■ WM ■ ■B .• ♦*'** > v v. S\ /.-.% BOOKS BY REV. WILBUR F. CRAFTS, Ph. D. S abbath for Man. Cloth, $1.50. The Civil Sabbath. Paper, 15c. Practical Christian Sociology. Cloth, $1.50. The March of Christ down the Centuries. ("Social Progress" Revised.) Cloth, 50c; paper, 25c. Readin g the Bible with Relish. 365 Brief Bible Readings for Home Worship, Chapel Exercises, etc. Paper, 15c. Must the Old Testament Qo ? Cloth, 30c; paper, 15c. Teachers' Edition, Revised Testament. Cloth, $1.50. New Testament Helps. (Appendix of last.) Paper, 20c. Talks to Boys and Qirls about Jesus. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50c. Before the Lost Arts. Cloth, 40c; paper, 25c. Heroes and Holidays. (Children's Sermons.) Cloth, $1.25. The Temperance Century. Cloth, 75c; paper, 35c. Successful Men of To=day. (Revised and Enlarged.) Cloth, 75c; paper, 25c. BY REV. AND MRS. W. F. CRAFTS. Plain Uses of the Blackboard. Cloth, $1.00. BY MRS. W. F. CRAFTS. Pocket Quarterly. 10c. each ; 40c. per year. Outlines for Primary Teachers. Paper, 10c. Letters to Primary Teachers. Cloth, 50c; paper, 25c. Songs for Little Folks. Boards, 35c. Little Pilgrim Songs. Boards, 35c. BY DR. AND MRS. WILBUR F. CRAFTS AND MISSES MARY AND MARGARET W. LEITCrL Protection of Native Races Against Intoxicants and Op ium. Cloth, 75c; paper, 35c. Prices named include postage. Samples of reform leaflets and docu- ments sent free to all who apply with stamp. The International Reform Bureau, 103 Maryland Avenue, n. e., = Washington, D. C. §Unumbtr % Sabbatfx bag to hn$ it Ijolg, jfe bags sjralt tjmn labor anb bo all tjrg ioorh ; but i\t %zhtrd\ bag is tbe Sabbatj) 0f % Iforb tj}g dob : in it tjron sjmlt not bo ang foorh, fyon, nor tjrg son, nor if)g bangjrte, tjrg manstrbant, nor ijjg maibswbant, nor tjjg rattk, nor tljg stranger tfmt is foitljin tj)g gates : for in si* bags % i^orb mab* J|,eabm anb *artjr, i\z sm, anb all tjrat in i\tm is, anb xmid\ i\t s*bmt{) bag : tojrmfor* i\t Ifrrrb MUsstfcr i\t Sabbat^ bag, anb fmllototb it. AND mcltne our ijearts to Uttp tijts ILato. THE SABBATH FOR MAN A STUDY OF THE ORIGIN, OBLIGATION, HISTORY, ADVAN- TAGES AND PRESENT STATE OF SABBATH OBSERVANCE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE RIGHTS OF WORKINGMEN BASED ON SCRIPTURE, LITERATURE, AND ESPECIALLY ON A SYMPOSIUM OF CORRESPONDENCE WITH PERSONS OF ALL NATIONS AND DENOMINATIONS REVISED AND ENLARGED TENTH EDITION. [Copyright, 1894.] Rev. WILBUR F. CRAFTS, Ph.D., Author of " The Civil Sabbath" " Successful Men of To-Day" ''''Practical Christian Sociology" ^Protection of Native Races against Intoxicants and Opium" etc. " The Sabbath was made for man."— Mark 2 : 27. "The cause of God, the cause of nations, and pre-eminently the cause of the workingmen." — Catholic Presbyterian. "Here is a question where men who differ on other subjects may stand together. The Protestant and the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran and the strictest Puritan, have alike an interest in maintaining our Sunday law." — Rev. W. W. Atterbury, Secretary of New York Sabbath Committee. THE INTERNATIONAL REFORM BUREAU, 103 Maryland Ave., n. e., WASHINGTON, D. C. vOn Ul* Leaping with Thee from seven to seven, 'Till that we both, being tossed from earth, Fly hand in hand to Heaven." -WITH THT SEX/r ntu _DAY_R_CSX y — Faber, DR. HAEGLER S CHART. Beginning on Monday morning, each downward stroke marks the daily expenditure of energy, and the upward stroke the nightly re- covery, which does not rise quite to the height of the previous morn- ing ; so that there is a gradual decline during the week, which only the prolonged rest of the Sabbath repairs. The downward line shows the continuous decline of the forces when they are not renewed by the weekly rest. See Der Sonntag, vom Standpunkte der Gesundheitsp- /lege, etc. Trwa. Ufa" oJL^ THE SUNDAY LINE.' Merictiatf 1 ' t s The days overlap on the Pacific, so that persons on different sides of the 180th parallel have the same sunrise and sunset, and yet with the one it is Saturday, and Sabbath with the other. Seamen change their calendar on crossing the 180th parallel, which is called "The Sunday Line" on that account. [From •" Day of Rest," by Rev. James Stacy, D.D., Ncwnan, Ga., by permission ,j also cut opposite. See Appendix (982), (985).] SABBATH MAP OP TNt WORLD. t-V&A. I. "Distpicts uncUr CKrJ-sliort Government* t6ot encourage $e J^rtglo-^rocncar 1yf>« of SoVbotfi Observe nee. 2. T^'lsWcts under Christie nG over^meots t&af eocouraaf tne Continental Sunc 7r. "Bi«»tnc1s under Christie n Governmfcnts r8©t fevoro ^emi-£onfitvn1al ^>und 4. T3i«tric*9 ur*ltr HW Kr4 class of CbrlslioaGovemroerils H^ cUt.nq.uisn HW Lorcls-T>ov only by Custom ftavirxj no 'punday Low . * £.r*Jar T^stPlCT* ««&«• &i fkcor^ Cla^cf |||lj| Christian Governments . ^^ fc. UncHr^t.oo Governments *&.cn dislioguisR t«e fjgljl Lord's -day by la>^ . HNflj 7 £obba&le« countries. !^^ coitions ^ tftt ^abfoatf even In t*c« ^obbol* less I and* . J After the whole world had been completed according to the perfect nature of the number Six, the Father hallowed the day follow ing, the Seventh, praising it and calling it holy. For that day is the festival, not of one city or of one country, but of all the earth ; a day which it is alone right to call the day of festival for all people, and the birth- day of the world. — Philo, Creation of the World, chap. 30. This Fourth is not a commandment for one place, or one time, but for all places and times. — D. L. Moody, at San Francisco, Jan. 1st, 1881. Christianity has given us the Sabbath, the Jubilee of the whole world, whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the phi- losopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Address to Harvard Divinity School, 1838. The use of the Sabbath, as it began, will end only with the world itself. — Bishop Horsley, Sermons, p. 444. The Lord's-day is not the day of God only, it is the day of human- ity. This is the true democratic festival — this day of God and man. And yet this is the day which certain friends of the people wish to deprive them of — false friends that cheat them with the name of Lib- erty, thinking only of their bodily needs, and not wisely even of those. ■ — Pere Hyacinthe (M. Loyson), at Geneva Conference. The Sabbath stretches through all ages — affects all men in every period of time — distinguishes the true servants of God from the wicked, more than any other ordinance — upholds the visible profes- sion of religion before the eyes of mankind — keeps up the face and aspect of Christianity in the world — is the most direct honor that a man can pay to the name and will of the ever-blessed God— and will never cease in its authority here till our Sabbaths on earth give place to that eternal Sabbath of which they are the pledge, the preparation. — Daniel Wilson, Late Bishop of Calcutta, Seven Sermons on the Lord's-day. OUTLOOK. 1884. Will the coming man keep the Sabbath ? If so, will it be his holi- day or his holy day ? Will Scotland's Sabbath displace the Conti- nental Sunday, or be displaced by it ? Will New England's restful and worshipful Sabbath extend its leaven at last to the Pacific coast, or will Cincinnati's convivial and commercial Sunday cyclone its way to the Atlantic ? Her recent riot, as I shall show, throws a lurid light en the curse of Sunday saloons, while, by contrast, statistics from Scotland, Ireland and Wales show the blessings of " Sunday closing." The recent discovery and publication of " The Teaching of the Apostles" shortens and simplifies the argument for the change of the Sabbath to the first day of the week, and suggests some improvements upon our usual modes of Sabbath observance. Recent archaeological discoveries in Assyria, China and elsewhere bring us new materials for the argument from Pagan traditions for the division of time by weeks and Sabbaths at the very beginning of human history. Recent movements in Europe shed fresh light on the Continental Sunday as related to labor and morals. These new developments in connection with the Sabbath call for a new consideration of the subject, that we may give the best possible reasons for the faith that is in us, to those who are not persuaded of the obligation and advantages of the Sabbath as a day of protected rest and worship. The Sabbath also needs a full consideration in all its aspects. A single sermon or article is apt to arouse more questions than it settles. The civil Sabbath and the religious Sabbath require separate but connected consideration ; so also the patriarchial Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, the relation of Christ and Paul to the Day, the change to the first day of the week, the relation of Romanism and the Reformation to the Continental Sunday, the ancient Puritan Sabbath, the modern Anglo-American Sabbath, together with the questions involved in Sunday railroads, Sunday mails and Sunday newspapers. These links in the argument for Sabbath observance cannot be IO OUTLOOK. Btrongly forged and interlocked in a leaflet or a lecture, but call for a series of papers. The Sabbath also requires a harmonious and connected treatment. The papers and addresses presented at Sabbath conventions make valuable books, but do not remove the necessity for a volume covering the whole subject in harmonized chapters. The Sabbath furthermore requires a treatment whose scope is not local but world-wide. Steam has brought the whole world into neigh- borhood ; the Bible has brought it into brotherhood. The Sabbath customs and laws of each land affect every other land. No city or nation liveth to itself. If the United States allows Sunday trains, Canada finds it next to impossible to wholly prohibit them. Lax Sab- bath observance in Christian lands, by means of their tourists and traveling merchants, weakens the Sabbath observance of missionary converts in heathen lands, where the Sabbath is the very citadel of Christianity. If the Continental Sunday grows better or worse, Great Britain and the United States feel the change at once in the living tide that flows thence by travel and emigration. Every large city is a miniature world in its population, and so feels the influence of every upward or downward movement of law, or sentiment, in any part of the earth. There is now no country where some do not keep the Sabbath, and whatever victories or defeats come to the cause of Sabbath observance in any land, affect it in every other. Nothing therefore seems so un- speakably selfish as for 'a man in this age to test the question as to what he may do on the Sabbath by asking, " Will it do me any harm ?" Every question about Sabbath observance should be meas- ured by its effect, not on " me" but on " man, 1 ' for whom in his world- wide home, " the Sabbath was made." In order to give such a world-wide view of Sabbath observance, I have gathered, by correspondence with more than two hundred per- sons, residing in nearly every nation of the world, reliable reports about Sabbath observance as it is, compared with what it was, and what it should be. Warned by the mistakes of other travellers, I have not relied upon my own observations as a transient visitor in most of these countries, but have supplemented and corrected my own impres- sions by conversation and correspondence with reliable residents in each case. These persons represent not only all nations, but also all denominations, and include missionaries, travellers, ministers, mer- chants, doctors, judges, lawyers, editors, policemen, railroad-men, and workingmen of all kinds, to whom grateful acknowledgment is due for the valuable aid which they have thus rendered. OUTLOOK. II INTRODUCTION TO ENLARGED SIXTH EDITION, 1892. This book has been revised* and republished in the very thick of the fight over the proposed Sundayf opening of the World's Fair. It is passing strange that our people have not all seen, in the recent turmoils of the French and Spanish republics, captivated by such ad- venturers as Boulanger and Balmaceda, each of whom nearly led his republic to suicide before he took his own life, that a people who spend their Sabbaths in toil, and play, and politics, can never develop enough intelligence and conscientiousness to safely and permanently govern themselves. But humanitarian and patriotic reasons for the Rest Day, strong as they are, cannt>t save it. Continental history proves that con- science must also be enlisted. God alone is a match for greed. We must preserve the Sabbath as the Lord's Day or we cannot save it as the Rest Day, the Home Day, the weekly Independence Day. This book is issued just on the eve of the World's Annual Week of Prayer for the Sabbath, the first week of April. The same week the Colum- bian Commission at its Spring meeting in Chicago will probably decide whether the World's Fair shall defy or obey the Sabbath laws of God and of our country. Surely this is a loud call to prayer, and whatever the decision shall be, we shall need to be instant in prayer to defeat defeat or to complete victory. * So far as the statements made in the former editions of this hook are not still ap- propriate, they have been changed or supplemented. To find all that the book con- tains on any topic, the alphabetical index at the end of the book should be consulted. _t While we recognize the proper use of the word " Sunday" in characterizing such things as are not in harmony with the law and design of the Sabbath, as, for example, " Sunday amusements," " Sunday excursions," " Sunday newspapers," we put on record our conviction that the proper designations of the day of rest and worship are, the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. — Resolution o/ the Western Pennsylvania Sabbath Association. THE KIND OF REPUBLICS HOLIDAY_SUNDAYS MAKE. 12 OUTLOOK. INTRODUCTION TO SEVENTH EDITION, 1894. The Sabbath has won its Waterloo in the official votes at Washing- ton and Chicago on Sabbath-closing of the World's Fair, and if this victory is promptly and properly followed up in Congress §* and in our States and cities, the Continental Sunday of toil and dissipation, the worst of foreign invaders, will soon be driven from our land. Some have attached undue importance to the fact that after the Fair had begun with gates closed on the Sabbath in accordance with the Act of Congress and the agreement of the Chicago directors, the latter opened them in defiance of law, of contract and of commercial honor, and were subsequently allowed and finally compelled to con- tinue the opening through shameful legal technicalities. When the great events of this best of centuries are reviewed at its close, seven years hence, there will be few triumphs of Christianity in the field of politics or of commerce that will tower so high as the six victories in the Sabbath-closing campaigns, namely : (1) the Sabbath closing act of Congress, passed by a' three fourths vote in August, 1892 ; (2) the defeat in Committee, during the following Session of Congress, of a desperate effort to repeal the law ; (3) the decision of the federal Court at Chicago, through Judges Woods and Jenkins, June, 1893, in favor of the Sabbath on the only occasion when the main question was before the courts; (4) the confessed failure of Sunday opening, the greatest victory of all, for which we are indebted to " our friends the enemy ;" (5) the vote of the National Columbian Commission on July 11, against Sunday opening, 54 to 6 ; (6) the vote, on July 15, of the Chicago directors to the same effect, 24 to 4, another reversal of previous opinion. The writer was privileged to be at hand at the consummation of all these victories except the court decision, and felt beyond words their significance as indicating that the American people really value the Sabbath more than pessimists or even optim- ists have supposed. He found by circulating a petition among ex- hibitors that even more than the three-fourths that covered their exhibits were opposed to Sunday opening. This in behalf of the rich, and the Sunday non-attendance of more than three-fourths of the poor that were expected, together declare as did the act of Con- gress, the appreciation of the Sabbath by America's ruling majority. Introduction to Tenth Edition, 1902. This edition appears when the Sabbath is more attacked and less defended than ever before in our land. In a recent tour of our central States the writer found no place, not even small college towns, where anyone claimed that saloons were closed on the Sabbath. Conditions were worse farther West, but slightly better in the East and South. Even in Canada, Sabbath observance is losing ground. But wherever Christian citizens have made vigorous effort, this rising tide has been checked, notably in New England. Greatest of recent victories was the conditioning in xoor, of the Congressional appropriation to the St. Louis Fair on Sabbath closing, secured by "contract," aprovision drawn by The International Reform Bureau, which will prevent an exhibition of the French Sunday in celebration of the Louis- iana Purchase, and substitute, as the best of exhibits, The American Sabbath. INDEX Sabbath Map of the World \ 6 Outlook 9 I. Is the Sabbath Surrendered ?. .„. 21 1. Hopeful Facts from Pagan Lands 24 2. " " Continental Europe 50 3. " " the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches 60 4. Hopeful Facts from Great Britain 65 5. Hope in the Attitude of the Great Men of To-day Toward the Sabbath 75 6. Hope from the Survival of Sabbath Laws in U. S 82 7. Hope from the Predominance of Evangelical Churches in U. S 83 8. Hope from the Predominance of Rural Districts in U. S. go 9. Hope from the Sabbath Observance in some large Cities. 91 10. Hope from the Religious Conservatism of the Southern States 92 11. Hope from the Improved Sabbath Observance in some of the Western States 94 12. Hope from the Growth of the Prohibition Movement. ... 96 II. Is the Sabbath Imperilled ? 99 1. Perils of Legislatures 101 (1). Repeals 101 (2). Amendments 104 (3). Ambiguity. 107 2. Perils of Courts 112 (1). Juries 112 (2). Judges 114 (3). Lawyers 118 3. Perils of Enforcements and Non-enforcements 119 4. Peril from National Habit of Law-breaking 124 '5. Peril from Continental Sunday 126 Continental Sundays in Russia 127 " European Turkey 130 Z"*' 5 **' 14 INDEX. Continental Sundays in Bulgaria j * * * **.*.**.,**.. . 128 " " Greece 132 Italy i 32 the German-speaking Nations and Denmark 133 Continental Sundays in France and Belgium 147 '" " Spain and Portugal 152 The Continental Sunday in Mexico and South America 160 41 Western Cities of U. S 165 Sunday Opening of Museums 178 III. Are Sabbath Laws Consistent with Liberty? 189 1. Sabbath Laws Compared with those against Cruelty to Animals 198 2. Sabbath Laws Compared with those for the Protection of the Public Health 199 3. Sabbath Laws Compared with Appropriation Laws 214 4. Sabbath Laws Compared with Educational Laws 223 5. Sabbath Laws Compared with those for Protecting the Home 228 6. Sabbath Laws Compared with those in regard to Labor and Capital 231 7. Sabbath Laws Compared with those for Prevention of Crime 236 8. Sabbath Laws Compared with Laws recognising and regu- lating National Holidays. 247 IV. What of Sunday Trains, Sunday Mails, and Sunday Newspapers ? 267 1. Sunday Mails 271 2. Sunday Trains (including Steamboats) 289 (1). What Railroad Employees say 293 (2). " " Managers say 298 3. Sunday Newspapers • . . . o 322 V. What Degree of Sabbath Observance can be Realised in 19111 Century Cities ? 351 1. The Ideal Sabbath 353 The 4TH Commandment shown to be not for the Jews alone, (1). Because it is a Law of Nature 353 (2). (3). (4). (5). (6). (7). in the Decalogue 357 " was first given in Eden 360 binding on foreigners in Palestine 363 ancient nations had " weeks," etc 364 Prophets declared it was tc be Universal. . 365 Christ taught it was " for Man " 366 INDEX. 1 5 Apostolic Sabbaths 37° 2. What Degree of Sabbath Observance has been se- cured in 19TH Century Cities ?. . . 385 (1). Sabbath Observance in San Francisco, New Or- leans, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago 386 (2). Sabbath Observance in Philadelphia, Boston Balti- more, Brooklyn and New York 390 (3). Sabbath Observance in London 390 (4). " " Edinburgh 391 (5). " " Montreal and Toronto 393 VI. What can be done by Christians for the Improvement of Sabbath Observance ? 411 1. By Ministers 415 2. " Church Officers 418 3. " Private Christians .- 427 4. "Churches 439 5. " Sunday Schools 450 6. " Christian Homes 455 7. '' Being in the Spirit on the Lord's Day 477 VII. Appendix. Notes to Section I, II, III, IV, V, VI, Reference Numbers 1 to 198. Concordance of New Testament References to Old Testament Laws, Reference Number 199. Sabbath Commentary, Reference Numbers 200 to 248. Ancient References, Jewish and Pagan, to the "Week" and the Sacred " Seven," Reference Number 203. Sabbath school Concert on the Sabbath, Reference Number 249. Testimony of the Fathers as to the First and Seventh Days of the Week, Reference Numbers 250 to 274. Classified Table of Sabbath Laws Past and Present, Reference Numbers 275 to 400. Denominational Declarations on the Sabbath, Reference Num- bers 400 to 425. What Noted Men say of the Sabbath, Reference Numbers 500 to 699. Sabbath Literature, Topically Arranged and Briefly Described. Reference Number 700 List of Active Sabbath Societies, Reference Numbers 795 to 808. Alphabetical Index, Reference Number 999. "Of all the phenomena which exhibit the loyalty and affinity of Christians, what compares in significance or in sweep of influence with that institution which every week begins to bear the Lord's name in the far-off Pacific, awakens believers in Japan, in Australasia, in China and on through every meridian in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, and in America, away to the island kingdom of Hawaii and beyond ; until it ceases in the sea where it began, — calling the whole Christian host of every nation and language and race, under the whole circuit of the sun, to that day's common, united worship of Jesus the Lord ! What ubiquitous consent like this has the world ever known ? In what other associated action do all divisions of man participate ? After all her centuries, what has Christianity now or ever to show in evidence, not of her wise charity, nor of her consistent morality, nor of her triumphant civilization, — but of that which is her supreme characteris- tic, — of that which surpasses, includes, guarantees all these others, — of her loyal devotion to her Lord— so public, so impressive, so con- vincing, as the world-round worshipping assemblies of the Lord's Day ?" — From " Eight Studies on the Lord 's Day" pp. 28, 29. INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION. A RECORD AND REVIEW OF SABBATH REFORM, 1885-92, SHOWING THE ONLY DEFENSIBLE GROUND OF SABBATH OBSERVANCE. While the Lord's Day everywhere proclaims the deity of Christ, it also embodies, more than any other visible institution, the humanities of Christianity, " Christian Socialism/' that is, the application of Christianity to this world, which is the special demand of our times. The Lord's Day brings rest and cleanliness to the body, change and culture to the mind, fellowship to the heart, as well as re-enforcement to the conscience, and joyous uplift to the soul. It benefits man as an individual — yet more in the social relations of the home and the State. This divine pillar, the Lord's Day, shows " the way out" of " Dark- est England," and " Darkest New York," and " Darkest China," and " Darkest Africa." Wherever the Sabbath is well kept it lessens both the selfishness of the rich and the shiftlessness of the poor, the twin roots of poverty and vice. It furnishes .the conscientiousness and justice and benevolence necessary to all schemes of social, as well as moral reform. Even more than in the United States, Continental agitations against Sunday work have originated in labor organizations. Socialism is leading a renaissance of Puritanism. These movements are a strik- ing illustration of that Scripture saying about God's laws, " His com- mandments are not grievous." Christians tunneling from one side of the mountain for the glory of God, and working men tunneling from the other side for their own good, meet at the Fourth Commandment, which is found to be as fully in harmony with the nature of man and the necessities of society as any other of the Ten Commandments, on which, it should be remembered, Christian civilization rests — Justinian, Charlemagne, and Alfred having based their legal codes on the Deca- logue. One reason why the Sabbath law and other Bible laws are often considered burdensome by many is that they fail to understand that religion is only living in accordance with nature ; conversion being like the setting of dislocated bones, restoring them to their proper place and functions. The Fourth Commandment, at least, is a " natural law in the spiritual world." A restful change one day in seven from one's usual labors and amusements is found to be required, For full particulars of Sabbath observance at every period and in all parts of the world ? chronologically arranged, see Appendix notes (200-404) and indexes ; also my ** Civil Sabbath" (35 cts.) - - I§ INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION. not only by religious and civil laws, not only by the laws of the Old Testament and the New, but also by the laws of nature. Sabbath rest is good, not only for our spiritual nature, but also for animal nature in man and beast, and even for machinery. The failures and successes of workingmen in their recent efforts to secure a "more restful Sabbath, point out clearly the only defensible ground of Sabbath observance, which it is all-important for both the friends of God and the friends of man to hold and fortify. They show what this ground is, not by Scripture, not by abstract theorizing, but by "the philosophy that teaches by examples." Some one has. said that the Sunday question is not Sunday amuse- ments versus work, but Sunday amusements versus worship, but the two questions are one. Sunday amusements involve the work of amusement vendors and open the way to all other kinds of Sunday work. As a permit for the sale of beer only always admits whiskey in its shadow, a permit for Sunday sport always admits Sunday work. So reads the newest page of European history. The " Sunday rest movement" is being urged all over Continental Europe — the suspension of industry, without any restraint of Sunday vices. Thoughtful men, who know that Sunday dissipation is more exhausting and more demoralizing than Sunday work, will not expect any valuable results from a law that empties the factories into the beer-saloons. That movement, however, serves one purpose, at least — it stands as the Continent's confession to the world that the Conti- nental Sunday, the holiday Sunday, is to many a day of needless toil. Those who know the Continental Sunday best, it will be seen, have the same opinion of it that t,he Quaker had of a bad neighbor, of whom his opinion was asked; he replied: "He would make a tip-top stranger." Surely we should not welcome