not. When a man undertakes to preach on such a subject, he surely ought to post himself on so essential a point as that. The last Legislature did not pass a Sunday law; such a bill was not even introduced, although there were some petitions presented for such action.

Among the remedies suggested for the "malady" of Sunday nonobservance we notice this:—

Have a civil Sabbath, which shall have a religious motive.

On this erudite proposition, comment is unnecessary. We simply add that all civil Sabbath suggestions have a religious motive, although there is generally a disposition to hide the motive, trusting that a future public sentiment will permit the dropping of the civil feature. Our last Legislature passed a law forbidding the compulsory working of employees for more than six consecutive days, but the particular rest day is not designated. The advocates of a Sunday law express the hope that this law may some day be amended.

CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER.

By Editor

Editorial.—Notes and Comments—The Blessed Witnesses—Why So Many Will Be Lost...................................... 369, 370

Doctrinal.—Look Up (poetry)—The Life of the Word—The Second Coming of Christ—No Eternal Hell—Creation—Predestination....................................................................... 371-373

Miscellaneous.—The Report of the Spies (poetry)—Overcome as Christ Overcame—The Efficacy of Prayer—The Preciousness of God's Promises—Faith and Prayer and "Science" Healing—Abrahamic Faith—Is the World Growing Better?—The First Complete Bible............................................................................ 374-377

Home and Health.—He Knoweth Best (poetry)—Aunt Jane's Remedy—A Girl's Religion—The Art of Exact Expression—Tobacco Comfort—The Power of Appetite............................................................................... 378, 379

Mission Fields.—India, No. 9 (Zenana Schools)—Early Marriages in India................................................................... 380

Our Work and Workers.—A Worker's Prayer (poetry)—Preparing Discourses—From Our Island Missionaries—Field Notes, etc ............................................................................................ 381

International S. S. Lessons.—Wisdom's Warning (Lesson 5, Sunday, April 30, 1893)—The Coming of Christ Will Be Personal and Literal (Lesson 5, Sabbath, April 29, 1893).............................................................................................. 382

News and Notes.—Religious—Secular.................................... 383

Editorial.—Various Notes and Comments—Sunday Observance—Enforced Sabbath Breaking................................................ 384

The Highest Criticism of the Bible

THE highest and most important criticism that anyone can make of the Bible is to unquestionably believe it.

False Ideas About Honest Work

By The Whittier

In the eye of our American schoolboy the clerk who receives fifty dollars per month is a gentleman, while the mechanic who receives one hundred dollars per month is looked upon with a sneer. The miscalled education that begets in our rising generation such false ideas is worse than the ignorance of the unlettered.—The Whittier.

The Dangers of Nonproductive Education

The too-prevalent idea that educated people must dress in fine apparel, live in the town or city, and do only such work as will not soil their hands or exert their muscles, has ruined many a lad. The nonproductive classes are far too numerous in proportion to population, and many of our graduated non-workers are thrown on their wits to make a living and "keep up appearances." And their wits often bring them into disgrace.

ENFORCED SABBATH BREAKING.

By Editor

THE following in regard to a new feature of the Sunday-closing question at the World's Fair is from the San Francisco Examiner of the 9th inst.:—

It looks as if the friends of the "American Sabbath," who succeeded in inducing Congress to follow the virtuous way in demanding that the World's Fair be closed on Sundays, might witness a curious result of their achievement. The argument of the Sabbatarians was that the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of people suspending their ordinary vocations and entering a quiet park to contemplate the world's masterpieces of art and science, would destroy the sacred character of Sunday, and lead eventually to its transformation into a working day. It now appears that if the Fair shall be closed, that transformation will be effected without indirection or delay.

The workingmen in Chicago and the neighboring cities do not propose to be cheated out of the opportunity of seeing on one day in the week what their moral advisers can see in six. They are circulating petitions to their employers asking permission to work on Sundays and take their weekly holidays on Mondays, and the employers are responding cordially to the proposition. Thus the project is, to quote the Chicago Herald, that all the cities within a day's ride of the Fair—that is, within an area of some hundreds of thousands of square miles—"will see chimneys smoking, forges blazing, moulds seething, and lathes flying Sundays," and all to preserve the sanctity of the American sabbath. Sunday work will be forced upon the country to avoid the sacrilege of Sunday culture and recreation.

Fortunately, we are not yet reduced to this alternative. It is believed in Chicago that the action of Congress in attaching new conditions to a part of the souvenir half-dollar appropriation has relieved the directors from any obligation to observe the requirements of Sunday closing. In all probability they will order the gates to be opened on the workingman's day of leisure, and so the necessity for desecrating the sabbath by ordinary labor will be avoided.

THE Bulletin, of Des Moines, Iowa, says that in an address before the Evangelical Alliance at St. Louis, March 27, Rev. Henry George urged that the Sunday mails be stopped, with the argument that the "carrying of letters on the Sabbath is iniquitous." Dr. George is field secretary of the American Sabbath Union. He recounted the victories of the union in the World's Fair Sunday-closing strife, and then said:—

Our next fight will be to stop Sunday mails. We will go before Congress on that issue. That's the iniquitous traffic that causes one-quarter of a million of people to desecrate God's day. That's the abomination that makes trains run on Sunday, and makes the Sunday newspapers possible.

Resolutions indorsing the position taken by Dr. George were passed by the Alliance, and a committee was appointed to assist in putting an end to the "abomination."