on our front steps what Europe is kicking down her back stairs. Even in our own West and Southwest, where the holiday Sunday prevails only in a varioloid form, workingmen are asking emancipa- tion from the ever-increasing Sunday work. But all efforts of work- ingmen to resist the invasion of tl.e Sabbath by toil, while admitting amusement, have been and must be in vain, for the ground of the holi- day Sunday is indefensible. Its central position is too low — namely, that the Fourth Command- ment is abrogated, and that Sabbath observance has no higher author- ity than the State, or at most the State and Church and apostolic exam- ple. God and conscience, the mightiest of all defenders of the true Sabbath, are thus left out of the battle, and it is made a mere contest of human opinions. Whether a recognition of the Divine authority of the Sabbath law is put into the public statutes or not, it must be put by the Church into the public conscience, or the Sabbath can not be successfully defended even against needless toil. This much of the art of defense has been taught us by defeat in many costly lessons. Where even the pulpit teaches that the Sabbath has no higher author- ity than Church or State, and no law of observance more definite than apostolic example (which is wholly silent on the two burning questions of Sunday labor and Sunday amusements) ; where the teachers of re- ligion get their only proof-texts for Sabbath observance out of the human gospel of utility or selfishness (of whose ///utility its child, the holiday Sunday, is a shining example) ; by what bulwark can the INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION. 19 charge of galloping Greed be repelled from the Sabbath ? If the Sabbath is only a human holiday, it is impossible to show that one man has not as much right to use it for work as another for sport. This right is not denied by Protestants on any other holiday. The battle being wholly on the ground of expediency, Greed defends its Sunday excursion in our country, and its Sunday factory in Germany, on the ground that each is better than Sunday saloons. If Sabbath rest be only a matter of expediency, the argument for the Sunday factory rather than the Sunday saloon is sound, though the similar argument applied to Sunday excursions is not, for Sunday excursions are mostly only Sunday saloons on wheels. While the center of the holiday Sunday's position is weak in the lack of Divine authority, its flanks are weak in their permission, on the one side, of some public amusements ; on the other, of some forms of needless labor. The labor and business which the holiday Sunday permits by law are mostly those which are supposed to be essential to public amusement. In order that others may be amused, railroad men, newspaper men, bakers, butchers, tobacconists, confectioners, barbers, bootblacks, drivers, florists, and, in many cases, liquor-deal- ers, are allowed to work their employees seven days in a week. It is on the heels of these exceptions, and through the same breach in the wall, that every other form of toil comes into the Sabbath. And why shouldn't it? If a man. cannot buy his Sunday cigars and caramels overnight, why may he not insist on having bis new shoes and new hat also on Sabbath morning, " hot from the griddle ?" It is a fact of history that wherever a breach has been made in the wall of the Sab- bath to let in Sunday concerts and the Sunday opening of museums, not only worse amusements, but work also, has come following after, because there is no defensible line of battle by which one public amuse- ment (legal on other days) can be kept back, while another public amusement, which stands on no higher footing before the law, though it may before the Church, is permitted. Nor is there any place for defending the Sabbath against one form of needless work for gain while another form of needless work for gain is permitted. " Twice is he armed that hath his quarrel just." The holiday Sunday is not thus- armed, for it is not impartial either in what it forbids or in what it permits. The efforts of workingmen to cut off Sunday work without cutting off Sunday sports proceed on the supposition that the labors that in- vade the Sabbath on one flank are wholly independent of the lusts that invade it on the other. Closer examination would show that Greed is the commander of both invading hordes, and Selfishness his chief of staff. The amusement vender cries, " The Sabbath was made for man" but he means "for money." " ' The Sabbath was made for man,' but it was not made for man to destroy." If a rich railroad corporation can use the Sabbath for works of gain, why not a poor hat-seller also ? If men may sell on the Sabbath, cigars, newspapers, and candies, why not purer and more useful things also ? If a man cannot wait for news until Monday morning, why should he wait for shoes ? The law that allows the making and selling of daily newspapers on the Sabbath, and forbids the making and selling of good books, lacks equity, the very heart of true and effective law. Such law is a violation of law. By the law of equitable treatment all trade.. 20 INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION. all amusements, all work (save works of necessity and charity and private work by those who keep another day) should be prohibited, or none. Theaters are not willing to lose Sunday gains if saloons are allowed to be open. Hatteis and clothiers will soon be claiming the day all over the East, as they have already generally taken it in the West, on the ground that they have as good a right to make money on the Sabbath as tobacconists and confectioners. The law should not permit me to make another man work on the day of rest that I may be amused. I should be required to find my rest in some way that will not sacrifice another's. Only the ignorant will say in defense of Sunday trains, Sunday newspapers, Sunday mails, and Sunday sails : "The few must suffer for the good of the many." I find that in the United States fully two millions were in this slavery of needless Sunday work in 1892, and the number is rapidly increasing. Every week some man has to choose between his salary and his Sabbath. Those Americans who would allow on the Sabbath the running of trains, the making and selling of newspapers, or any other works not clearly works of necessity, or of mercy, or of religion, have taken a position where they are exposed to a double enfilading fire, first, from all who wish to continue other needless work on that day, and, second, from all who wish to continue other public amusements on that day. You say, " Sunday amusements have come to stay." The same might be said, with more reason, of sin j but Christians do not give that as a reason for welcoming sin to their homes. Some of those who think " the Sunday paper has come to stay" once 'thought the same of slavery. They forget that God has " come to stay,'* and so evil will have to go. The words of Lyman Beecher, in the temper- ance report which he wrote for the Connecticut Association of Con- gregationalists in 1812, are equally appropriate at the present stage of the Sabbath reform : " This Association does most earnestly entreat of the brethren in the ministry, of the members of our churches, and of the persons who lament and desire to check the progress of this evil, that they neither express nor indulge the melancholy apprehension that nothing can be done on this subject ; a prediction eminently calcu- lated to paralyze exertion and become the disastrous cause of its own fulfillment." The Evangelical Christians in this land, one-fifth of the population in membership alone, besides twice as many more adher- ents, can stop the Sunday mail, the Sunday train, and the Sunday newspaper, if they will ; and they will, if led on courageously and hopefully by their ministers, editors, and professors. I say what I do know when I say that it was for lack of just this — there were noble exceptions — that the Massachusetts Sabbath law was in 1887 wangled (not "amended") into an indorsement of what the laws of God forbid, into the most lax Sabbath law that can be found in the United States, except in Louisiana, Montana, and Nevada. A like guilt, with like exceptions, lies at the door of the Christians of Ohio, for the Dow Law, that in one section permitted city councils to repeal the Fourth Commandment, which Cleveland and Sandusky and Cincinnati hastened to do. Although the law has been repealed, the scar remains for our instruction and warning. There never was a sound argument for Sunday amusements ; but in these days, when the movements for shorter hours of labor and "early INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION. 21 closing" and the Saturday half-holiday are everywhere multiplying the workmen's hours for week-day recreation, there is not left even a plausible argument for Sunday concerts and the Sunday opening of museums, much less for the " hell of the Sunday boat." The Saturday half-holiday and early closing will achieve full success all the sooner if the capitalist is not able to point to a Sunday holiday. Any defensible ground of Sabbath observance must include, for its center, the Round Top of Sinai. We must occupy and fortify the position that God's authority, as well as man's, is back of the Sabbath, commending it not to reason only, but to conscience also. This is the work of the Christian pulpit, the Christian press, and of Christian schools — the three chief conservators of public conscience. The right wing of this defensible line of battle is a hill-top of equity — the impar- tial prohibition of all work, except work of necessity, mercy, or relig- ion. The left wing in this defensible line of battle is another hill-top of equity — the impartial prohibition of all public amusements. Is the position I have thus indicated as the only defensible ground of Sabbath observance impracticable ? Nay, it is not even unreal. It is very near the position on which the only successful workingmen's defense of the Sabbath has ever been conducted in Europe. While Continental workingmen have vainly attempted to recapture their Rest Day, British vorkingmen have successfully defended theirs by resisting the vanguard of the Sabbath's invaders, refusing even the opening of museums in 1886, as often before. They see clearly that there is no defensible position between the Sunday opening of national museums and the Sunday opening of theaters, nor between the Sunday opening of theaters and the Sunday running of factories. It is vastly significant that the only country in Europe in which workingmen have not, to a large extent, lost their Sabbath rest, is one in which public conscience recognizes the Divine authority of the day. What I have described as the only defensible ground of Sabbath observance, centering in the heights of a public conscience that rec- ognizes the day as of Divine authority, with an impartial prohibition of all needless work on one flank and of all public amusements on the other, is more perfectly realized in Toronto than in any other large city of the world, and there proves itself both practical and popular. Even a proposition to allow Sunday street cars was refused by the rate-payers in 1892 by a vote of 14,000 to 10,000. Toronto usually puts a man into the mayor's chair who is also able to grace a pulpit with a lay sermon. A majority both of the aldermen and the school board, .in 1891, as usual, were church-members. On the issue of the battle for the Sabbath the fate of our country and of our Christianity depends. Neither evangelical Christianity nor popular liberty ever thrived in a land of holiday Sundays, which are the allies of tyranny, infidelity, and superstition. A quiet Sabbath is the best school of liberty as well as of religion. Let us then hold at any cost — for it is easier to defend than to recapture — the only defen- sible ground of Sabbath observance — namely, that both the authority of God and the good of man require on that day the cessation of all needless work and of all public amusements. The Sabbath here pictured is not less but more joyous than the picnic Sunday. It is a profound saying of Isaiah that in order to "make the Sabbath Sidelight" we must " turn away from pleasure." The sons of the stranger .... every one that keepeth the Sab- bath .... even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer .... for mine house shall be called the house of prayer for all people. — Isaiah, '56 : 6, 7. There remaineth therefore a keeping of the Sabbath to the people of God. — Heb. 4 : 9 {literal rendering). England owes much of her energy and character to the religious keeping of Sunday. Why cannot France follow her, as the Sabbath was made for all men, and we need its blessing ? — La Presse, Paris. In England, Sunday is kept as a day for God and man, and, above all, for the workman. Oh, that our poor misguided Socialists would come to a place like London, in order to see how honestly, industri- ously, punctually, vigorously, and orderly, work is carried on there throughout the week ! — then on Sunday comes the rest. — Dr. Peter- man, of Prussian Reichstag. It is the freedom of religion and the educating power of Sundays which explain the average prosperity of America, — Professor Gold- win Smith, Oxford. Antiquity has bequeathed the Sabbath to modern nations ; and the fact that this institution has subsisted in spite of the changes which have taken place in the domain of politics and religion, testifies to its intrinsic value, and to its absolute necessity. — Haegler, Der Sonntag, vom Standpunkte der Gesundheitspflege, etc. IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? A RELIGIOUS paper, not long ago, printed as an editorial heading, " THE SABBATH SURRENDERED," following it up with these words : " It seems startling to see such words at the head of these columns, and the more startling still when we feel compelled to regard them as a plain statement of fact. The Sabbath is Surrendered ! We see no reason, no opportunity, for any essential modification of the statement. We let it stand as the deliberate assertion of our judgment." That editor will rejoice to be refuted, to be shown that his " judgment " is " not according to truth " — that facts belie his fears. The Sabbath is not surrendered. Some of its outworks have been captured in some places, but the Sabbath is not surrendered, nor is it likely to be. . It is bad generalship for leaders to cry prematurely, " Defeat," or, " Retreat." Discourage- ment invites defeat, while hope helps to victory. When the ancient Trojans knew that the Palladium, the image of Pallas, which they regarded as their chief protection against the Greeks, had been stolen from, their citadel by their enemies, they made but a de- spairing defence, and lost their city. So with Jerusalem when the besieging Romans had set their temple on. fire. If the armies of Sabbath defenders are convinced! 24 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. that this Palladium of Liberty and Religion is hope- lessly lost, they will fight a losing battle. But we cannot hope without reason. What are the reasons for hoping that the Sabbath will not fall before the attacks made upon it ? By the Sabbath I mean, not the Pharisaic Sabbath, nor the Puritan Sabbath, but the Christian Sabbath as it is embodied in the laws and creeds of Great Britain and the United States. I leave to a later chapter the discussion of the Sab- bath's authority, only pausing here to remark that the English-speaking people generally confess themselves under obligations to set apart the first day of the week for rest and religion, first, because it is a law of the land ; second, because it is a law of nature ; third, be- cause it is a law of apostolic example ; fourth, because it is a law of Christ ; fifth", because it is a law of the Decalogue ; sixth, because it is the law of Eden ; sev- enth, because it is a law of the churches. Some for one of these reasons, some for another, and many for them all, recognize the propriety of legally setting apart the first day of the week as a day of protected rest and worship. What are the signs that this custom will not cease, but rather increase ? i. To begin at the lowest point, it is a hopeful fact that the Christian Sabbath has to-day a strong foot- hold in many lands which at the opening of the century were wlwlly pagan. Let us begin a round-the-world tour of inspection with the now Christian Kingdom of Hawaii, the Sand- wich Islands, in regard to whose Sabbaths we have testimony all the more valuable because it comes from IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? . 2$ an enemy of Sabbath observance, Moncure D. Con- way, who stopped at the large commercial city of Honolulu one Sabbath, on his way from San Francisco to Australia. Like most infidels, he had so completely failed to read " the other side" — the Christian side of history — that he expected on landing to witness " merry scenes, islanders swimming around the ship in Arcadian innocence, the joyous dance and song of the guileless children of the sun," but his anticipations were rudely destroyed by finding a " silent city," " paralyzed by piety." " Never in Scotland or Con- necticut," he says, " have I seen such a paralysis as fell upon Honolulu the first day of the week." This traveller found the stores shut, and in a druggist's shop they would not even sell him a glass of soda. No one being willing to show him the sights of the place, he was compelled to go to church in order to see the people. He was impressed by what he saw there, especially at the Chinese church under the care of Mr. Damon, whose work in elevating the people he cannot help praising. But, after all, he can enjoy little where the Sabbath is kept so strictly, and com- plains bitterly of the " pietistic plague" which prevails on the island. He complains also of the "howling missionaries," but if he had arrived in Oceanica before the Christian Sabbath he might himself have had to do the " howling." Eli Corwin, D.D., who spent many years in these islands, writes me that "there were few non-church- goers, the people rising early on Sundays in order to have home worship before church worship, and observ- ing the day cheerfully as one of physical rest and spiritual refreshment. Several persons who have travelled widely, name the 26 • THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Sandwich Islands with Scotland and New England as the districts in which they have seen the best Sabbath observance. My correspondent in Honolulu writes more particu- larly of the present Sabbath observance of these islands. In answer to various questions, he informs me that they have " no Sunday paper," that they show their sympathy for working people not by Sun- day pleasure excursions, which are prevented or pun- ished, but by closing business places by agreement on Saturday afternoon at 4 o'clock, and liquor stores by law from 11 P.M. on Saturday to 5 A.M. on Monday. Omnibuses which were put on to carry people to church now carry some to a pleasure park, but when a steamer recently attempted to inaugurate Sunday excursions, arrest and fine nfpped the project in the bud. Newsdealers do not open on the Sabbath, except when a foreign mail arrives on that day. Other feat- ures of the Hawaiian Sabbath are thus described in a letter accompanying the answers : " The native Hawaiians are amiable, not fierce as are some other Polynesians — for instance, the Marquesans and the Marshall Islanders in the North Pacific. The Chinese also are law-abiding, from hereditary national proclivities, and fall easily into our ways of life. Though they take Sunday to tramp about and visit, yet they do it without disturbing the peace and quiet of the community. There may be some few instances of Sunday gambling, but as a general rule our Chinese (farm laborers of the Hakkah clans) are not the rowdy set they have in California. Thirty years ago, before the development of California, when there were only 1600 foreigners all told, the missionary influence was predominant. Family worship was the rule on every IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 2/ vessel that sailed between the islands under native captains and crews. The irruption of California ideas and manners, with increasing numbers of comers from the coast, has upset the old order. Where thirty years ago men who had money and public spirit wanted to spend it in laying out a botanical garden, and intro- ducing new products, now we have a Racing Park As- sociation and a race-course that was finally abandoned from its own villainy. There was such persistent and barefaced jockeying, that no race was a fair contest of speed. Quarrels among the gambling fraternity naturally resulted, and the whole thi'ng broke down from its own corruption. " Sunday is a quiet day. There is some riding out of town by those who want a holiday. In the after- noon some church-goers, and even some church-mem- bers, ride for an hour or so with their families. The 'buses run full out to the Casino at Waikiki, our sea- side resort for bathing, etc. But such Sabbath dese- cration is a minimum when compared with Boston or New York, a mere trifle in comparison, yet it may grow into an evil of formidable dimensions in such a heterogeneous population as ours ; especially since the King would like the restrictions of our New England Sabbath done away. Persistent efforts are made every session of the Legislature to change the Sunday law. " Our most important inter-island steamer used to arrive Sunday morning. Passengers and their baggage and the mails were landed early, about 5 A.M., but no freight was ever delivered. Good people were grieved at the arrangement, and rejoice now in the change that with the new and faster boat brings this work into Saturday afternoon. Formerly the King had salutes fired when he, or any member of the royal family, de- 28 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. parted or arrived ; and very often this happened on Sunday, often quite late on Sunday mornings. But recently this has been stopped." Moving westward from Hawaii, we are soon in the islands of Micronesia, of whose Sabbath observance one of the missionaries, Rev. Robert W. Logan, writes me as follows : " On all the islands in Micro- nesia on which Christianity has obtained the para- mount influence (as it has in most of them), we have delightfully quiet Sabbaths. Saturday is called 1 Preparation Day.' It is the great cooking day of the week ; no cooking whatever is done on the Sab- bath, except in cases of sickness. The people rise at dawn (as on other days), dress themselves in their best, and then breakfast upon what has been prepared on Saturday. By 8 or 8.30 A.M. they are usually as- sembled for worship. They hold a prayer-meeting by themselves first, then the missionary or native teacher goes to the church, and the usual service follows. At the close of this the natives divide up into classes under the leadership of the missionary, his wife, and . the deacons, and an hour is spent upon the sermon, one after another recalling some portion of it until the whole has been pretty well recalled. Then follows Sunday-school, at 4 P.M., after which there is a prayer- meeting which the missionary or native teacher does not attend. A short service is held in the evening, at which a Bible or other story is told. " No Sunday work is done by the natives, and no rowing, or sailing, or walking for pleasure, is seen. There is a delightful calm and quietness, which seems to prevail everywhere." Reaching the islands of Japan, we are surprised to find a new Sunday law in this heathen land. At the - IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 29 " Restoration," in 1868, every fifth day was set apart as a holiday (the 1st, 6th, nth, 16th, and 21st of each month). But on April 1st, 1876 — the Solar Calendar having been adopted in 1873 — the Mikado decreed that the first day of the week should become the weekly holiday for officials, not for religious reasons, of course, but because it would be more convenient to observe the same day as other nations with whom Japan has political and commercial dealings. It is not as yet a rest day for working people, and so is of little value to the missionaries. The fact that the officials use the Sabbath for a frolicking holiday often makes it even more difficult for their families to keep the Day holy than if it were a business day, because it is the special time for entertainments. But it is to the whole people an unconscious weekly reminder of Christianity, from which it is known to have been bor- rowed. The pagan Mikado is therefore unconsciously helping Christianity by his Sabbath law, as pagan Cyrus did, of whom it was said by Jehovah, " I have girded thee, though thou hast not known me !" Mrs. M. T. True, for many years a missionary in Japan, bears cordial testimony to the faithfulness with which Japanese Christians keep the fourth command- ment, often at the sacrifice of " all their living," and also to their " increasing love for the Sabbath." Sab- bath observance is found to be so absolutely essential to Christian life that it is made a test question when a native convert applies for baptism, whether he will keep the Sabbath, even at financial risk or loss. She adds the very significant statement that when young Japanese who have been educated in America come back, they sometimes say, " I cannot unite with the church in Japan, because Christians here are so much 30 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. more strict about the Sabbath and other matters than they are in America, " which does not speak very well for our Christian land. This she explains as due to the fact that the standard of Sabbath observance has been lowered in the home-churches during the last score of years, so that returning missionaries, who have been absent for that time, " find less conscience with regard to the Sabbath" and more " seeking of worldly pleas- ure on the Lord's-day," than existed when they went away. A similar contrast appears between the Chinese Christians of California and those converted in China, as shown by comparing the letters I have received from Otis Gibson, D.D., 1 of San Francisco, with let- ters from China, where the Chinese, according to President Angell, ex-ambassador to China, " subject themselves to much practical inconvenience in at- tempting to keep the Sabbath. They observe for- eigners very closely, and often decide whether they are Christians or not by their observance or neglect of the day." The Sabbath observance of foreign resi- dents in China is "very lax," but their " places of trade are not opened much on Sunday," and every closed shop must be a strong though silent reminder of Christianity. Admiral Sir W. Hall relates that when captain of the Calcutta, and stopping at Hong Kong, a Chinese pilot who was on board, seeing the sailors assembled for divine worship on the Sabbath and relieved from their usual work, while on shore Chinese workmen of all kinds were busy at their ceaseless tread-mill of toil, said very seriously, "Your Joss (God) is better and 1 The reference figures, i, 2, etc., in the text refer to the Appendix. IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 3 1 Kinder than our Joss r for he gives you a holiday and rest one day in seven, and we've only one rest day in all the year — New Year's Day." That is what every Christian Sabbath-keeper of China leads the natives to think, even when they do not say it. European and American merchants can, by mutual agreement, close all the shops in their own quarter of a Chinese city with very little if any real loss ; but it is a vastly different thing for a Christian Chinaman, whose competitors and customers are chiefly heathen, to close on the Sabbath to the vexation of his patrons, who recognize no sacredness in the day, and sc are driven to other dealers. Yet this is done ; for exam- ple, a stanch Chinese Christian opened a rice store with a heathen partner, making the express stipulation that it should be closed on Sunday. His door thus closed every Sabbath where no law but God's requires it, has been a silent sermon for Christianity and the Sabbath. Another interesting case, given by Rev. Mr. Mas- ters, a missionary in China, is that of a converted Chi- nese mechanic who regularly brought his chest of tools on Saturday evening to the missionary chapel and left them there until Monday, either as a testimony, or a protection, or both. S. L. Baldwin, D.D., recently a Methodist mission- ary in China, contributes the following incidents of heroic and trustful self-sacrifice on the part of Chinese converts in keeping the Sabbath : " Li Yu Mi, a young blacksmith of Ngu-kang, was converted. One day in class-meeting he said : ' My neighbors said I would starve if I became a Christian, for I would not be allowed to do any work on Sun* 32 THE SABBATH rOR MAN. days ; and that if I did really embrace Christianity they would never give me any more work. These statements startled me at first, and I scarcely knew what to do ; but after thinking over the matter, I con- cluded that God would take care of me if I sincerely tried to obey His will ; hence I embraced these doc- trines, and became a Christian, and now what is the result ? Why, with regard to keeping the Sabbath, [ find that I now do more work in six days than I formerly did in seven ; and with regard to losing my business, I never had as much work in my life as I have had since I became a Christian. My shop is fre- quently crowded w r ith people who bring their farming tools to be repaired ; and while I am doing their work, they keep me busy answering their questions about these new doctrines.' This man became a faithful preacher of the gospel, and has filled the office of Presiding Elder with great acceptability. " Another young man was followed by his mother to the house where the Christians met, and there she beat him with a stout bamboo cane during prayer time, and took him away from the meeting. She had threatened to do this the previous Sunday if he did not give up Sabbath-keeping, but he persevered in his determination to keep God's holy day. " One boy at Koi-hung was scolded by his guardian for going to Christian meetings on Sunday, and told that if he would not work on that day he should have nothing to eat ; and for several Sundays he went with- out food, rather than work on the Sabbath. He be- came a faithful member of our church. " A rice merchant at Shanghai joined Dr. Yates's (Baptist) Church. People said he would have to give up his business. At first he suffered somewhat by IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 33 closing on Sunday ; but soon dealers from the country- coming flown in boats, if they arrived Saturday night, or Sunday, would keep their cargo in their boats until Monday, to sell to him, because they said they could rely upon his word and his dealing truthfully with them ; and his fidelity was rewarded even temporarily by his greater than usual success." We pass on to India, whose Sabbaths fairly represent those of British colonies in Asia and Africa — British Burmah, New Zealand, Cape Colony, Sierra Leone, etc. (Australia is a province, and its Sabbaths are almost Canadian in excellence, as shown by the suppression of Sunday newspapers in 1889 in Sydney, and of Sunday concerts in 1890 in Melbourne. India being under the sceptre of the Christian Em- press Victoria, sees, on every Sabbath, the closing of all public offices, and the church-going of English officials, which has a favorable influence upon the army of native officials, who are thus given the day for beneficent rest, and in a general way upon the whole community as a weekly reminder of Christianity. " The better parts of Madras, Calcutta, and smaller government towns," says Rev. G. T. Washburn, mis- sionary, " are more quiet on Sabbath than many a European Continental city. The attitude of the Gov- ernment has given some dignity to Sabbath observ- ance. In centres of governmental influence Sunday observance of some sort or other has made consider- able impression upon the non-Christian population." As to the observance of the Sabbath by native Christians — except the few who are under German missionaries, and imbibe their views on this subject — Mr. Washburn says : ' ' The aim of the missionaries, in which they are heartily seconded by the native min- 34 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. istry, is toward a careful observance of Sunday, and a man would not be reckoned even among nominal Christians who did not keep the S?bbath by abstaining from work." Many are able to do this without sacri- fice, being in the employ of the Christian Government, or of Christian men, or being independent farmers ; but others are put to great straits in finding places for themselves and their boys as herdsmen and agricultu- ral laborers, in consequence of their Sabbath-keeping, while the same custom causes great inconvenience and trouble when Christians, many of whom are poor agri- culturists, are joint-owners of land with heathen. In many cases a Sabbath-keeper is thereby debarred from a desirable partnership in land-cultivation. In spite of these embarrassments and losses the native Chris- tians of India do generally keep the Sabbath, and Mr. Washburn testifies that he has never known a case where in the end it has resulted in financial ruin. Other phases of the- Sabbath of India are presented in the following letter from Rev. James Mudge, re- cently editor of The Lucknow Witness : " Englishmen in India are very much what they are in England. But, as a rule, it is not the religious classes who find their way out there, and very naturally the)' allow themselves more liberties in religious ob- servances when freed from the conventional restraints of home and a Christian land. The shops, however, are not opened, nor are papers published, so far as I know, by Englishmen in India on Sunday. Sunday is a holiday, and is prized as such. No people in India of any sort, Christian or non- Christian, are so con- sumed with desire to kill themselves by unnecessary work as to lead them to abolish holidays after the American manner. The courts, banks, etc., enjoy all IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 35 the Christian holidays (including Sundays, Christmas week, Good Friday, etc.) as well as all the Hindoo and Mohammedan holidays, which are very numerous. The abuse of Sunday is chiefly in the direction of too much play rather than too much work. Men go shooting, or play lawn tennis, etc. There is a trouble sometimes regarding the prosecution of Government works on Sunday. There is, I believe, a standing order of Government against it ; but it is left mainly to the wishes of the individual officers immediately in charge. So that where they are stanchly religious the works stop ; otherwise not. As the laborers and contractors are non-Christians, a point is made, with some show of reason, that they should not be obliged to be idle on our religious day. Many private Chris- tian people also allow themselves leeway here in per- mitting work to go on for them on Sunday when the workers are heathen. But the missionaries and their friends set their faces strongly against it. " As to native Christians, the chief temptation they have is to buy things on Sunday, it being a leisure day, and all the Hindoo and Mohammedan shops being open, and the general trade going on as usual in the bazaars. But such lapses are closely looked after, and the converts are being educated unceasingly to a proper reverence for the Day and a careful attendance at church. " British laws never interfere at all with the relig- ious matters of their subjects ; Hindoos observe their own days and no others, Mohammedans ditto, except that those employed in Government service have the Sundays as holidays besides their own." The Sabbath has obtained a slight foothold in Mo- hammedan Persia' by the efforts of missionaries, but 36 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. for whose presence nothing would there be seen of the days which " Like way-marks, cheer the pilgrim's path, His progress mark, and keep his rest in view." W. W. Torrence, M.D., writes thus of the cele- bration of sacred days in Persia's capital, Teheran (June, 1884): "The Friday 'Sabbath' of the Mo- hammedans is not devoted to worship in the same sense as our Sabbath, although the shops are mostly closed. Great numbers go to the baths, then to the mosques, where they mumble their prayers, smoke their kaliouns, drink their tea, engage in conversation, making it a day of recreation rather than of worship. They seem to have no idea that the day should be kept sacred, but buy, sell, and do any other work they choose. " In Teheran there are some 300 Europeans, of whom the major part are Catholics. Our little band of missionaries in Teheran, including children, num- bers six. We try to keep the hallowed days as we have been taught in our childhood, and we think it has had a salutary influence upon the native members of our church, and the numerous children of the day- and boarding-schools under our charge. The United States Minister and family co-operate with us. ' The Romanists, who are our rivals nearly every- where, keep the Sabbath in much the same way as they do at home — in idleness, or amusement, thinking their own thoughts, and working their own pleasures. " Observance of the day is a thing almost unthought of among the members of the various diplomatic corps stationed here, except our own. The same is true of Europeans in the service of the Shah, as military in- IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 2>7 structors, teachers of music, etc., and I am sorry to say, none are more lax in their observance of the Sab- bath-day than our English cousins, some of them being non-Sabbatarians, and ridiculing the idea of keeping it as a holy day in which no work is to be done. We were greatly encouraged, however, at the steps taken by the Queen's Minister to Persia, and the members of Her Britannic Majesty's Legation some three or four months ago, when they attended divine service every Sabbath morning in our new chapel on the mis- sion premises ; and this, too, at a time when the Per- sian Government was trying to annoy us." Passing on into Africa and across it, I have the testi- mony of Rev. George Thomson, who was for six years a missionary to its people, to the excellent Sab- bath observance at the British colony of Sierra Leone, where no shops open on the Sabbath, except markets, which close at 8 A.M. From the Shingay Mission in Sherbro, near Sierra Leone, where all are heathen except the missionaries and their converts, Rev. Joseph Gomer writes that the negroes about him generally consider the Sabbath " a day set apart by God for the whites" (< Some of the head men of the villages where the missionaries preach have learned better, and so have made laws prohibit- ing their people from working on the Sabbath ; and in others, the Sabbath is observed by common consent." Liberia is reported as having an excellent Sabbath observance. In all these provinces of West Africa, however, as on other missionary ground, the chief obstacle to Sab- bath observance, as well as to temperance and all other elements of Christianity, is the unchristian exam- ple of resident merchants from Christian lands, many 38 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. of whom, even in the British colonies, " make no dis- tinction of days, loading ar>:l unloading their cargoes, and carrying on business in their shops, regardless of the Sabbath and the law." The Rev. W. C. Wilcox, an American missionary, writes thus of Sabbath observance in South-eastern Africa, at Natal, the British colony, and at Inham- bane, near at hand, where he resides : " As to Natal, I believe the Sabbath is kept better in that colony than in almost any of our western states. No cars run on Sunday. Steamboats are not allowed to discharge cargo. I do not know of any Government service in operation on Sunday, unless it be the lighthouses. I believe the telegraph offices are not open. There are no Sunday newspapers, and no work is done in stores, mills, factories, or saloons, but hotel bars are open. But as you leave Natal and come northward into Portuguese possessions, there is almost no Sabbath. I will tell how it is at Inham- bane, and I believe it is the same at Lorenzo, Marquez and in other Portuguese colonies. Nothing is closed on Sunday except the Custom-house, and even that is opened the same as usual when the packet arrives or is here over Sunday. When a man employs natives by the month, he counts every day, and requires just as much work on Sunday as every other day. I have talked with some of the Portuguese settlers about it, and their excuse was that these natives are so lazy that if they gave them a Sunday they would say every day was Sunday. You may be able to see the force of that objection, but I never could. We have always kept Sabbath, and I think we have got about twice as much work out of the same number of men as the Portuguese usually do. But I do not say that it was IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED ? 39 altogether owing to the Sabbath. I paid better wages and fed them well and kept grog from them. The natives here do not know when Sunday comes. They do not keep record of the days by weeks. The natives in Natal have now almost universally come to suspend hard work on Sunday, through the teachings of the missionaries. There is certainly one great advantage coming from it, in that there is one day when they will not feel that we are troubling them if we call them together to hear the Gospel. Whereas here, every day being alike, if the. Sabbath happens to be a good day to work or hunt, they think they are afflicted by having to stop and listen to us." Madagascar is a place of special interest in the history of Sabbath observance. The Rev. George Cousins, an ex-missionary, thus describes the Sabbath in its two principal cities (July, 1884) : ! You name Tamatave and Antananarivo as the places about which you would like information. They are totally different in character, and scarcely any- thing that would be true of the one would hold good of the other. Tamatave is now in possession of the French. What I may say of it must be understood as referring to its condition before the French seized it- say a couple of years ago. It then consisted of three distinct but closely contingent settlements. The best part of it was a foreign settlement, the French Creoles being the strongest element. Then there was the town, inhabited by the black coast tribe called Bet- simisaraka. Finally, and somewhat more distinct, was the Hova town surrounded by a stockade, and having a fort in its centre. With a few laudable exceptions, the foreigners regarded Sunday as the gala day of the week. Shooting excursions, card parties, billiard-play- 40 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. ing, calls, gossip, drinking were its distinguishing feat- ures. A few might begin the day by going to mass ; the Betsimisaraka ' mistresses ' of the foreigners and their children, and the lawful wives of those who had wives, being somewhat exemplary as regards mass ; but mass over, the day was given up to gayety. The Betsimisaraka town was a most distressing sight on Sunday. All work was at a standstill, and the people gave themselves up to the delights of rum-drinking, the one thing they care for. They are a conquered race of easy-going disposition, whose love for rum will, if not soon checked, cause their extermination. In the Hova town alone was there any seeming attempt to make Sunday a season of rest and worship. The Hovas are from the central province, away in the up- lands of the interior where the capital is, and are domi- nant over the greater part of the island. By their authority, all Government business was stopped for the day, the market was closed, the lading and unlading of ships was suspended ; and, in their own settlement, the day passed quietly, most of them going to one of their two chapels once or twice during the day. Still, even among the Hovas, the observance of Sunday at Tamatave was very unsatisfactory. Many of them were consistent Christians, but they lived in an atmos- phere of godlessness and corruption, most hurtful to spiritual healthiness and progress ; while many yielded to the influences of the place, and degenerated most terribly. Tamatave therefore was a poor specimen of a Sunday-keeping place. " Antananarivo, on the other hand, is exemplary in its Sabbath observance. Since Christianity conquered all opposition and became the recognized religion of the Hova people, that city, and all the villages and IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 41 towns of Imarina, the central province, have become what one may call quiet, orderly, church-and-chapel- going places. This is specially true of Antananarivo. " Let me deal with your questions seriatim. (1) What is allowed and what forbidden ? All buying and sell- ing, all ordinary work— even that of fetching water from the springs at the foot of the hill on which the city stands— is prohibited. This water-fetching is a very tiring and lengthy operation, and means wearing working garments ; hence its prohibition. Cooking, however, is carried on as usual, palanquin- riding to and from a place of worship is common, walk- ing being extremely difficult. Family gatherings and friendly visits between the hours of service are cus- tomary. (2) As regards the difference between Ro- manists and Protestants about the day, the former tell their converts in the plainest way that the day is a festival day, and that attendance at mass is all that is required of them. The priests encourage their con- verts to indulge in games, and tell them to fetch water as usual. Frequently there has been trouble with the Hova authorities on this account. " The Protestant missionaries are far less ' Sabbata- rian ' in their views than the native Christians, who are disposed to be very austere. The missionaries often use their influence toward the cultivation of more lenient views. (3) The non-worshipping heathen people are under the same prohibitions as the wor- shipping. (4) Liquor-selling by natives is unlawful in Imarina. Foreigners, protected by their treaty rights, obtained by coercion, before the Malagasy knew what they were agreeing to, permission to sell liquor ; but with one or two exceptions, they do not sell on Sundays — that is, not openly. What goes on 42 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. quietly it is hard to say. (5) Food is not openly sold at all on Sunday, but were anybody in actual distress for want of food, it would be easy enough to get it on the quiet. Next to no food is sold, however, on the Sunday. (6) Most of the merchants from Europe and America in the central province, and especially in Antananarivo, treat Sunday with respect. A fair number attend a place of worship. There are in Antananarivo and its immediate suburbs sixteen Protestant chapels and churches, and four Romanist churches, in which about 15,000 people assemble for worship, many of them a second time. The popula- tion is about 100,000." Some years ago the Christian Queen of Madagascar was informed by representatives of two European powers that they would do themselves the hoi or to call upon her on the following Sabbath. The Queen acknowledged the intended courtesy, and politely in- formed those two representatives of nominally Chris- tian governments that she observed the Sabbath, and therefore could not receive them on that day, but would be glad to do so on the day following— a sug- gestive example to those who lack the courage to de- cline a Sunday visit, that would interfere with the rest and religiousness and home fellowships of the day. Equally heroic devotion to the Sabbath is shown by the common people of Madagascar. A native woman and her daughter became Christians, but the father of the family, a heathen still, set him- self in every way against their new religion and their new life. And one of his chief endeavors was to make them break the Sabbath. They were poor people, living chiefly on rice ; and this man would sometimes throw away all the rice bought on Saturday night to IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 43 force his wife to break the Sabbath by buying more. The mother and child made no complaint, gave no hard word. If there was any cold rice left from Satur- day's boiling they ate that ; if not, they went without till Monday morning. Sometimes he would pour .into their Saturday-bought rice other rice which he had bought on the Sabbath — then the mother and child would set the whole aside and never touch it. The Malagasy mother and child made no parade, no fuss ; and the quiet reality of their faith was too strong for the heathen father. By and by he, too, gave up his old life, was baptized, and became a right hand of the mission. " Let your light so shine." Passing north into Egypt, 3 Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Turkey, which together make up the Turkish Empire, H. H. Jessup, D.D., missionary pastor at Beirout, tells us that although Oriental Chris- tians (Greeks, Armenians, Maronites, etc.) encourage what we call a " Continental Sunday," a day levelled to their saints' days and chiefly spent in visiting, with only partial suspension of business — markets, coffee houses, and barber shops being open — " the evangelical converts of all sects spend the Sabbath as we do in our American churches. Sunday observance and temperance with truth-speaking distinguish the Protestants from other sects." Dr. Jessup says that, except in the rural populations of the United States, Scotland and England, he has not found anywhere so good Sabbath observance as " among the native con- verts in foreign lands." Of the Sabbath observance of missionary converts in European Turkey, we have the following tidings from Rev. Robert Thomson, of Philippopolis : " The attitude of the native Protestants is in general all that 44 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. could be desired. They consider it as a day to be de- voted to receiving spiritual and moral instruction ; and therefore they attend regularly on the public means of grace. The rest of the day they pass quietly at home, generally usefully. It is known all round that Protes- tants will not do this, that, and the other thing on Sundays, and they are lef: free and are respected. The only exception to thi r is the Government order, which compels the Reserve >.o drill on Sundays. Great efforts have been made by us to get the day changed, or to have Protestants excused ; but in vain. Many of our young men have nobly endured long and re- peated terms of imprisonment on this account ; but the law is still in force. And I regret to say that in one place some of our friends are now feeling that they cannot hold out any longer, but must consider this a matter of necessity." Rev. Julius Y. Leonard, another missionary in Tur- key, contributes the following facts as to the observ- ance of the Sabbath in that motley land : " Fifty years ago Turkey had no true Sabbath. Why ? Because they had three Sabbaths, and neither of them according to the New Testament, (i) The Jews had, as they still have, the seventh day of the week as their holy day. Shops were shut before sun- set of Friday, and every candle lighted which .was to be used, according to their interpretation of the Com- mandment (Ex. 35 : 3) : 'Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day.' If we wished our guide to assist us in purchasing any- thing from the stores, he would carefully inspect our list to see what must be got from the Jew's shop, and be sure to get them before Saturday, when all their stores would be closely locked. (2) The Moslems had IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 45 their Sabbaths on Friday — the day when official business of State is not transacted and even the Cus- tom-house is closed. It is the day when the Sultan with great pomp goes to worship in some one of the numerous splendid mosques, and crowds of people witness the procession. But ordinarily no special sacredness attaches to the day that would hinder a man from going on a journey, making contracts, or doing any kind of work. The noon service is some- what longer than that of other days, and not unfre- quently accompanied with a sermon. (3) The Chris- tians of all sects and nationalities — Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Roman Catholics, etc., observed the Chris- tian Sabbath, but then, as now, usually, in a most un- christian manner. Drinking, going on excursions, making friendly and official visits, characterised the day. In certain places a change for the better has taken place under the lead and influence of the Prot- estant or Evangelical congregations, .churches and schools, of which I will next speak. With the intro- duction of the Holy Scriptures in an intelligible tongue by American missionaries, came to these nations the boon of the New. Testament and the New England Puritan Sabbath. Place yourself in any town 6r city which has been long occupied as a mis- sionary station, and on a Sunday morning what do you see ? Let it be, for example, in the town of Mar- sovan, 60 miles south from the Black Sea and 350 miles east from Constantinople. The Sabbath bell is heard. Families as neatly attired as their circum- stances allow, wend their way to the meeting-house. They carry Bible and hymn-book and Sunday-school lessons with them. Not unfrequently you see the oldest iDoy carrying the big family Bible carefully 46 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. wrapped in an embroidered handkerchief, while the infant is borne in the arms of its mother, and the next older child in the arms of the father, happy in the privilege of holding the hymn-book or the Testament which is to serve them as they shall sit upon the car- peted and cushioned floor, and join heart and voice in the public worship. The Day is given up to religious meetings, family worship, catechetical lessons, and spiritual songs. Out of a congregation of six hun- dred souls, the greater part find ' the Sabbath a de- light.' During the week preceding they have antici- pated the Sabbath as a day of rest and instruction, and when it is past, the sermon, the lessons, the prayers, and the bright speeches of such Sunday-school schol- ars, as their teachers may have called out with their ready passages committed to memory, all furnish themes for conversation. The moulding and reform- ing influence of these Sabbaths in a thousand different central points throughout the Empire is invaluable. I have lived in Ceserea and in Marsovan, and spent many years in the aggregate among the out-stations connected with these centres, and I cannot recall a single case where a Protestant, Armenian or Greek has opened his shop for trade, or practised manual labor, or indulged in idle recreation on the Sabbath day. As a consequence, you will find that a neighboring Arme- nian or Greek imitates the Protestant's example, and gains for himself a day of rest, even though he does not read his Testament or care to enter the house of God. Obviously this degree of faithfulness to the Sacred Day and its noble objects is attained under great difficulties. There is no Sabbath law. The rul- ing nations have not been accustomed to make a dis- tinction in favor of the Christian Sabbath — often, in IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 47 fact, as if in spite, they have made appointments quite inconsistent with its observance. Courts sit on Sunday quite as much as any day. In some towns Sunday has been designated by the supreme government as the Market day of the week — the only day of ex- change on any considerable scale, when artisans and merchants from different towns can meet and barter their goods. " A great difficulty occurs in journeying. One must go when the caravan goes. It may start on Sunday. It certainly will not rest over Sunday anywhere on the road to accommodate the religious sensibilities of a few persons of whatever name. Missionaries have escaped the necessity of travelling on the Sabbath, usually by arranging to travel in a large party composed chiefly of Christians, or by paying extra prices for the privilege of resting at some place agreed upon beforehand, and furnishing fodder for- the horses. The native Chris- tians are learning to make similar arrangements. ' The following incidents may illustrate the general sentiment on this subject : 1 Two men arrive at the port of Samsoon to take ship for Constantinople. After waiting two or three days for a steamer, over due, it arrives Sunday. In- stead of going aboard with their luggage, which must be taken through the Custom-house and then by small boats to the steamer in the offing, they let her pass by, and remain on expense three days for the next steamer ; and they do this knowing that the price of passage on the second steamer will be double that on the first. This I witnessed. The men were poor day laborers from the region of Harpoot. 4 " Not many years ago I employed a Protestant shoemaker, an old man, to carry Bibles and religious 48 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. tracts to the town of Ladik. His wages were simply a commission of ten per cent on his sales, and the hire of his horse. _ He was to carry his shoes in one wing ®f his saddle-bags, and our books in the other wing, balancing them thus over his pack-saddle. Unfortu- nately, the Market day came on Saturday. The trains of small merchants and artisans would go up on Friday and return on Sunday. On Saturday in the market- place this good brother would set out his shoes on the left hand and his Bibles on the right hand. The novel spectacle brought many customers, and gave op- portunity for him to preach Christ. On almost every trip he would be exhorted by friends to return on Sunday with the caravan, because it was unsafe for an old man to return through such a wilderness alone, be- cause the highway robbers would make mince-meat of him for the sake of his bag of shoes, etc. But he in- variably assured them it was not right for Christians to travel on the Sabbath. He would spend the Holy Day expounding the Scriptures in their low hotels and coffee shops. On Monday, mounted above his re- maining load upon his horse, he would make his jour- ney of eighteen miles with none but the God of Abra- ham for his guard and friend. One Sunday a large band of robbers fell upon that returning caravan, and with violence carried off everything they possessed. The next day good Hadji Mugnditth, the colporteur, passed over the scene of the disaster all unconscious of what had transpired, and finished his journey un- molested. " I have been told that at Constantinople there is among Evangelical Protestants a less scrupulous regard for the sacredness of the Sabbath than in the interior of the country. And I partly believe it, for they are TS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 49 nearer to the deplorable example of European and American nations." But even in Constantinople, native converts rebuke the Christians of Europe and America by the sacrifices which they make to keep the Sabbath, of which the following incident, from a recent number of the New York Independent, is representative : " An Armenian convert to evangelical faith was employed in a place where work on Sunday was a fixed rule. In the gen- eral stagnation of business, to give up his place was to endure a slow starvation. The poor man wrestled with his conscience for some time, pleaded with his em- ployers without avail, and at last decided that, for the sake of his own spiritual life, he must, at any cost, cease working on the Sabbath. He offered his em- ployers the money necessary to hire a man in his place for Sabbath work. They accepted his offer, provided he would also permit his salary to be cut down ten dol- lars per month. This Christian hero accepted the hard terms, and now his face is seen, bright and smiling, at service and at Sunday-school. Meantime his employ- ers, at first calling him a fool for his pains, are filled with wonder at seeing a man who is willing to sacrifice money in order to be free to worship God." Hundreds of such incidents of trustful self-sacrifice might be given from missionary lands to put to shame those Christians who have not yet learned the parable of the double portion of manna on the sixth day, which proclaimed that those who cease on God's day from their own work shall not he unprovided fo\^ These incidents underscore the words of Mr. Moody at San Francisco (New Year's Day, 1881) : " No man is obliged to work on the Sabbath in order to support his family ; his duty is to obey God and then to trust 50 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. in God." As a noble wife said to her tempted hus- band : " If you can't raise a family successfully by keeping the Sabbath, you surely cannot by breaking it." This rapid but reliable glance at pagan lands gives us as the first element of hope for the perpetuity of the Sabbath the fact that the evangelical converts are generally learning to keep it as a Holy Day, not as a holiday. 6 2. A second element of hope for the friends of Sabbath observance is that a strong reaction in its favor has already set in upon the Continent, whence the poisoned streams of Sabbath desecration have flowed so disas- trously into Great Britain and the United States. Jericho may well take hope when the fountains of its sickening waters are being salted. How cheering is the fact that " Societies have been formed in nearly every country of Europe for promoting the secular and civil as well as the religious observance of Sunday !" This is partly due to the influence of the English- speaking exhibitors at the recent International Exhibi- tions at Vienna and Paris in closing their departments on the Sabbath, and partly to what Continental travel- lers have seen to be the favorable effects of Sabbath observance in Great Britain and the United States. It should not be forgotten that when we speak of "the Continental Sunday" we do not include the Sabbaths of Switzerland, Holland and Scandinavia, which are only semi-continental — more like those of Great Britain and the United States than those of Ger- many and France. " Greenland's icy mountains," no longer heathen, also belong to the Sabbath-keeping part of Europe, Work and hunting are put aside for IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 51 the Moravian Church services, which gather 60,000 worshippers. As to the Sabbath observance in Sweden, I have in- formation from three Swedish pastors, from whom I learn that, except in large cities like Stockholm, on the Sabbath ** No stores or shops are open — no public house is allowed to be open at the time of divine ser- vice, nor is labor permitted. However, some trains and cars run, and there are Sunday excursions. After 6 P.M. the observance is not as good as before that hour." This is due to the fact that the Sabbath is reckoned by Continental Lutherans, as formerly by Puritans and Covenanters, from the sunset of Satur- day. Commander Forbes says that the Sunday of the Ice- landers " terminates at six o'clock, having commenced the same hour the previous evening." Throughout the vast dominions of Russia also these boundaries are in vogue. I cannot agree with the patriotic Swede who writes me, " Our nation has more religion than any in the world," but I can testify that the considerable number of Swedes I have known have had religion of a very good quality, and I have abundant witness that Sab- bath observance in the rural parts of Sweden is un- usually good. Ralph Wells, the world-famed Sabbath- school worker, names "some parts of Sweden and Norway," with the Highlands of Scotland, as the re- gions where he has seen the best Sabbath observance. What he saw in Scandinavia on the Sabbath is thus epitomized : " Almost universal church-going — almost total ab- stinence from secular pursuits — religious instruction of children at home — careful Bible study. In Stockholm, 52 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. one Baptist Sunday-School of 1800 scholars — 150 young men in pastor's Bible class sent out, two and two, almost the entire class each Sabbath afternoon, to labor in the waste places of the city." H. H. Boyesen, the Norwegian novelist, wrote me; in the spring of 1884 of the excellent Sabbath observ^ ance of Norway in the rural districts, on which he was then apprehensive that the siding of the clergy with the King in his conflict with the people, might have an unfavorable effect — an apprehension which has doubt- less been dispelled by the subsequent yielding of the King to the people's demand for a parliamentary gov- ernment. The Sabbath observance of Switzerland is imperfect, but improving. Twice within a few years The Inter- national Federation of Lord's-day Societies (organized in 1776) has met in its cities, and the Swiss Minister at Washington informs me that each of its confederated republics or cantons, except Geneva, has Sabbath laws, while the federal law over them all " forbids Sun- day labor in manufactories," and " the federal law on railroads requires that any laborer or employe of rail- roads shall have his own Sunday every three weeks at least," which has been amended so that " in cases of necessity" he " may have his holiday on some other day than Sunday." " Papers are published freely on Sundays, but generally not on Mondays," so that printers and editors at least have Sabbath rest. " No mails are distributed by letter-carriers on Sundays," which is more than can be said of some other Conti- nental countries. Sabbath observance, even in the best of Continental countries, is inferior to that of the United States and Great Britain — for instance, in Switzerland there is no IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 53 closing of liquor shops or theatres, and elections are regularly held on the Sabbath 6 — but Scandinavia, Holland and Switzerland are far in advance of Spain,' France, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Greece and Russia, which together make up the realm of the real Continental Sunday. Are there any elements of hope in these latter coun- tries ? Here of course we are only seeking hopeful symptoms in the midst of dangerous sickness. The last action of the French Assembly on the Sab- bath question, of which I have received a copy 7 from the French Minister to the United States, records that on the 12th of July, 1880, "the law of the 18th of November, 1814, upon the rest of the Sabbath and the religious festivals was repealed." This repeal of the law which succeeded the tenth-day festival of the Revo- lution is not as discouraging as it seems, for the repeal is mainly aimed at the Roman Catholic festivals, which had been given equal protection with the Sabbath. The Sabbath is now marked in the French Code only by the unimportant by-laws that make it a dies non in judicial proceedings, and by a few other very indirect recognitions ; but while the Sabbath laws have diminished in the last fifteen years, Sunday trade has also diminished. The earliest note of this change that we find is in the New York Times of June 8, 1869, and is as follows : " A very profound and wonderful reform has just been begun in Paris. The principal shops — including those of nearly all linen-drapers, hosiers, silk mercers and venders of ready-made ap- parel — will henceforth be closed on Sundays. The merchants have taken this step of their own accord, and the employes appeal to the good-will of the public to aid them in making the measure general." 54 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. The origin of this movement, which the Times at- tributes to " the merchants" themselves, is more accu- rately explained in the following extract from one of the Reports of the New York Sabbath Committee : " The movement started among the Roman Catholics of France some years -ago, in favor of a better observ- ance of Sunday, under the leadership of the Count de Cissey, is making progress, and has secured the closing of factories, shops, and stores on Sunday in numerous places. Among the Protestants, a committee charged w r ith promoting the observance of the Lord's-day has recently been reorganized in Paris, and promises to prosecute its work with activity." Three clergymen of New York — Wm. M. Taylor, D.D., O. H. Tiffany, D.D., and J. M. Reid, D.D.— each testify that in recent visits to Paris they have observed a decided decrease in the number of shops open on the Sabbath as compared with their former visits. Dr. Reid found a Paris clerk who said that he would not be a clerk in any store which was kept open on the Sabbath, and that there were other clerks of the same mind, and also that Sabbath-keeping was on the increase. Dr. E. W. Hitchcock, pastor of the American Chapel in Paris for eleven years, ending in 1884, writes me that " there is less work done on the first day of the week, much less than twenty and thirty years ago. The manufacturers and wholesale establishments are mostly closed. The majority of the retail shops are, closed at noon. A goodly number are not opened at all on Sunday, and a sign at the door reads, ' Closed Sundays and Fete-days.' It is considered eminently respectable not to work or do business on Sunday. IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 55 Then employers and employed covet the day for rest and recreation." These, of course, are only crumbs of comfort, and there is little to feed hope upon in France, or its imi- tation, Belgium, further than that there is a growing discontent with the Continental Sunday, and increas- ing agitation for its improvement in the direction of greater restrictions. In Italy, societies in Milan, Rome, Naples and else- where, are at work to secure the' Day of Rest, espe- cially to laborers and employees. Steps have been taken to organize a " Laborers' League for Sunday Rest." The result of this movement is already seen in the closing of some of the large stores in Milan on the Sabbath, with the notice posted, " Closed on Sunday out of respect to the humanitarian principle of the Sunday rest." What American or Englishman "will fly such a banner in his shop window by closing on the Sabbath when law or public sentiment would allow him to open ? ' The Aonio Paleario Society and the Young Men's Christian Association," according to the New York Sabbath Committee's Report, ''have united in issuing a series of documents in favor of the Sabbath, and in organizing in Rome a union of all who will observe the Lord's-day themselves and give to others under their control the same privilege. The movement has awak- ened attention on the part of leading Roman Catholics in Italy, and incited them to efforts in the same direc- tion." Leroy M. Vernon, D.D., missionary at Rome, writes thus of some recent slight improvements in Italy's Sabbath observance : $6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. " (i) The Roman Catholic Church in Italy certainly insists on attendance at mass Sunday morning, but the afternoon is invariably a half holiday. The laxity for the afternoon is, I think, a sort of premium for the rigor of the morning, in the interests of church-control rather than in those of real devotion. (2) The church authorities in Rome within the last three or four years have publicly insisted on greater observance of the Lord's-day, but I am inclined to think that it was hostility to the Government which led them to de- nounce working on Sunday by Government laborers, almost more than any real regard for the day. Still, there have been some efforts looking to better observ- ance of the Sunday. And almost all the Protestants in Italy have latterly been very outspoken and urgent on the subject. Some little has been gained, it seems to me. (3) Sunday newspapers are generally pub- lished, varying but little from the usual issues. A few of the better papers (in style), such as the Fanfulla, of Rome, publish a Sunday edition of a purely literary character. (4) The Continental Sabbath remains sub- stantially unchanged. The Protestants are probably more circumspect and observant, but their numbers are yet too small to modify perceptibly the general usage." In the German-speaking nations there is more on which to link our hopes of an improved Sabbath ob- servance. After much misgiving Germany is at length adopting Sabbath-schools quite widely, and thus will correct Sabbath-breaking, not by merely prohibiting it, but by putting something in its place. The chief elements of hope in Germany (including in that term all the German-speaking states) is that the Emperor William, and also the King of Wurtemberg IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 5/ and the Grand Duke of Baden, have each expressed "their sympathy with the International Federation of Lord's-day Societies, and that all classes of people, the Roman Catholics and Lutherans in the name of religion, and the socialists in the name of humanity, are petitioning the German governments, and exhort- ing the German people, with a view to the better ob- servance of the Sabbath. Professor H. M. Scott, of the Chicago Theological Seminary, whose recent residence for several years in Germany has made him an authority in regard to relig- ious movements on the Continent, writes me thus of the signs of improvement in the " Continental Sunday" (April, 1884) : " The recent legislation in Germany, starting from the humanitarian stand-point, is favor- able to Sunday as a day of rest. This is especially the case in Prussia, and the Prussian spirit is spread- ing. ' The State is to avoid all public official acts on Sunday, and protect laborers, servants and operatives from the demands of their employers for work on Sun- day. ' The Church, too, has been more active recently, and it is part of the conservative reaction, which car- ried the Prussian Synod in J 879 by 120 to 40, to em- phasize Sunday-keeping. A Berlin pastor even con- demned the Emperor for reviewing troops on that day. German Christians who have seen the Sunday in Britain desire it in their own country. Dr. Konig, of Leipzig, works there for the Sabbath and the Sun- day-school, which he learned to love in Scotland. The Synod of Saxony, about two years ago, almost unanimously petitioned Government in favor of a stricter observance of Sunday. In the cities all places of business must put up shutters during church hours, and the police enforce the law. At the meeting of the 58 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. * Protestantentag, ' representing the rationalistic the- ology of Germany, held in 1876 at Heidelberg, it was said in theses on the ' Sunday question ' : ' The Prot- estantenverein seconds with all its power the move- ment being made to make the Sunday rest general among the German people. ' The old Lutheran Synod, representing some 60,000 members in Prussia and Baden, sent a petition in 1878, and again in 1882, to the Imperial Parliament, pleading for better observ- ance of the Sabbath-day. Thus the extremes of the- ological opinion unite in favor of such a practical measure for religion and humanity. The dissipation flowing from a Sunday ill-spent is awakening deep thought among German Christians. Intoxication is on the increase in Germany. I heard Prof. Roscher, the famous political economist of Leipzig, once point to the fact that suicides of women are usually committed on Sunday, and those of men usually on Monday, as a sad commentary on an ill-spent Sunday. The woman left neglected at home, in despair takes her life ; the man awakening Monday from a drunken Sun- day, loathes himself and life, and casts both violently away. In a second letter, bringing still more recent in- formation from German papers, then just received, Professor Scott says (April, 1884) : " The German Parliament recently passed a resolution opposing the transmission of wares, books, packets, money, etc., in ordinary cases through the post on Sunday. This motion was passed by a vote of 127 to 82, and that against the opposition of the Postmaster-General, who said that some of the Rhine clergy favored Sunday mails ; whereupon 421 ministers of that Province pub- lished a declaration that they desired no such thing. IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED ? 59 A Social Economic Association of the Rhine peti- tioned Parliament to make Sunday laws stricter, and their petition was referred to a parliamentary commit- tee, which agreed to it by a vote of 13 to 10." We may well hope that the Continental Sunday will find no welcome in Great Britain and the United States, when it can bring only letters of condemnation from those who know it best, w r ho would fain export it with their paupers and convicts. In a third note (Aug., 1884) Professor Scott writes : " At a meeting of United Synods in Berlin, June 16, 17, it was resolved that ' as a rule the officials who are employed in all transport business, whether public or private, must be allowed to rest at least every third Sunday. ' This resolution passed after being supported by Court-preacher Stocker and others. It is a step in the right direction." An illustration of the growing disposition on the Continent in favor of keeping the Sabbath is found in the fact that the great business house in Berlin, that of Rudolf Herzog (" a business like that of Wana- maker in Philadelphia"), has abandoned all work on the Sabbath, all letters arriving on that day being left unopened until Monday — as they should be. Still more radical improvements in the German Sabbath are likely to be the result of an earnest effort to reach the masses with evangelical truth, that has recently been started in Germany by Dr. Theodore Christlieb, of the University of Bonn, and Court-preacher Stocker, of Berlin. The work will be systematically prosecuted through Bible-readers that have been ap- pointed to labor among the lower classes, and through preaching in concert-rooms and theatres. 60 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. 3. Aitother element of hope is that the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches are sharing the reaction against the Continental Stinday. In 1876 or 1877, at a meeting held at St. Peters- burg, attended by laymen and ecclesiastics of the Or- thodox, Lutheran and Reformed communions, it was decided to organize a society to promote the observ- ance of the Lord's-day. In 1884 special attention was called in Russia to the evil of allowing the Sabbath to be used as the great market day. The Grecian Synod of the Greek Church a few years ago issued a circular enjoining the better observance of the Sabbath, and the principal mer- chants of Athens have suspended business on that Day. Pope Leo XIII. has given his hearty indorsement to Count Cissey, of France, in his crusade for a better observance of the Lord's-day. In reply to an address from a Roman Catholic society which opposes the profanation of the Lord's-day, the Pope, on March 20th, 1881, at the suggestion of Archbishop Gibbons, of Baltimore, issued an address in which were these words : " The observance of the Sacred Day which was willed expressly by God from the first origin of man, is imperatively demanded by the absolute and essen- tial dependence of the creature upon the Creator. And this law, mark it well, my beloved, which at one and the same time so admirably provides for the honor of God, the spiritual needs and dignity of man, and the temporal well-being of human life — this law, we say, touches not only individuals, but also people and nations, which owe to divine Providence the enjoy- ment of every benefit and advantage which is derived IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 6l from civil society. And it is precisely to this fatal tendency, which to-day prevails, to desire to lead mankind far away from God, and to order the affairs of kingdoms and nations as if God did not exist, that to-day is to be attributed this contempt and neglect of the Day of the Lord." Many similar utterances have been made by many Roman Catholics within a few years past — by a Roman Catholic Convention in Germany in 1883 ; 8 by a " Catholic Young Men's Convention" in Chicago in 1881 ; by the Metropolitan Catholic Union, of New York State, in 1882. Sunday excursions have been condemned by the Roman Catholic Bishops of Mon- treal and Buffalo ; Sunday liquor-selling, by Bishop Keane, of Richmond, Va. Cardinal McCloskey and Archbishop Wood, of Philadelphia, have also rebuked the desecration of the Lord's-day. Even in Chicago, where Archbishop Feehan, in 1882, allowed his friends to violate the laws of God and man, and turn the Lord's-day into a holiday, in receiving him back from Rome, it should be put to the credit side of the account that the late Bishop Foley and fifteen thousand other Roman Catholics presented a petition of their own to the City Government asking for the closing of Sunday saloons. The Bishop of New Jersey even refused burial to one who had disobeyed the order of the church pro- hibiting the sale of liquor on the Sabbath. Father Walworth, of Albany, said in a published letter : " I need not repeat here the precept of the Catholic Church, which prohibits all merchandising on Sunday. It would be ridiculous to fancy any excep- tion in favor of so dangerous a merchandise as that which constitutes the liquor trade." 62 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Among the New York pastors who protested in 1884 against the Sunday opening of museums, was Father Preston. The commencement of the agitation in Ireland in favor of ''Sunday closing" is also to be credited to Roman Catholic prelates, Bishop Furlong (1857), Archbishop Leahy (1861) and others. In the following letter from Mr. Stephen Preston, Minister from Hayti to the United States, it will be seen that some improvements in Sabbath observance in that island have been inaugurated by a Roman Cath- olic. " I regret to say that in Hayti there are no Sunday laws, and that until i860 it was market day. This custom dated from the establishment of slavery in Hayti, the slaves not being allowed to leave the plan- tations for the purpose of trading except on Sundays. The Haytiens kept it after the abolition of that insti- tution in 1793, and even after the independence of the island in 1804. But in i860 the Roman Catholic curate of Port-au-Prince, the capital of the Republic, aided by some of the local authorities and a few Prot- estant residents of different denominations, undertook a crusade in favor of the observance of Sunday by urging the closing all places of business and the public markets. They succeeded concerning the sus- pension of business, but not regarding pleasures. The people are free on that subject, and I have to say that, except by very few of the natives or foreign resi- dents, either Roman Catholic or Protestant, the Sab- bath is not kept in Hayti as it is in many Protestant countries. About the same state of things exists in the other islands of the West Indies, except those under the ' British Crown.' " IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 63 The following letter, from Father Sylvester Malone, one of the most influential priests of Brooklyn, brings out still further the antagonism of the Roman Catholic Church in its theories, and among some of its priests in feeling and teaching also, to the Continental Sun- day : " I am just in receipt of your letter, in which you put me several questions in reference to the teachings of the Catholic Church on what all Christians owe as their duty to the command of God, ' Remember to keep holy the Sabbath-day.' In the first place, I have to remark that the Sabbath of the Jews was celebrated on the last day of the week, and not on the first, which we Catholics call the Lord's-day. For this change we have only the authority of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church then enjoins on all her members the obligation of keeping holy the Sunday, or first day of each week. What she understands by this command is that no servile work be done, and that prayer and praise of God fill up the greater portion of the day. The attendance at Mass is of obligation. Nothing can excuse a Catholic from neglect of this duty on Sun- days and holy days but sickness, or some very grave reason, which would seem sufficient to any fair-minded person. Of course all traffic of every kind is forbid- den, as It would take the mind from studying the things of God, and indispose it to faith and piety. In all our churches there are services from six o'clock until some time after twelve. The very devoted can remain in the church all this time or any portion of it that suits them. All must hear one Mass, which may take an hour. The evening service consists of Ves- pers, which is sung by the choir ; there are often many other devotions. These are the public functions which,, 64 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. I believe, are more largely attended by the Catholic people than by any other denomination. We advise our people to make the whole day holy so far as they can, by reading good books, by prayer, by works of charity toward their neighbors, and in every way that they may make manifest in a special manner their grat- itude to Almighty God. If we could we would have closed every store where liquor is sold on Sundays ; and where the violators of the law were detected, a withdrawal of their license and other penalties would be strictly enforced. I know there are many Catholics who favor recreation on Sundays, and were it indulged in for health's sake, and not for dissipation, there is no reason to interdict it, especially in the case of the hard-working people, who have too little pleasure and pastime. There should be no drinking, no dancing, no singing, no carousing, for all of these so far distract the mind from God as to make of Sunday a day far more worldly than even the other six, in which they are busy in acquiring riches and wealth. I hope this short note will give you to understand how fully we are alive to the importance of a proper observance of the Lord's-day, and how much we priests strive to keep our followers up to all its requirements. The Church in France and Italy has lost much of her pres- tige, and the consequence is a very lax observance of the Sabbath by the masses. Unbelieving men at the head of the Governments in both countries allow the people to do just as they please, and we see labor and pleasure the characteristics of the Sunday on the Con- tinent, to the great scandal of Americans and English- men who travel there for the first time. I trust that our people may never imitate the bad example of Europeans ; rather let us hope that all good and zeal- IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 65 ous men will, by their example and teaching, aid the good work of encouraging all to spend the Sunday in the service of God, and for the good of their fellow- men. " I may here set down the feast days or holy days which Catholics, who can, are bound to reverence as they do the Sabbath. 1st, The Nativity of our Lord, or Christmas Day ; 2d, The Circumcision, or New Year's Day ; 3d, The Epiphany ; 4th, The Ascen- sion ; 5th, Corpus Christi ; 6th, SS. Peter and Paul ; 7th, The Assumption of the B. V. Mary; 8th, All Saints." This letter, while incidentally showing the weakness o£ the Roman Catholic position in claiming for the ob- servance of the Lord's-day only the same ecclesiastical authority as that of church festivals, is also encourag- ing in giving emphasis to the antagonism of a portion at least of the Roman Catholic priesthood to Sunday trading, Sunday revelling, and the Continental Sun- day. A darker side of the picture will appear in let- ters from Spain and Italy ; but there is at least a ray of hope in the numerous recent utterances of Roman Catholic prelates against the desecration of the Lord's- day, and in their increasing recognition of the truth uttered by the Roman Catholic statesman, Montalem- bert, when he said : " There is no religion without worship ; there is no worship without the Sabbath." 4. Coming to Great Britain, we find the elements of hope for a better Sabbath observance almost too numerous to mention. Mr. Moody, on leaving England in 1884, sa -id to a reporter of the Pall Mall Gazette, in contrasting Lon- don's moral status with what it was at the time of his 66 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. previous visit, ten years before : " The Sabbath is bet- ter observed. I attribute a good deal of this to the revivals in the Church of England, which is more Christian than it was ten years ago." Revivals are the most radical cure of Sabbath dese- cration. Another element of hope is the earnestness with which English workingmen have repeatedly defeated the efforts of their kid-gloved patronizers to thrust upon them the alleged benefits of the " Sunday open- ing" of the national museums and art galleries, which they have recognized as the thin edge of the Conti- nental Sunday, and so have prevented by overwhelm- ing petitions, of which I shall speak elsewhere. It should be noted here, however, as an important ele- ment of hope, that all the agitation for " Sunday opening" has not lessened the majority against it in either House of Parliament. The majority against opening in the House of Lords was the same in 1884 as in 1879, an d would have been two less but for a mis- take. In the House of Commons the vote for opening was four less the last time than the first. Another hopeful fact is that, while more than half the London shops were open on Sundays in 1857, only one fourth opened in 1882. But the chief element of hope for the preservation and improvement of British Sabbath observance is the great success of the " Sun- day closing" of liquor shops in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. In Scotland the government returns prove a marked decrease in the consumption of intoxicating liquors, and also in drunkenness, through the operation of the Forbes-Mackenzie Act. In the five years end- ing 1853 — the act came into force in 1854 — the con- sumption of spirits in Scotland amounted to 36,039,712 IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED ? 67 gallons. In the five years ending 1859, tne number of gallons was 27,909,255, being a decrease of 8,130,457 gallons, or an annual decrease of 1,626,091 gallons under "Sunday closing." In the five years ending 1864, the number of gallons was 24,845,897, a further decrease of 3,063,358 gallons. In 17 towns the total number of cases of drunkenness and crime during the last three years under the old law was 145,366, while in the first three years under the new law, with a larger population, the number fell to 116,101, a de- crease of 29,265, only one third as many being arrested for drunkenness on the Sabbath as the average of the other days. Mr. Thomas Linton, Chief Superintendent of Police and Procurator-Fiscal of Edinburgh, connected with the police force for forty years, says that before the closing of public houses on the Sabbath a larger force of police was required than now. Between eight o'clock on Sabbath morning and ten o'clock at night, there are now only twenty-six men at a time on the beats in the whole of Edinburgh, while on week-days there are seventy-eight. The closing of public houses on the Sabbath has also led to a decrease of drunken- ness on Monday, and the number who now absent themselves from work on that day is small compared with previous years. The Pall Mall Gazette publishes a table of statistics, showing" How Sunday closing has worked in Ireland," which is well worth studying. The arrests for drunk- enness on the Sabbath in the " Sunday-closing" dis- tricts since the Act came into force, in 1878, show a decrease of 53 per cent. The consumption of liquor in these districts during the " Sunday-closing" period shows a decrease of live and a half millions sterling 68 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. [about 2j\ million dollars]. The effect of shut doors on the Sabbath, it is proved, extends through the week ; and there is a decrease (from 518,609 to 442,665) of 75,944 cases in the number of arrests for every-day drunkenness during the " Sunday-closing" period. The most striking fact of the situation is thus brought out : " In the year 1883 the arrests for drunkenness in Ireland numbered 89,526. Of this total, Sunday, in- cluding the arrests in the five exempted cities, con- tributed 4195, leaving 85,000 to be distributed over the other six days of the week. In other words, the six ordinary days of the week gave 14,000 arrests each, whereas Sunday, the idle day, the day when money is more or less available, and a day not kept in the Sab- batarian sense, but which is specially protected from the traffic of the publican, gave 4000 ! Had every day of the week been as well protected, the drunken arrests in 1883 should have numbered less than 30,000, instead o 4 the actual total of 90,000." The Dai-y Telegraph, of London, commenting on these facts in an editorial (May 20th, 1884), says : ' These are facts which make the plea of Sunday clos- ing simply resistless." " Sunday closing" in Wales completed its second year June 30th, 1884, an d has too short a record to make its statistics of special value, although they point in the same direction as those of Scotland and Ireland. The fact that liquor shops are open in England on the very borders of Wales, greatly embarrasses the working of the Welsh "Sunday-closing"act, which can have a fair trial only when a similar law is enacted for England, which is urged to it by the successes of Sunday clos- ing, not only in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, but also in the British Colonies and in the United States. By IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 69 replies to a circular sent out by Lord Kimberley in July, 1881, to the British Colonies, inquiring whether legislation had taken place during the last ten years relative to the sale of intoxicants on the Sabbath, we find that " Sunday closing" prevails in the Canadas, in Newfoundland, in Natal, in Western Australia, in South Australia, in New Zealand, in New South Wales, in Victoria and in Queensland. All the testis mony is to the effect that " Sunday closing is and has been highly beneficial." Wherever in the United States "Sunday-closing' ' laws have been enforced, drunkenness and other crimes have greatly decreased. Rev. W. W. Atterbury, Sec- retary of the New York Sabbath Committee, says : " During three years — from 1867 to 1870 — it is an im- portant historical fact, which no subsequent failures can obliterate, that we had a liquor law that was enforced in New York. Before that time a law prohibited the sale of liquors with pains and penalties ; but it was not enforced. In 1866 a law was passed, called the Metropolitan Excise Law, that was enforced for three years. The result was that the arrests for disorder and drunkenness, which had always been twenty-five per cent more on Sunday than on Tuesday — as an average week-day — at once decreased, and became forty per cent less on Sunday than on Tuesday [a gain of 65 per cent]. That law continued in force until the regime of Mr. Tweed, when it was repealed." Since Tweed reversed the engines of law enforce- ment, his successors have continued to allow the back doors of saloons to fan the flames of vice and crime on the Sabbath into their most destructive proportions. Through the efforts of a Citizens' Law and Order League in enforcing the "Sunday-closing" laws of JO THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Massachusetts, in a recent year the arrests for drunken- ness on the Sabbath decreased thirty-four per cent. In Columbus, Ohio, on the Monday following the enforcement of the new Sabbath laws of that State, it was telegraphed abroad : " The Sunday-closing law was strictly observed by saloon men, and it was the most quiet day of the year. The average arrests of twenty-five for drunkenness was cut down to three cases." Sunday arrests have been so greatly decreased, and Sabbath rest so greatly increased wherever the ring- leader of Sabbath desecration, Alcohol, has been locked up, that the English Parliament cannot much longer withhold the boon from England itself, where liquor shops are now open six or seven hours on the Sabbath. It is a remarkable fact that in the week ending April 5, 1884, no less than 529 petitions in favor of " Sunday closing'' of public houses in England were presented to the British Parliament, while only eight were forth- coming in favor of the new franchise bill. A vast ma- jority of the population, as tested by canvass, desire the cessation of the Sunday drink traffic. More than 600 towns and villages in various parts of England, representing a population of upward of five millions, have been canvassed on this question by schedules left at their homes, and 966,256 householders have given written replies as follows : In favor of Sunday closing, 789,333 [80 per cent] ; against Sunday closing, 107,489 ; neutral, 69,434. In 1883 nearly two millions of Englishmen petition- ed for " Sunday closing " in England, and a resolution was passed declaring its expediency ; but the crowd of less important public business, and the chattering of IS THE S\BBATH SURRENDERED? J\ obstructionists, prevented the passage of a correspond- ing bill, which, however, must soon be given to those who have asked for it in larger numbers than have ever petitioned for any law that has not been granted. The London Times, commenting on the last defeat in Parliament of the proposal to open national museums on the Sabbath, said : " The working class are a good deal more interested in the Sunday closing of public houses than in the Sunday opening of museums. In the former they welcome the removal of a powerful temptation ; in the latter they are more or less in- clined to suspect an attack, unintended, no doubt, but none the less insidious, on the safeguards which guar- antee them their Sunday's rest." In a similar strain The Quarterly Review, speaking of Financial Prospects, in March, 1884, says of " Sun- day closing :" "It is the wage-receiver who calls for it. It is from the new electorate, the great mass of whom live by weekly wages, that that pressure has proceeded which has made possible a kind of legisla- tion, of which, prior to 1868, no practical statesman dreamed ; which even in 1875 seemed infinitely re- mote. That nearly half the drinking and three fourths of the drunkenness of this country take place on Satur- day evening and Sunday is too notorious to need proof or illustration. The demand for Sunday closing, then, means a demand to curtail, by at least one half, the period during which their habits and the necessities of their daily work permit the wage-receivers to indulge in their favorite vice ; and such a demand argues a very great and significant change of feeling among them." We may well pause here in our round-the-world trip of Sabbath inspection to consider the rights and rea- 72 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. sons that authorize and urge England to enact and America to enforce " Sunday-closing" laws. Laws forbidding liquor-sellers to do business on the Sabbath are sufficiently justified on the ground that they have no more right to break the law of general rest than any other business which is not a work of necessity or mercy. If the nobler forms of trade must cease in the interests of the general rest, certainly the most dangerous of all merchandising ought to have no exception made in its favor. One would think by the state of things in many large cities, that the Sabbath was not made for man, but for the liquor-dealer. German beer-sellers in America claim immunity on race grounds, and are the last to close when enforce- ment is attempted. But they have no better claim than others. That to sell beer on the Sabbath was their custom in Germany is no argument to those who do not wish America to be like Germany, either in morals, or government, or in the Continental Sundays that underlie both, and help to make' it a good land to emi- grate from. When native citizens are compelled to intermit the sale of useful articles on the Sabbath for the general good, there should certainly be no except tion in favor of poison-selling foreigners. But the opening of saloons on the Sabbath can be justly prohibited in a free country, not only because the public health calls for the suspension on that day of all needless trade, but also because liquor-selling (harmful on any day, and so rightly prohibitable on all days) is doubly demoralizing on the Sabbath, as on election days, and so on both may rightly be prohib- ited by the State in the exercise of its right of self- protection. A holiday or holy day with open rum- shops is not a blessing, but a curse. Professor Swing IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 73 speaks with suitable intensity of the horrible illustra- tion of this fact which Chicago affords: "To have twenty-five hundred saloons open on any day of idle- ness is not only to rob the day of its prime quality, of its physical and mental rest, but it is to transform the day into a positive evil. It is of no advantage to common people to have a day of rest from common labor, if the day is to bring an unusual outlay of money, and an inflaming of the passions. If the stores are closed, and the manufactories are closed, and the spade and pick are put aside for twenty-four hours only that glasses and bottles may rattle, and cards be shuffled, and dice cast, and hard-earned money be wasted, then it would be better that industry should rule all the seven days of the week. Regular labor all through the year would not injure a laboring man half as much as he would be injured by fifty-two days in the beer shops. A day which shuts up a factory and opens a saloon is an absurdity. What a sweet day that must be when it is an open question whether those who are to enjoy it will live over it ! A broken head is more probable than a saved soul." Statistics show that in Germany, where Sunday liquor-selling is open and untrammelled, fifty-three per cent of the crimes are committed between Saturday and Monday morning. Many a poor German woman dreads to have Sunday come. Her husband, who has worked hard and kept sober through the week, finds it a much more perilous affair on his weekly respite, and returns home from his Sunday " recreation" in no favorable mood for domestic peace. In England, with its six and seven hours of Sunday liquor-selling, the same results appear. To use the language of one of the Homilies (" Of the Place and 74 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Time of Prayer"), " It doth too evidently appear that God is more dishonored and the devil better served on the Sunday than upon all the days of the week beside." Similar testimony is given by judges, chaplains and others to the effect of the Sunday liquor traffic in the United States. Judge G. G. Reynolds, of the Brooklyn City Court, after remarking that he has to do only with civil cases, and so sees less of the fruits of Sabbath-breaking than judges in criminal courts, proceeds to say : " Inciden- tally, however, we in the civil courts see much of the evil effects of Sabbath-breaking. In many of the actions brought to recover damages for assault and battery, we find the quarrel originated in liquor saloons on Sunday ; and in the actions brought under what is known as the Civil Damage Act, it generally turns out that the worst cases are connected with Sunday drink- ing. If the license laws, even such as they are, should be strictly enforced in respect to Sunday closing, it would greatly lessen the evils connected with the abominable business of selling intoxicating drinks." Alderman Cullerton, of Brooklyn, in 1883, stated that a few years before he had used all his influence to prevent the enforcement of the Sunday-closing laws, but since then he had seen so much of the evil effects of selling liquor on Sundays that he would now fight harder to secure the rigid enforcement of the law than he ever had fought against it. The records of Brooklyn police courts shozved that on Sunday there were twice as many arrests for drunkenness and disorderly conduct as on any other day in the week. Almost every Mon- day morning he was waited upon by the wives of laborers who had been arrested for Sunday sprees, and asked to use his influence in their favor. These poor IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 75 women managed to keep their husbands at home Sat- urday night, but could not detain them in the house all day Sunday. The men went to the saloons, spent all their money, got drunk, and their wives and fami- lies had to suffer for it. It was the same thing every week. The money earned by the men was squandered in drink, and the unfortunate wives had to work hard to pay their husbands' fines and buy food for their children. Sunday liquor-selling is the pirate of commercial life, preying upon all other trades and interests. On Sunday it robs the church and the home of the pres- ence of fathers and brothers. Extending its relentless grasp forward into the week, it robs the Monday work- shop of its employees, and the grocer, the baker, the butcher, of their legitimate share of the laborer's wages, which are monopolized by the liquor-dealer, while the tippler's family are left ragged and hungry. The liquor-dealer is an Arab whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand should be against him. At the very least, he should not be allowed a ^lay more of each week than better merchants. 5. Passing from Europe to America, we pause to note another element of hope in the fact that nearly all the great men on both sides of the sea have given their em- phatic testimony in favor of the observance of the Sab- bath as a Holy Day of legally protected rest and worship. Charles Sumner is almost the only man of eminence in modern times who has expressed himself in favor of Sunday as a sporting holiday after the Continental fashion. Against him may be quoted Washington, Lincoln, Garfield, Webster, Seward, and a long list of eminent men, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and in- ?6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. fidel ; American, British, and Continental ; statesmen, doctors, jurists, manufacturers, travellers, who give unanimous testimony that health, mind, morals, and liberty all require that one day in seven shall be legally protected against business and public pleasures. General Washington, in August, 1776, at the begin- ning of the great war of the Revolution, in a general army order, said : " That the troops may have an op- portunity of attending public worship, as well as to take some rest after the great fatigue they have gone through, the General, in future, excuses them from fatigue duty on Sundays, except at the shipyards, or on special occasions, until further orders. . . . We can have little hope of the blessing of Heaven on our arms, if we insult it by our impiety and folly." The following is President Lincoln's famous Army Order in regard to Sabbath observance : " Executive Mansion, Washington, ) Nov. 15, 1862. j " The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval service. The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine will, demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity. The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperilled, by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High. At this time of public distress, adopting the words of Washington, in 1776, IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? *ff e men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.' The first general order issued by the Father of his Country, after the Declaration of Independence, indicates the spirit in which our insti-. tutions were founded, and should ever be defended : 1 The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Chris- tian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.' President Garfield, whose name is so often associated with those of Washington and Lincoln, was like them in his regard for the Sabbath. At the Chicago Con- vention, at which General Garfield was subsequently nominated President, on Saturday night many wanted to go on with the balloting after midnight, and many pressed Judge Hoar, the Chairman, to ignore the Sab- bath, and let the convention proceed. Judge Hoar replied, " Never ! This is a Sabbath-keeping nation, and I cannot preside over this convention one minute after twelve o'clock." On that Sabbath Garfield at- tended church and heard a sermon. At dinner the conversation turned upon the suspense of the country. One spoke of the deadlock in business created by it ; another of the suspense at Washington, where all were waiting the further developments of the convention. All except Garfield said something ; and when all were done, he remarked, quietly, but with earnestness, to one sitting beside him, " Yes, this is a day of suspense, but it is also a day of prayer ; and I have more faith in the prayers that will go up from Christian hearts to-day than I have in all the political tactics which will prevail at this convention." During his sickness he remembered the Lord's-day 7'8 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. when it came. On one Sabbath morning, as he opened his eyes to its holy light, he said : " This is the Lord's-day. I have a very great reverence for it." Daniel Webster once said : tl The longer I live the more highly do I estimate the importance of the proper observance of the Christian Sabbath and the more grateful do I feel toward those who impress its importance on the community." 9 William H. Seward, in a letter to a Sabbath Con- vention at Rochester, N. Y., July 20, 1842, said : " Every day's observation and experience confirm the opinion that the ordinances which require the observ- ance of one day in seven, and the Christian faith which hallows it, are our chief security for all civil and relig- ious liberty, for temporal blessings and spiritual hopes." These quotations call to mind an incident which oc- curred at the Profile House in the White Mountains, where the guests usually have Sabbath evening wor- ship in the parlors. On one of these evenings, one of a group in the office, who was noticing the people as they passed in to worship God, sneeringly said, " That will do for those who don't know any better." " I don't know any better," said a fine-looking man, as he turned from the group to go in. Washington, Lin- coln, Garfield, Webster, Seward, ' did not know any better' than to " remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." That the eminent men of Great Britain are almost unanimously opposed to the Continental Sunday, even in its least harmful phases, has been clearly shown in the numerous Parliamentary debates on the question of opening the National Museums on the Sabbath. Who have advocated such opening? Sir Joshua IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 79 Walmesley (the first to move for it in the House of Commons, 1850), George Howard, Esq., Sir Coutts Lindsay, Lord Carlingford, Lord Thurlow, Lord Dun- raven, Lord Roseberry, Viscount Powerscourt, Earl Granville, the Duke of Westminster, the Prince, of Wales. Most of them are unknown outside of Eng- land, except that one of them is famous for his wealth, another for his vices, while a third is known by his political association with Gladstone. Who have opposed Sunday opening ? Gladstone, D'Israeli, Shaftesbury, Argyll, Bright, Broadhurst, Tait, Selborne, Cairns, Ebury, McArthur, Charles Reade, nearly all of them known in all lands as noble- men, without writing their titles. Not a few such testimonies in favor of the Anglo- American Sabbath come also from Continental leaders. Montalembert, the French statesman, said, in behalf of such a Sabbath, " Man was not made for industry, but industry was made for man." l0 De Tocqueville said to an American, when the American Sabbath was better than now, " France must have your Sabbath or she is ruined." The French political economist Nadand, who has written an interesting history of the working classes in England, says : " I was formerly a furious adversary of Sunday rest. I find among my notes the sketch of a discourse which I was about to pronounce in the Legislative Assembly in reply to the honorable M. Montalembert. My opinion is no longer the saine. I would see closed to-day the workshops and the stores of France from Saturday at midday to Monday morn- ing. My conviction is that the workman, the clerk in the store, the women who work away from their own homes, by resting a day and a half in the week, and 80 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. not working more than nine hours a day, would accom- plish more in their toil than by being constrained, as now, to the toil of a slave. It is not the body only, it is the heart and the intellect which demand the obser- vation of Sunday." Pierre Joseph Prudhon, one of the ablest of French Socialists and atheists, in an argument for the Sabbath from a secular standpoint, said : " Shorten the week by a single day, and the labor bears too small a pro- portion to the rest ; lengthen the week to the same extent, and labor becomes excessive. Establish every three days a half day of rest, and you increase by a fraction the loss of time, while in severing the natural unity of the day, you break the numerical harmony of things. Accord, on the other hand, forty-eight hours of rest after twelve consecutive days of toil, and you kill the man with inertia after having exhausted him with fatigue." Humboldt, the great German naturalist, left this testimony : " It is as unreasonable as inhuman to work beyond six days weekly." When the advocates of a Continental Sunday at- tempt to offset these testimonies of great modern leaders by quoting the utterances of Luther and Calvin, four hundred years ago, in the twilight of the dawning reformation, it is an impressive confession that the Continental Sunday has no illustrious defend- ers in the present noonday of the reformation. In the words of Gilfillan : " There has perhaps never been a topic on which a greater number of the wise and good have been agreed, than the divirte authority, 11 the sanctity and the value of a weekly day of rest and prayer." 600 The Continental Sunday is, however, championed IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? Si by all the liquor-dealers, all the gamblers, all the pros- titutes, and by such statesmen (?) as the New York Aldermen, one of whom perpetrated, in 1882, the fol- lowing preamble and resolution against the Sabbath and the English language — a fair specimen of the anti- Sabbath literature : "Whereas. The recent enforcement by the consti- tuted authorities of laws, which by reason of more enlightened, reasonable and considerate ideas of hu- manity, had become to be viewed subversive of the liberty of individual citizens in a government demo- cratic in form, and coercive to sectarian and so called religious enactments, has excited the community of this, the most cosmopolitan city of the known world, subjecting the poorest of citizens to the most incon- venience by the loss of the means of their subsistence. "Therefore, This Common Council of the City of New York, by resolution herewith express their ear- nest and severe depreciation at the folly of the State Legislature in the reenactment by codification of laws which custom and human progress had caused to view as most Puritanical and obsolete ; and we therefore ask the Legislature to assemble (which, fortunately, will be Democratic) to repeal at the earliest possible opportunity the odious Sabbatarian clauses in the ' Penal Code,' that the citizens of this, the ' Excelsior Stat?,' may enjoy the privileges guaranteed by ' Magna Charta,' unfettered by laws originating in religious fanaticism." The resolution, without any objection to its gram- mar, was adopted with great enthusiasm by a vote of fourteen to five — thirteen of the twenty-four aldermen being liquor-dealers. So long as such men are the chief advocates of the 82 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Continental Sunday, it would seem safe, even without looking further into the subject, to repudiate it. 6. A nother eleme?it of hope lies in the fact that in spite of repeated efforts 12 in the United States to repeal or seri- ously modify the Sabbath laws, they still remain on the statute books of almost every State. In California, the repeal of the Sabbath law was made a party issue in 1882, one party boldly attacking it, the other hardly defending. The plausible plea for burying the law was that it was a " dead letter," but in fact this watch-dog had been found to be alive in Los Angeles, and the liquor-dealers feared it might prevent their Sunday robberies of the people else- where, and so killed it. Thus California went " out of the Union" into the company of Louisiana, which had previously been the only State without a Sabbath law. But Louisiana, in 1886, gave up its lawless Sunday, not through religious influences, but because its French Catholic planters found that when their employees spent Sunday in saloons they did not report for work on Monday, often not even on Tuesday. From 1887-90 California was the only State without a Sabbath law, but was joined in the latter year by the new State, Idaho, which as a Territory never had a Sabbath law. Of the Territories then remaining, none were without a Sabbath law. Oklahoma's first Legislature forbade liquor-selling on the Sabbath, with $100 penalty. The District of Columbia was said by its Commis- sioners, in 1889, to have no operative Sabbath law ; but its obsolete code was found sufficient in 1890 to stop Sunday ball-playing, and either through the powers given in that code or by special police regula- tion, Sunday saloons continued to be forbidden as in IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 83 former years, the Commissioners meantime, and mill- ions of other petitioners, asking Congress for a more adequate Sabbath law for the Capital. Alaska, also, neither State nor Territory nor District, was left by Congress without protection for its Rest Day. ' The Sunday laws are substantially the same in all the other States and Territories. They forbid on Sunday common labor and traffic, public and noisy amusements, and whatever is likely to disturb the quiet and good order of the day. They make Sunday a non-legal day. The courts and legislative halls and government offices are closed." Exceptions are made in Sunday laws by some legislatures, and interpreta- tions are given by some courts which make some of these laws sanction more than works of necessity and mercy ; and in many cases the laws are not well en- forced ; but it Is an element of hope that in spite of efforts in almost every State to repeal or seriously modify these laws, they have been retained on the statute books, and that it is as well with them as it is. 7. Another element of hope lies in the fact, shown in Dorchester's Problem of Religious Progress — a rec- ognized authority in statistics — that twenty per cent of the people in the United States are members, and fifty per cent more are adherents, of evangelical churches, ziearly all of them being in favor of observing the Sab- bath, not as a holiday, but as a holy day. Ignorant of these facts, or ignoring them, the New York Staats Zeitung calls the opposition to the Continental Sunday in the United States, " the intolerance of a very small fraction of the population." Even among the thirty per cent who are not mem- bers or adherents of evangelical churches, there are many opponents of the Continental Sunday. That 84 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. some Roman Catholics are strongly opposed to it I have already shown. Many of the so-called " liberal Christians ,,M should also be counted among its opposers. W. H. Ryder, D=D., Universalist, recently of Chi- cago, says : " Sabbath laws are justified in a Republic on the ground of self-preservation. They are also justified by Divine command and by the experience of mankind. They are justified because Sunday is the poor man's day of rest, which neither wealth nor wickedness has the right to take away. They are jus- tified upon the principle that the privilege of rest for each citizen depends upon the observance of a day of rest by all citizens." Edward Everett Hale, Unitarian, of Boston, gives no uncertain sound in the following bugle-call to a better Sabbath observance : " Every conscientious man must make up his mind whether he thinks public worship one day in seven a good thing or a bad thing, and whether he considers this Sunday rest, as pro- tected by statute, a good thing or a bad thing, and then must make it a matter of action, also. He has no right to take the comfort of Sunday and leave the maintaining of Sunday to ministers and church-goers. The profanation of the day by high-minded, moral and intelligent young men in amusement and recreation, helps the way to the secularization of all days. Is my question to be always that miserable question of my good ? . . . Have we come to that sink-hole of hog- gishness that we will do nothing that we are not paid for on the nail ? What we say is, that public worship is a necessity to the noblest life of the community. If you say so, you must act so. You must visibly, and with personal sacrifice, enlist yourself on that side. . . . TS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 85 The church bell on Sunday rings not for Orthodoxy, or Methodism, or Unitarianism, so much as it rings for public spirit, for mutual regard, for human free- dom. If you choose to go sailing all day, or to go off to ' worship God on the mountains ' all day — as I observe is the cant phrase — or to spend the Sunday in fishing or hunting, you do practically all you can to break down the institution." Robert Collyer, D.D., Unitarian, in assuming charge of the Church of the Messiah, New York, took for his opening sermon, the text, " I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." That was the very word, too, he announced, that he left as his parting charge with the Church of the Unity in Chicago. He said that a wise and gracious friend there remarked to him after church, " I wish you had preached that sermon twenty years ago, instead of the one I remember you did preach, in which you told us we might worship God better perhaps in the woods or meadows, or in our own homes, sometimes, than in the sanctuary. I remember saying to myself," said this gracious friend of the preacher, " We do not need such exhortation. We are ready enough to stay at home, or wander about the world. Our minister has no idea how glad we are to hear such doctrine." The minister himself confesses, " I had no idea how easy it was for the men or women of our free thought and free ways to drift from the service of the sanctuary." He quotes those who say, " There is no need for me to go into the house of' the Lord ; I have outgrown all that, and am now my own temple and my own priest." He asks, "What do you really do in the woods, and on the waters, and in your own homes, and what does it all come to ?" " The drift of it all," 86 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. he says, " is to slay faith, and to touch with paralysis the nerve of any grand endeavor." " Few and far be- tween," he thinks, are those who can withstand its baneful power ; " while with multitudes whom no man can number, this ' own temple and own priest ' busi- ness is merely seeming, and the dumb things that run and fly, worship God more truly than they do." He adds, " There is one God of such things, and his name is the one they got from their godfathers and god- mothers ; one supreme service, and you spell it with four letters — s-e-l-f. " As to the seventh-day worshippers — Jews, Seventh- day Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists — they form together but five tenths of one per cent of the popu- lation of the United States, 15 and are still fewer in Great Britain ; and so, except in a few places where they live together in considerable numbers, they have little influence on Sabbath observance. If all the foreign element should be counted against the Sabbath, it is but fifteen per cent of the popula- tion in the United States, and much less in Great Britain, and so has no controlling force except in a few large cities of the former country. But this influence, even in large cities, is usually the despotism of a loud minority. For instance, Cincinnati, which is surren- dered to Germans of the baser sort, is but two fifths German in its population, and many of these are in sympathy with American friends of order, rather than with the anarchists of socialism and sensualism. There are not a few places where this despotism of margins over masses exists, and where the long-suffering native majority need to prove that they have some rights which the foreign minority are bound to respect. Even if European vandals, re-enforced by savage IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 87 Americans, should in any city outnumber the virtuous citizens, native and foreign, they can and should be overruled by the State, of which they are always a small minority, although the worst of them make up in a Babel of noise what they lack in numbers, and so cause timid people to think them a great and resistless host. Let it, then, be proclaimed to the friends of the Sab- bath that only fifteen per cent of America's population is foreign, and that only a part of this foreign element is against the Sabbath. A resident of one of the European capitals said to an American, "You know we have sent you only the scum of our country, what floats to the top, you know ; we send that to you, and keep the other ones behind." The American replied, ' That is the very way we get cream in our country." Europe sends to America not only scum, but cream. The Scotch, English, Welsh and Scandinavians re- enforce rather than attack the American Sabbath. Even the German element of the population is not unanimously in favor of the Continental Sunday. German Americans are not all saloonists and Socialists. There are Germans and Germans. Politicians who are fishing for the German vote with anti-Sabbath and pro-saloon resolutions and laws will do well to note the fact. A woman from North Ireland said to me, naively, " I never saw an Irishman until I came to this country." As there is a North Ireland and a South Ireland, so there are Germans who believe in making the Sabbath a holy day as well as Germans who would use it as a holiday. A German pastor in Brooklyn says : " The foreign Lutheran population do better here, on the whole, than in" Germany. American Lutherans of the General Synod type are strict in Sab- 2>S THE SABBATH FOR MAN. bath observance/' A Presbyterian pastor in Wiscon« sin says, " The evangelical Germans are better church- goers and better observers of the Sabbath than the average native Americans. " A Methodist presiding elder in Chicago says of German Methodists : " They are as careful about the Sabbath as any of our people. I know some who refuse to use the horse-cars or to buy milk on Sunday." A California manufacturer says of San Francisco, " There is quite a large Chris- tian German population who observe the Sabbath as a holy day. " In Chicago, in 1880, the German Ministers' Meeting indorsed, by resolution, a Sabbath Association whose platform recognizes the Sabbath as of divine au- thority and universal obligation, and seeks for the ces- sation of all business and amusements on that day. I am informed by Wm. Niestadt, Secretary of the Chicago Sabbath Committee, whose platform is the same as that just referred to, that thirty-four of the forty German pastors of that city are in sympathy with the efforts of the committee. The proposal to have Sunday horse races in Chicago, in 1884, brought to- gether an indignation meeting of a thousand Germans, whose opposition was voiced by several of the thirteen German pastors on the platform. One of these pas- tors, Rev. J. D. Severinghaus, writes me as follows : " The Lutherans of the General Synod, German as well as English, all favor a better Sabbath observance than we now have. All the Reformed branches of Protestantism, such as Methodists, Baptists, Presby- terians, etc., influence their German allies sufficiently to have them at least consent to resolutions passed upon the Sabbath question, even though they might not follow them up as closely as their English-speaking brethren. The German Unirtc (some five hundred IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 89 ministers in this country) have no English interest, and are somewhat European in their views, although they are entirely evangelical in spirit. Of the Lutheran pastors,, outside of the General Synod, who number some 2000 ministers, it cannot be said that they favor anything like a Puritan Sabbath, but still they are all preaching the Gospel very earnestly and with good results, which naturally tends to an increased regard for the Lord's-day. They will not co-operate with anybody in outward demonstrations, and theoretically hold that Sunday is holy only for the purpose of preaching the gospel ; but still their influence in favor of law and order is most wholesome. What is left are German Catholics and German infidels. These, of course, count Sunday a holiday, and usually spend the Sabbath in a manner adapted to their tastes and cir- cumstances. In the Sabbath Association of Chicago there are representatives of German, Swedish and Norwegian, as well as English churches. No Germans object to any movements of this kind, as long as they are confined to moral suasion. Our recent demonstra- tion was a moderate success. 'We wanted to show the public that German Christians know the value of a quiet Sunday, and also to strengthen public sentiment with especial reference to the Sunday horse-racing, which was agitated at the time. I think the senti- ment in favor of a quiet Sunday is growing among the Germans, not because of anything our Sabbath Asso- ciation has done, but because of the healthy growth of church life in the German congregations of this city." A large minority, at least, of the Germans in the United States desire "a stricter Sabbath observance than we now have," and many of the others might be won by " sweet reasonableness." An illustration of 90 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. this is given in the following incident, related by the Secretary of a Sabbath Association : " Having visited an Eastern city, I returned home on a night train ; and knowing that a car filled with immigrants was attached, I went in, where I found the conductor in some trouble on account of not knowing the language of these foreigners. I offered my services, and became at once the interpreter, for which service I was per- mitted to remain with those immigrants the rest of the night. I spoke to them of this new country to which they had come, of religion and the Sabbath, etc. These people rejoiced to hear of Jesus, for they had been warned in their old home that there was no religion in America. I found a field ready to receive good seed, so I distributed our documents (' Sunday Laws and Sunday Liberty,' etc., in German 925 ), and in less than five minutes all were busy reading by the dim light of the car-lamps. At last an old man among them said : ' We will not read now, but will listen to a talk from the friend we have found, and read again when we are alone.' I spoke for over thirty minutes to a very attentive congregation, and saw many in tears." Such meetings in the interests of the Sabbath ought to be multiplied a thousandfold. We have, then, as a mighty hope, the fact that at least three fourths of the people of the United States are opposed to the Continental Sunday. 8. Another element of hope, kindred to the last, lies in the fact that the cities, the strongholds of Sabbath- breaking, do not have the ruling majority of our pop- ulation, nor will have before 1920. 13 In all rural dis- tricts, except in the far West, the Sabbath is still well observed. The large cities have so large attention IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED ? 91 in the newspapers that their inhabitants come to think that Cincinnati is Ohio, or Chicago is Illinois, as Paris is said to be France. But in the Legislatures the city representatives find that one does not equal four. The country districts elect Presidents, Con- gresses, Legislatures ; and the country districts, where the Sabbath is observed and prized-, make and guard the Sabbath laws. There is large hope in that. In the days of Constantine, Christianity was so com- pletely confined to the cities that it was assumed that every countryman was an idolater, the word " pagan" originally meaning countryman. Constantine exempt- ed countrymen from the provisions of his Sunday laws both as to farm work in the country and Sunday markets in the cities. Things have changed, and to- day the country is the stronghold of the Sabbath, while thousands of city people exempt themselves from its proper observance. But when to the three fourths of the population who live in the country and prize the Sabbath is added the majority of the city population, who also uphold it, we find abundant ground for hope. 9. There is also an element of hope in the fact so good a Sabbath observance has been preserved in many of the large cities of the United States, especially in Philadelphia (which 'ranks first in Sabbath-keeping among the large cities of the United States, in the opinion of a majority of my correspondents), and in Boston, Baltimore, Brooklyn, and New York. Men talk about the Sabbath being surrendered, be- cause, on summer Sabbaths 75,000 of the 1,400,000 people of New York City — five of every hundred — go for internal baths of beer to Coney Island and other 92 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. suburban resorts ; but there is a good deal of the Sab- bath left even in New York City. According to the New York Tribune, 725,000 of its population — a little more than half — spend the Sabbath religiously, and only 10,000 in beer gardens. Even in New York City, a quiet but earnest Sabbath Committee has stopped Sunday theatres and shows, Sunday crying of news- papers, and Sunday processions, except real military funerals, whose music is hushed in the vicinity of churches. Although the Sabbath of New York City is by no means what it should be, it is far from surren- dered. Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Brooklyn' have similar Sabbaths, not delivered from that sneak thief, the Sunday saloon, with his law-breaking back door, but quiet Sabbaths, nevertheless, when con- trasted with Paris, Munich, Madrid, or San Francisco. 10. Another element of hope in the United States comes from the South, whose religious conservatism has kept up a fairly good Sabbath observance thus far, and promises to continue it. It should be remembered that the Southern people are very largely orthodox in religion. The winds of doubt in the United States are chiefly from the East. A pastor in Richmond, Virginia, claims that " a larger percentage of its population attend church than of any other city in the country — probably in the world." Charleston is mentioned by many as one of the cities of the world where the best Sabbath observance may be seen. Judge Craft, of Memphis, says of the South : "The civil observance- prevails very generally in the South, outside of New Orleans and one or two other cities. Sunday is a day of quiet and of rest in all our rural districts." A man who was trained in Scotland, IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 93 and now lives in Utah, names as the best Sabbath- keeping region he has seen in the United States a dis- trict in Tennessee, where a Saturday half-holiday helped the observance of the Sabbath. The lights and shadows of Southern Sabbaths may be seen in the following representative letter from Mr. C. B. Fairchild, long resident in North Carolina, in regard to Sabbath observance in that State : " In the larger cities the church-going people, especially the Presbyterians, are very strict in Sabbath-observance, except in the matter of social visiting. They do no cooking on the Sabbath, attend church regularly, and avoid all kinds of work. Sunday trains are not allowed to run on any road, except one train each way, to carry the United States mail. The country people are not so strict. A planter will go, or send his over- seer, to the colored churches, and engage all his help for the coming year. The colored people, very relig- ious in their way, expect to make bargains and talk business on Sunday ; and many of them will engage in Sunday work for an extra fee, while others cannot be hired to do Sunday work. The planters sometimes work their hands in cotton-planting-and-picking time, if the weather during the week has been unfavorable. In many places in North Carolina, remote from towns, Sunday is not known. The people are in a benighted state — whole sections as ignorant of God and the Bible as any people that can be found in the world." Other correspondents, teachers of the negroes, in- form me that the Sabbath is not observed by them as earnestly as in the sad days of slavery ; but on the whole the reports indicate that Sabbath observance in the South excels that of the ' ' New West" and nearly or quite equals that of the average Northern States. 94 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. II. A nother element of hope in the United States is that the West has improved in Sabbath observance (ex- cept in the largest cities), as the communities have changed from frontier Territories into settled States. All my Dakota correspondents, for instance, speak of " the almost entire discontinuance of Sunday labor, which was common in Dakota five years ago." In Wyoming also, of late, there has been " a gradual change for the better." Both laymen and ministers say that even in California the Sabbath is on the whole better observed, and Christian services better attended than five years ago. Dr. J. G. McMillan, of Salt Lake City, notes there " a tore general closing of business houses on the Sabbath," and also says, " Sabbath is coming to be recognized in the mining camps, where it was formerly unknown." I am told that in Montana a few years since the Sabbath was the market day. The streets were crowded with miners, ranchmen and others from the outskirts. The loud tones of the auctioneer were heard, and it was the busiest of days. Now, as the Territory has become more settled, the Sabbath is quiet, though some stores still keep open on that day. In the older West, or, as it should be called, the Central States — from Ohio to Kansas — the Sabbath is fairly well observed except in a few large cities. The Sacred Day is as well observed by Christian Ind- ians and converted Chinamen as by their American brothers in the churches. Even the Mormons keep the civil Sabbath, as far as the closing of business places is concerned, but make it a holiday. Miss Frances E. Willard, than whom none have travelled more widely in the United States, answers the question, " Where have you seen the best IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 95 Sabbath observance ?" ''In Utah Territory, at Ogden. Every place of business tight shut — saloons included — and the whole population at church (i.e., at Taber- nacle) !" I am now looking only on the bright side of Sabbath observance, gathering only the elements of hope, just here from the West, several of whose people remind me that even in their great cities there are thousands of families where the Sabbath is as well observed as in a New England village. A Chicago merchant writes : •' Christian homes in Chicago and in New England differ little — a careful observance by parents and chil- dren of the proprieties of the day, and a mingling together as a family in happy little teachings and enjoyments, which make the day both Christian and pleasant." A San Francisco pastor gives a like an- swer to the question, " Where have you seen the best Sabbath observance ?" " Among the Christian people of California. The characteristics of their Sabbath observance are : Sweetness and light ; reverence tem- pered with love ; joyousness and rare fidelity in Chris- tian service ; teaching in the Sunday-schools and mission schools ; visiting the sick, the poor and the prisoner ; holding service in almshouses and hospitals ; giving Christ-like ministration to those in trouble, want and sorrow." There is hope also in the fact that the West, which used to be more lax in Sabbath observance, temper- ance, and other practical moralities, than the East, is coming to be the more orthodox of the two, as repre- sented by the fact that recent temperance victories are mostly Western, -and also by the removal of the con- servative Bibliotheca Sacra to Oberlin, to make room for the Andover Review as the organ of the new g6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. theology, whose views of the Sabbath are more like those at the fountain-head of the Continental Sunday than those at the headwaters of New England history. In the fidelity of Western churches to evangelical and evangelistic Christianity, and especially to tem- perance, there is large hope for a bettering of Western Sabbaths. There were many mining camps, a few years ago, where, if there was a church at all, the " communion had to be postponed from Sabbath morning until evening, because the deacons were all down in the mines." In other frontier churches the minister was the only male member, because the Sabbath was "market day" on the street. But when a " camp" becomes a city, and wants to attract both Eastern capital and solid families,* it is seen to be commercially desirable to civilize the Sun- day. With the erection of fine buildings comes the ambition to be considered no longer " wild West," but " nice," all of which co-operates with increasing churches and awakening consciences to drive out of the Sabbath, first, the Sunday prize-fights and horse- races, and then the gambling and drinking. A better Sabbath improves the population, and this, in turn, still further improves the Sabbath. * The Sunday question is not purely religious ; it is a social ques- tion, a question of the highest secular interest, that concerns men's health and pockets. It is a labor question, a democratic question, a question not so much for parsons as for the people. And anything that abridges or imperils the authority of the weekly Day of Rest is a wound to society, and a huge offense against the interests of the whole body of the world's toilers. The present attack on the Sunday is urged with smooth and plausible assurances of an eager desire to serve the cause of " liberty," of " humanity," of " civilization," etc. And yet nothing is more certain than that the policy which assails the Sunday is an act of treason against liberty, humanity, and civiliza- tion all in one. — Southern Cross, Melbourne, September 29, 1890. IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 9/ In the East a city grows worse as it grows larger. In the new West the towns sow their " wild oats" in youth, and then " settle down." 12. There is a rich sheaf of encouragement in the nu- merous instances where Sunday closing of saloons has been secured in our large cities. There is hardly a large city east of the Rocky Moun- tains in which the Sunday saloons have not been, at times, closed long enough to prove that they can be closed always. When city officers adopt the style of Mayor Nehemiah, " If ye do so again, I will lay hands on you," the old history repeats itself : " From that time came they no more on the Sabbath." In the years 1885-92 notable victories over Sunday saloons were achieved in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis. In all these cases citizens' Leagues or Committees took up the " sword" of law which timid officials had " borne in vain." And in all these cities, except Pittsburgh, it was found necessary to appeal, not to the courts only, but also to the ballot box. In Cincinnati and Denver such men were selected from the regular nominations of the two parties as could be relied on to keep their oaths of office, and in both instances those who valued law and order above party victory were able to elect those selected. In both cases it was found that the mayor is not the most important of city officers for law enforcement. In both cities the mayor was elect- ed by the personal deviltry party, but was unable to defend it either against the sheriff elected by law and order at Denver, or against the police judge and pros- ecutor so elected at Cincinnati. The Pittsburgh campaign has proved the saying that 98 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. two can put ten thousand to flight, for the closing, not only of Sunday saloons, but of all other Sunday shops in that city of three hundred thousand inhabi- tants (counting Alleghany, across the bridge), was ac- complished chiefly by Rev. J. T. McCrorsy and Cap- tain Wishart. One and the Lord, yea, one and the law are a majority, especially when " law" is repre- sented by courts as pure as those of Pennsylvania. Here are two encouragements of utmost value : (i) that a city in which a majority are wrong can be con- trolled by a united minority of good men acting as a balance of power, as the Committee of twenty-five hundred did in Cincinnati ; (2) that courageous indi- viduality, with the State's law and courts at its back, may transform a great city. The occasional suppression of Sunday saloons, with consequent reduction of Sunday crimes seven-eighths or nine-tenths, is useful as a sample of the benefits of prohibition. In Great Britain also, where '* Sun- day-closing laws, when enacted, are enforced, the people will soon understand what their best leaders already see, that a law which works so well on the Sabbath would work well on every other day of the week. The Sunday saloon is the very Goliath among Sab- bath desecrators. When he is slain the whole army will flee away. In all American history, Sabbath ob- servance and temperance have advanced and declined together. Nothing has done so much to prevent the profanation of the Sabbath as the increase of total ab- stinence and prohibition. Portland, Maine, has a very quiet Sunday, because its saloons are closed, and even IS THE SABBATH SURRENDERED? 99 its Sunday excursions are seldom riotous, because the boats have no bars. Judge Robt. C. Pitman, of Massachusetts, says : It is no chance association which leads to the cry, 1 Down with the Sunday laws and the liquor laws,' in so many parts of the country." The traffic wants the Day. It wants the Saturday-night wages. It wants the opportunity and the temptation to drink on the Day of Rest. It has the Day in Europe ; it covets it in America. It will have it, unless the political power of the traffic be broken." When the law-makers have been commanded by the people to withdraw the shield of law from before this Philistine, he will fall, and in his destruction the home and churchy instead of the saloon, shall become the centre of the Sabbath. The Philistines who assail our Sabbath of rest and reason and religion, with the saloon as their chief, are by no means insignificant foes, and I shall hereafter consider our perils from them ; but the facts that I have mentioned show, at least, that our citadel is not surrendered, and that our battle is not one of despair, but of hope. As one writes from the " New West," where the battle goes hardest, " We are in the con- flict, and the victory is yet to come, but sure." Therefore we write on our banners, " ALWAYS ENCOURAGED, NEVER SATISFIED," and take as our battle-song, " Ne'er think the victory won, Nor lay thine armor down ; The fight of faith will not be done Till thou obtain the crown." I gave them my Sabbaths . . . that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them. But . . . my Sabbaths they greatly pol- luted ; then .... I lifted up my hand unto them in the wilderness, that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them. . . . But I said unto their children . . . Hallow my Sabbaths. — Ezekiel, 20 : 12-20. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the Sabbath day ? Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us and upon this city ? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profan- ing the Sabbath.— Nehemiah, 13 : 17, 18. You show me a natiosi that has given up the Sabbath, and I will show you a nation that has got the seeds of decay. — D. L. Moody, Cong regationalist. God grant that v/e ir>ay never see the Sunday profaned here in our own country as we have seen it in other lands. — Bishop Regan, Roman Catholic, of Buffalo. It is as utter an impertinence for the German or the Frenchman, for the Jew or the Mohammedan, to come here demanding that we shall waive the cu c toms, and repeal the laws that hallow our Lord's-day, as that we shoul 1 surrender our language for the dialect of the Black Forest, or our marriage relations for the domestic usages of the Sultan. - Bishop Heniu' C. Potter, D.t)., Episcopalian, New York. Every patriot feels that his country's liberties are in danger when recklessness, lawlessness, and evil of all kinds are allowed such free range on Sunday as at present.— Rev. James M. Pullman, Univer- salist, New York, from report of sermon in N w York Tribune. " The increase of population is a peril to the Sabbath, in so far as the Church fails to retain her hold upon the masses. Industrial progress is unfavorable to the Sabbath, as creating new pretexts for Sabbath labor, and new temptations to engage in it. Great material prosperity is a danger to the Sabbath, as generating a comfort loving disposition, which sets light store on spiritual possessions. The sceptical spirit is a deadly peril, as eating the heart out of religious earnestness, and loosening men's hold on sacred convictions. The extremes of wealth and poverty are perilous, begetting at one end of the scale an intense worldliness, and engendering at the other a despised, outcast, hungry proletariat, disaffected to society, and eager only about bare subsistence. The keenness of competition is hurt- ful to the Sabbath, as driving men to do what they would rather avoid, in uider to hold their own with their neighbors." IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? Ezekiel's reminder to the Jews that their ances- tors, whom Moses led out of Egypt, were shut out of the Land of Promise in part because they had greatly polluted the Sabbath, coupled with Nehemiah's refer- ence to the fact that the Jews of a later age were cast out of the Land of Promise into captivity for the same reason, may well be studied by Christian patriots as suggestive of the perils which threaten the Christian lands of to-day through the increased profanation of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not surrendered, but it is imperiled. I. // is i?i perils of legislatures and parliaments. (i) There is danger, in some quarters, that the Sab- bath laws will be repealed. This will happen wherever vigorous enforcement is attempted, if public sentiment has not been sufficiently educated to hold fast to them in a political storm. It is a suggestive fact that in California, in 1882, when good citizens began to en- force the Sabbath law, the saloon-keepers defied it, cajoled the Democratic party of the state into putting an anti-Sabbath plank into their political platform, and, through the election of that party's candidates, repealed the law ; that is, as soon as they found the law was not dead, they killed it. Possibly a similar effort at enforcement might produce a similar result in 102 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. some other districts. This argument does not bear against enforcement, but in favor of creating a stronger Sabbath sentiment among voters and legislators, in preparation for enforcement. It is unwise to declare war before one's forces are trained and brought into sympathy with the object of the campaign. When foes are plotting, it is also unwise to be unready for sudden attacks, such as the repeal of the Sabbath law in France, in 1880, when no enforcement was being attempted, a repeal which the friends of the Sabbath were so unprepared to contest that not a single French Protestant uttered a protest against it in the French Assembly. A few radicals and Roman Catholics sought to save the day for rest and religion, and uttered strong arguments, which, if given all over the land in press and pulpit before the repeal was at- tempted, might not only have saved the Day from legislative assassination, but also from being a dead letter. E. W. Hitchcock, D.D., for many years pastor of the American Chapel in Paris, thus describes the repeal and its antecedents (April, 1884) : " Persistent at- tempts were made to blot out the Christian Sabbath during the French Revolution. [A tenth-day holiday was substituted.] After the restoration of the mon- archy the weekly Sabbath was restored, a*nd all secular work was forbidden by law on that Day. I think the legal penalty for breaking the Sabbath rest was fine and imprisonment. The law soon became a dead let- ter, because there was no public sentiment to sustain it. It remained on the statute books, however, until about three years ago, when it was simply annulled by the French Parliament. It was discussed both in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and I remember IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? IO3 reading what was said upon the subject with much interest. The radical orators maintained, with much bitterness, ' that the law was a relic of clerical tyranny, a monument of superstition, an insult to reason, an infringement upon personal liberty and civil rights, which could never be enforced and slwuld not be, and that it should be erased from the Civil Code, because so long as it stood there it was a constant menace which/any fanatic might invoke and cause honest citi- zens annoyance and expense, though no one would ever be convicted, however open the violation of the law, because there was no popular sentiment to sustain it, while the breaking of one law weakened respect for all law/ There were only a few votes against the repeal of the law, but a weak attempt was made to modify it in the interests of the working classes, on sanitarian and humanitarian grounds. The amend- ment did not prevail, and the law was simply repealed." This was unfortunate, because a law, even when un- executed, is a national ideal, an educating influence, a high-water mark toward which the nation can be drawn in periods of reformation. It is easier to rouse men to enforce a neglected law than to re-enact a repealed one. By arguments similar to those used in France, the Prussian law forbidding Sunday work was repealed in 1878. In 1883, the law exempting pupils from at- tendance at public school during the hours of Sabbath worship, was also repealed, and the Crown Prince and Crown Princess in 1884 visited one of the schools, ostentatiously, on the Sabbath, evidently to advertise the fact that they were more " liberal " than the Sab- bath-favoring Emperor. These repeals of the Sabbath laws of France, Ger- 104 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. many and California will encourage other foes of the Sabbath to continue their attacks upon it. A better public sentiment is the only secure defence. (2) Where there is no danger of repeal there is danger that the Sabbath laws may be seriously weak- ened by amendments. Nevada's new Sabbath law makes it a misdemeanor for any person to keep open on the Sabbath " any store, banking-house, broker- office, or other place of business for the purpose of transacting business therein," or to expose for sale " any provisions, dry-goods, clothing, hardware, fruits, vegetables, or other merchandise ;" but the provisions of the act do " not apply to persons who, on Sunday, keep open hotels, boarding-houses, barber-shops, baths, saloons, cigar-stores, restaurants, taverns, livery- stables, and drug-stores, for the legitimate business of each." A. R. Lawton, President of the American Bar Association, in his annual address, 1884, savs °f this new law : " The exceptions here are much greater than the rule." This calls up the suggestive fact that when the old Sabbath laws of New York were enforced, in December, 1882, in connection with their new publica- tion in the revised Penal Code, even the cigar dealers and confectioners, whose Sunday sales had just been decided by the courts " not to be works of necessity or mercy, ' ' were able to terrorize the State Legislature, by waving their ballots, into amending the law so as to permit them to sell on the Sabbath ; as if one could not just as well buy his tobacco and candy for the Sabbath on Saturday as his hat or shoes. Any school- boy can see that if all cigar-stores were closed on the Sabbath they would sell just as much tobacco in six days as they now do in seven — except what they sell to Sabbath-school boys who are led by the open stores IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 105 to embezzle the missionary penny or nickle that their parents have given them, to purchase health-destroy- ing cigarettes. The Governor — and I doubt not the Legislature also — was given abundant proof that the only gain to cigar dealers and confectioners from Sunday trading was at the cost of the children's consciences and the Sabbath- school treasuries, and yet, under the political whip, these public servants obeyed the dictation of the most inexcusable of all Sabbath-breakers. A law is weak in proportion as it is partial and un- just, and the New York Sabbath law, in allowing on the Sabbath what its courts have repeatedly declared are not works of necessity or mercy — namely, selling newspapers, 19 tobacco and confections — has discrimi- nated with an arbitrary partiality 20 that constantly weakens its enforcement. Such law-making is law- breaking. One clause of the law sanctions what an- other clause forbids. Only a few weeks before the law was changed from a prohibition of tobacco-selling on the Sabbath to a permission, Judge Arnoux, of New York, in giving his decision that tobacco-selling was not a work of necessity or mercy, said, " So broad an exemption would abrogate the statute. ' ' The Legis- lature, by permitting this unnecessary tobacco-selling, practically " abrogated " the law in which they placed it, and made it unjust, and, it would seem, unconstitu- tional also, in discriminating among dealers in unperish- able articles, in favor of two, and against scores having equal claims. I believe it could be proved in the civil courts, as it is self-evident in the court of common- sense, that it is a violation of the constitutional provi- sion that no citizens shall be inequitably discriminated against, when newsdealers, tobacconists and confec- 106 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. tioners are allowed to sell imperishable goods on the Sabbath, while booksellers and hatters are forbidden to sell their more useful wares until the cream of the Saturday night's wages has been skimmed away by the dealers in trash and poison. Every state is in danger of such amendments so long as legislators feel that they must yield to every noisy demand of any powerful guild among their constitu- ents, however unjust its claims, provided they cannot otherwise retain its votes. The same peril exists in Congress. A specimen of this came from the chief Senator of the United States, in 1884 — a Janus-faced letter, which should have been dated "On the Fence," to an anti-Sabbath meeting of liquor dealers and their friends, in which were the following expressions : " There are probably some respects in which wider means for rational and peace- ful enjoyment of the Sabbath could be provided, and then there are other respects probably in regard to which the welfare of the community, to which indi- vidual wishes and unlimited liberty must yield, would be subserved by legislation in a different direction ; but, as I say, it is quite impossible for me to give time for the consideration of the subject." What a contrast this letter affords to the reply of Senator Joseph R. Hawley, when, as President of the Centennial Exhibition, he was urged to open that world's museum on the Lord's-day — " Before God, gentlemen, I would not dare to open the Centennial gates on the Sabbath !" Legislators allow themselves, in many cases, to be- come what the English call " sandwich men," refer- ring to those who walk about between two advertising boards. The average legislator is simply the sandwich IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? IO7. man of his constituents. Herbert Spencer, on this account, recently declined to stand for Parliament. It would have been better for him to have gone and illustrated the nobler conception of politics, that a legislator is not chosen to represent political clients, attorney fashion, but as a representative man to speak and act his own convictions. A legislator should not follow public opinion, but lead it. Not public opin- ion but public conscience is the true measure of legis- lation. (3) There is also a perilous tendency in legislative bodies to insert in Sabbath laws elastic words and pJirases, such as can be used as jail-escapes for Sab- bath-breakers. Such a word is " comfort" in the Sabbath law of New York, which allows as a work of necessity " any- thing needful to the comfort of the community." That clause is sure to be made a circus tent to cover all sorts of violations of the law, whenever vigorous enforcement is attempted. Such a word is " travel- ers," as used in the former New York law, and in the present laws of some British countries also in regard to liquor- selling on the Sabbath, which make excep- tions in favor of " travelers." These laws set all the liquor-drinking element in the population to traveling — if only round the block. An English judge, by the help of this loose law, decided that a man who had walked two and a half miles was entitled to a " travel- er's" drink. 21 The number of persons convicted for drunkenness on the Sabbath in England during the year ending September, 1882, amounted to 15,921, of whom 10,901 — more than two thirds — were bond fide residents of the places where the convictions were made. How the New York law, by its exceptions, 108 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. multiplied "hotels" to be as thick as saloons, and '■' travelers"- as numerous as drinkers, is well known. Permission for " sacred concerts"' 22 on the Sabbath, without even a provision against admission fees, is another dangerous exception, which any shrewd legis- lator might have known would be made the cloak for all sorts of secular and low entertainments, as it has in every state and country where the permission has been given. Still worse, if possible, is the profanity of real sacred concerts under the devil's auspices, whose music is provided by those who are not so loyal as the Hebrew captives, who would not sing the Lord's song in a strange land for the amusement of His enemies. The following advertisement was seen and copied from the windows of a public house in a Midland town of England: " Wanted, Sunday-school Scholars with Good Voices to sing Sacred music on Sunday Even- ings. Liberal Payments will be Given." In several states persons under fourteen years of age are not liable to punishment for Sabbath-breaking, as if we were not constantly having even burglaries and murders committed by persons younger than that, to prove their criminal capacity. As some states leave children unpunished, others leave them unprotected, prohibiting work only of those above fourteen or fifteen. Another dangerous exception is that in some states liquor-dealers are not forbidden to "give away" but only to "dispose of" liquors on the Sabbath. Prohibiting the giving away is necessary ; otherwise the law itself might as well be given away. The ex- ception in some Sabbath laws allowing "through trains," meaning trains from the East to the far West, or returning, is also liable to abuse, unless more exactly defined. IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? IO9 In some states " labor" is forbidden, but not 'busi- ness, and on that ground the Illinois Supreme Court, in 1884, declared a Sunday contract valid. If the law had forbidden both "labor and business," as it does in most of the states, such a decision could not have been made. Connecticut's boundaries, of the Sabbath, sunrise to sunset, enable an avaricious em- ployer to keep operatives at work all Saturday night and all Sabbath night, thus getting seven days' work from them per week. Rhode Island, following the law of Charles II., forbids one to, " do any work of his ordinary calling on the first day of the week ;" but this term has been construed as allowing him to do any other than his usual work — for instance, a man whose " ordinary calling" is that of a carpenter could work on the Sabbath as a gardener. The lawyers who framed the law evidently were not as keen-eyed as those who interpret it. Still more indefinite is the Sabbath law of Illinois. If any attempt is ever made to enforce it, it will be like using a hammock to net pike and perch. Lawyers in Chicago declare that even a Sunday theatre can slip through, unless the com- plainant lives in the neighborhood and is personally disturbed by it. Such loopy laws net no one. The big fish break, them, and the small ones creep through. There is a significant warning to the friends of the Sabbath in the statement of a Western lawyer that " the new states are more liberal [he means more loopy] regarding the Sunday laws, than the old ones — pre- sumably to encourage emigration." Only a better public sentiment can teach legislators to make Sabbath laws without these India-rubber loops. (4) There is yet another legislative peril of a nega- tive kind — the danger that lazv-makers will not repeal 110 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. those portions of the Sabbath laws whose enforcement would jeopardize their very existence or utility. Again and again, when good citizens have attempted to check some of the grossest forms of Sabbath dese- cration — for instance, the Sunday opening of saloons — those whom they have sought to restrain have retal- iated by enforcing portions of the Sabbath laws which were not sustained by public conscience — for instance, they have stopped the horse-cars — and so have stopped the whole movement. Whether Sunday horse-cars should be legalized by legislatures or courts, as works of necessity or mercy, I shall discuss in a later section of this book, in answering the question, " What Degree of Sabbath Observance Can Be Se- cured in Nineteenth Century Cities?" but this much may be confidently stated here, that it would be less harmful to have them legalized, with restrictions, until public conscience calls for their suppression, than to retain laws against them that are enforced only by Sabbath-breaking rum-sellers, theatre proprietors, and base-ball clubs, in defiance and self-defence. Nothing should be kept in Sabbath laws which can be thus used to defeat their purpose. On this ground the provi- sions against "traveling" on the Sabbath have been repealed both in Connecticut and in New York ; in the latter State, with concurrence of a conservative Sabbath Committee, not because its members sanction Sunday traveling, but because they feel that such a matter may wisely be left out of the laws until those forms of Sabbath-breaking are suppressed which more distinctly interfere with rest and religion- and which the majority of the people strongly disapprove. In my opinion it is not wise to repeal the law against traveling on the Sabbath, but rather to modify IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? Ill it, since city churches, in the Summer days when the windows are open, are seriously disturbed in their worship by the noise of passing vehicles. The finest auditorium among the New York churches is almost useless in the hot season, because the voice of the preacher is nearly drowned by the clatter of trains on the elevated railroads, crying with every rushing train, " No Sabbath ! No Sabbath !" We want not chains, but laws stretched across the streets to secure quiet during church hours, as a " decent courtesy to the prevailing religion." The chain that was once stretched across Broadway for this purpose is cited by anti-Sabbatarians as a specimen of extreme Puritan- ism, but such a chain protected the churches in Leipsic of " liberal " Germany until 1876, and has been suc- ceeded by a law requiring that horses shall be walked in passing churches at the hour of service, of which law drivers are reminded by a large sign on each church, 'Walk Your Horses." Such a sign the church of Edward Everett Hale, of Boston, keeps stored away as a relic of early New England customs. But Ger- many is more just in keeping up so reasonable a re- quirement. The States of Washington and Minnesota have pro- visions in their liquor laws, aimed especially at Sunday saloons, that ought to be copied by every other State to make enforcement effective wherever undertaken, namely, that if any public officer — sheriff, county attorney, city attorney, mayor, chief of police, roundsman, or constable — " refuses or willfully neg- lects" to make complaint against those who break the law, he shall be punished by a fine and deposition from office for the remainder of his term. A Legislature voting down such a bill would be proclaiming that an 112 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. officer may break his oath. One officer deposed would make further prosecutions unnecessary. The remedy for all bad Sabbath legislation is to send to our Legislatures men who have both the courage and the scholarship to defend the Sabbath, when it is at- tacked by those " sandwich men" who so truly repre- sent the city slums. 2. The Sabbath is in perils of. courts. (i) It has much to fear from zorxM^t juries. Cincinnati, "the American Berlin," which Dr. Reuen Thomas described a few years ago as being on the Sabbath " a huge beer garden, rapidly on its way to become a huge bear garden, ' ' has recently ' ' reported progress" in that direction, and underscored in fire and blood the perils of Sabbaths and cities from cor- rupt juries. Most of the newspapers, in their com- ments on the cause of the great riot of 1884, hit wide of the mark. Not so a Cincinnati correspondent of The Congregationalist, who showed that a successful plot to assassinate the Sabbath caused the acquittal of the murderer, Berner, whose acquittal in turn caused fifty persons to be murdered, and the wounding of one hundred and fifty more, besides great destruction of property. The correspondent thus described the lay- ing of the train whose explosion was to startle the world : " First the infidels and Roman Catholics, who made up the majority of the City Council, excluded the Bible from the public schools. Next, the city laws which forbade the sale of liquor on Sundays, and prohibited various amusements, were repealed, though they had not been much enforced of late. Now, saloons which had opened only their side doors on the Lord's-day, threw their main entrances wide open- IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 1 3 Theatrical performances, base-ball "matches, balloon ascensions and other Sunday sports multiplied. The better classes — or rather a few of their representatives, for the majority seemed strangely apathetic — secured the passage by the Legislature of an act closing thea- tres on Sunday. It was enforced a few months. This was followed by a law shutting saloons on Sunday, under penalty of fine and imprisonment. One or two prominent offenders were convicted. Some of the papers fairly raved over the alleged outrage, the nar- row bigotry, the ridiculous Puritanism. They had previously laughed at the law, and suggested many impracticable ways for evading it. These proved of no effect, and the Council was invoked by the attorney of the saloon men, the very lawyer who saved Berner from the gallows, to interfere. It was not slow in doing so. An ordinance was passed empowering each councilman to select jurors' names from the residents of his ward, and give them to the clerks of the police courts to draw from. The councilmen picked out the worst possible men, and there were no more convic- tions. 24 The theatres and saloons were soon open as usual on Sundays, and remain so." The City Government, by this lawless plan for im- paneling juries that would not convict any one of Sabbath-breaking on any evidence, inaugurated a plan by which a jury was obtained that could be induced to acquit even murderers who had confessed their guilt, and so a righteous indignation was aroused, which was followed by unrighteous rioting, whose bloody hand and communistic torch, "painting Hell on the sky," give timely warning not to Cincinnati only, but to all other cities also, to see to it that jury duty is not left to fools and knaves, whose prejudices and pockets rule 114 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. the verdicts. Why should we expect anything better from juries than the murder of the Sabbath, and the acquittal of murderers, when good citizens so gen- erally dodge jury duty, that only 15,000 men out of 1,400,000 population are available for that work in New York City ? In the blaze of Cincinnati's burning court-house, the world may well read and ponder the words of Divine warning : " If ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath clay, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of \ Jerusalem, and it shall ?tot be quenched."™ (2) The Sabbath has something to fear also from judges 26 and justices who are not in sympathy with it, but rather with its enemies, and whose prejudices and political aspirations have a larger influence than the dictionary in their interpretations of the words found in Sabbath laws. The word " necessity, " which occurs in nearly all Sabbath laws — " works of necessity" being expressly permitted — is especially liable to such judicial perver- sion. A member of the New York Bar thus describes, in The Christian Union, its legitimate interpretation : " One view in which the judges have agreed is that the law does not mean that work must be ' absolutely necessary,' as the phrase is. The law contemplates that the community has a general need that all should rest on Sunday ; most of the affairs and doings of week-day life are less important than this need of a rest day ; but some few are superior. To keep the body physically sustained by food ; to provide facili- ties for worship during some hours of the day ; to nurse and heal the sick ; to provide prompt burial of IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 115 the dead — these and some other objects are superior to the need of general repose. Necessary work in- cludes all that is indispensable to be done on Sunday in order to secure attainment of whatever is more im- portant to the community than its Day of Rest. An- other view adopted, is that the law does not mean a personal necessity, but one arising out of the nature of the thing to be accomplished and the need of the community for it. That one is very poor and in great need of wages is not the kind of necessity that allows him to labor. Another view widely established is that the Sunday law against work is not designed to prevent or destroy any lawful vocations altogether. Therefore, if the nature of a business or a process is such that it does not admit of a cessation once a week, whatever must needs be done on Sunday to keep it going, is necessary. Examples are, the work of sea- men on a voyage, the duties of a policeman or watch- man, the prosecution of a manufacture which cannot be completed in six days, or stopped and resumed. With respect to all those business matters which de- pend upon the course and events of nature, courts act on the common-sense principle that whatever can, by good judgment and forethought, be anticipated or postponed, cannot be deemed necessary ; but exigen- cies which cannot be foreseen, such as storms, ship- wrecks, conflagrations and the like, create a necessity." But these reasonable interpretations have been frequently exceeded by judges and justices whose dic- tionary is prejudice or politics. Such judicial abuses of the Sabbath law are liable to become more numer- ous as enforcement becomes more frequent, unless there is an improvement in public sentiment, which will in turn improve the definitions of the courts. Il6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Fairy literature tells of a magic tent boxed in a wak nut, that on being taken out expanded until it covered a king and his army. The writer must have had in mind this very word " necessity" as it is stretched in court decisions, especially by some police /'^justices, to cover almost the whole army of Sabbath-breakers. According to the New York Tribune, at the time of the enforcement of the new Penal Code (Dec, 1882), " Justice Power decided it was necessary that the public should be kept warm, and on these grounds discharged John Crumpton and Albert Ricker who had sold coal." Justice Bixby, in discharging several cases, expressed the opinion that " servile labor was prohibited only when it interrupted the repose and religious liberty of the community." He decided also that Sunday shaving by barbers was a necessity. Furthermore, he decided that " the law did not forbid the sale of newspapers ; it was intended only to stop general traffic. ' ' Other justices " decided that Sunday newspapers were a " moral necessity." Many of the lowest dens of the city secured judicial protection in breaking the Sabbath laws in the form of injunctions, whose injustice Judge Noah Davis afterward de- nounced. This whole burlesque of language and law is signifi- cant because it may occur again in any large city where Sabbath laws are strongly enforced, unless more care is taken in the constitution of the courts, and unless the friends of Sabbath observance at such times instruct the justices through influential lawyers, which was not done in the cases referred to. The second act in this burlesque was a still more " liberal interpretation" of the laws by the Police Commissioners after a Sabbath or two of enforcement IS THE SABBATH IMPER1LEI ■ .' 11/ — interpretations which even an anti-Sabbath news- paper in Brooklyn was constrained to call "palpable distortion of the English language." Under that same classification we may mention the decision of a Long Island City justice in 1884. An Irishman was arraigned for playing base-ball on the Sabbath. The Justice (?) discharged him on the plea that he was playing only " for pastime." and that it was in " an enclosed ground. " :r An Indiana judge decided that selling cigars on the Sabbath was ' ' as much a work of necessity as selling a cup of tea." A child of six years could refute such sophistry and that of the New York justices already referred to. It is not necessary to the enjoyment of a cigar that it should be newly boiled, nor is it necessary in order to keep the public warm that they should buy their coal en Sunday. Think of a judge, after making such a decision about " necessity." locking up a poor tramp for some lesser perjury uttered in the witness box ! Dispensing such stuff for law is hardly better than the custom of some restaurants that sell -key on the Sabbath as "' cold tea." In St. Louis, when the state Sabbath law was being enforced, in 1883, the slums and saloons found a judge to protect them by suspending the enforcement of the law. on the pretence that a previous statute, which had not been repealed, gave the city certain privileges which exempted it from the provisions of the state law in question. From Tennessee, where, in 18S4. there was some enforcement of Sabbath laws, a judge writes me : " There is no sort of danger of a repeal of the law. The only question is as to how latitudinarian may be the construction given to ' necessity and charity, ' Il8 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. A Virginia lawyer, who has been a member of the Legislature, says : " The rulings of judges on moral questions can not be foretold." That the Sabbath is in perils of courts elsewhere than in the United States is evident from a petition recently sent to the House of Commons of Canada, asking that the present Sabbath law be amended, because it is in some points " rendered ineffective in consequence of the manner in which some of its pro- visions have been interpreted." It seems almost useless to send men to legislatures and parliaments to make laws when they can be so easily unmade by the courts and police. The foregoing facts and opinions give point to the fun in the following item from a Denver paper, which is entitled, " A Clever Scheme." " Said Jones — ' We're going to run Blifkins for judge this fall.' Said Smith — ' Blifkins ! What does he know about law ? ' ' Nothing at all. He never saw a law book. That's the reason we're going to run him. We think if he is ignorant of law we may get a little justice.' ' (3) Lawyers have a share with the juries and judges, whom some of theiK influence to false decisions, in the injustice done to the Sabbath by some of the courts. One lesson of the Cincinnati riots is that bar associa- tions, if they do not wish to lower the moral standing of their profession to that of their chief tricksters, must carefully purge their membership of knavish law- yers, as associations of physicians have no fellowship with quacks. It is not a good omen that some of the law periodi- cals, in recording Sabbath laws and judicial interpreta- tions of them, frame them in such ridicule or criticism as shows the editors' hostility to anything stricter than IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? Iig a Continental Sunday, and favorable to the judicial stretching of these laws to aid the escape of those whom the makers of the laws intended to punish. After all, the courts are appointed by King Every- body in America, and every improvement of public sentiment will be felt in the courts as surely as a change of weather, so that our perils of courts, 350 as well as our perils of legislatures, can be most effect- ually cured by the work of press and pulpit in cultivat- ing a stronger public sentiment in favor of Sabbath observance. 3. The Sabbath is in perils of enforcements and non- enforcements. (1) There is danger of malicious and untimely en- forcement. The police of large cities are not always in sympathy with Sabbath Taws, 27 and there is danger that when they are compelled to enforce them, without due oversight by the friends of Sabbath observance, they will do it in a needlessly offensive manner, in order to cause their repeal or modification. The following specimen paragraph appeared in the Nezv York Tribune during the spasmodic enforcement of the Sabbath laws in New York, in 1882 :'-'.' We are trying to make the Code as obnoxious as possible in order to have it done away with,' said a sergeant at the Seventh Precinct Station. ' It is only the work of these sanctimonious Sabbatarians.' The Code was certainly enforced in the most obnoxious manner pos- sible in this precinct.'' The Tribune goes on to say : " 'The police, as a rule, seem to be more bent on making the lazvs odious than on enforcing them as a sense of duty." Even friends of the Sabbath sometimes injure their 120 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. cause by premature, and so unsuccessful, enforce- ment. (2) There is more danger, however, of corrupt or cowardly non-enforcement. The Tribune, in the issue just referred to, tells of a policeman who said to a to- bacconist, whose business was not then lawful on the Sabbath, " I'll be back this way in a half hour, and if those shades are not pulled down I'll arrest the person in charge. Sell all the cigars you want to, but dont let me see you doing it. ' ' What a commentary on the evident collusion of the police with law-breaking is the fact that on the Sab- bath following those I have referred to, 118 persons were arrested for being drunk in the streets of New York, and only 2 for selling liquor ! The New York Tribune rebuked this criminal neglect of duty, some months afterward, on a Monday following a Sabbath when all the saloons in Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Cincinnati had been closed up, back doors and all, de- claring that the same thing could be permanently done in New York, and should be. Not to enforce a law is rewarding law-breakers at the cost of those in the same business who keep it. A Virginia lawyer says of the Sabbath law against work, " I never heard of this law being enforced." A lawyer practising in Rhode Island and Connecticut says of their Sabbath laws : " All are dead, except when they come up in a civil suit, such as a claim for damages for injuries received from a defect in the highway by a man traveling on Sunday." Henry E. Young, in a paper read before the American Bar Asso- ciation in 1880, said : " The laws for the observance of Sunday, though on the statute books of all our states, have fallen into such disuse, that they seldom come to IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 121 the attention even of our profession, except when used as a short-hand way of getting rid of some nuisance on Sunday which is otherwise prohibited ; or when pleaded by some corporation as a defence to some action for neglect of duty." However, there are instances of enforcement here and there, suggesting what might be done elsewhere. For instance, a judge in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the spring of 1884, according to the New Yo?'k Tribune, indicted the manager of a local club for playing base- ball on the Sabbath, which " created a great excite- ment in Western cities for fear the action might be copied." It has been copied in too few places. It was copied in Jersey City, in Lebanon, Pa., and in Columbus, Ohio, 29 but all through the summer of 1884 Sunday base-ball games, in defiance of law, were reported from Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indian- apolis, Louisville, Milwaukee, Dubuque and Kansas City. The good citizens of these latter cities might well ponder the gallant fight in Columbus, Ohio, against this popular crime of Sunday base-ball. When it had long been tolerated, the Hocking Valley and Toledo R. R. decided to share with the base-ball association in the profits of the crime, and so began, on May 18th, 1884, the plan of running Sunday excursion trains to bring to the ball games the people of surrounding towns. The first Sabbath of this new arrangement brought into that city a rough crowd of 20,000 Sab- bath desecrators, who filled the saloons, brothels and streets with their hellish revelry, and transformed the Sabbath into the devils' day. It was a wholesome plaster to arouse the friends of the Sabbath and of law. The managers of the offending railroad promptly 122 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. yielded to the protest of leading citizens, and the Sunday excursion trains did not run a second Sab- bath ; but the base-ball association defied all protests, declared that the national game could not be sustained without the Sunday profits of the business, and it was only by resort to the courts that this law-breaking was at length stopped on the last Sabbath of June. This success, we are assured, is to be followed up by a movement to execute the law against the Sunday opening of saloons. About the same time an attempt on the part of the president of the Chicago Driving Park to introduce Sunday racing aroused even Chicago, which was quietly allowing Sunday theatres and Sunday ball games to trample on her laws, to such indignation and legal action as prevented even one such Sunday race. Equal earnestness might have prevented Sunday thea- tres and ball games, and could even now suppress them. These incidents are hopeful in proving that senti- ment in favor of the Sabbath is not wholly dead even where it is sound asleep. Another suggestive incident in the history of the enforcement of Sabbath laws is the course of Governor Waller, of Connecticut, when Mayor of New London, in regard to a proposed Sunday excursion by steamer from that city. He took a position, which every mayor should take, but which so few do take, that his action has become a matter of notoriety. He declared that he was bound to enforce existing laws, whether he liked them or not ; and accordingly he prevented the excursion. Yet more exceptional was the vigor- ous enforcement of the Sabbath laws in Jacksonville, Florida, by the Jewish mayor, who took the same IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 23 ground. Who has authorized any mayor or police officer to make distinctions among law-breakers ? A reform candidate for mayor of Chicago, a few- years ago, thinking to catch votes, said, in a public meeting, " If elected, I shall exercise a wise discretion in executing the laws in accordance with public senti- ment." That sentence defeated him, as he deserved to be. Such a " discretion" is disloyalty to the oath which every executive takes to faithfully execute all the laws. Hon. John Wentworth rebuked the remark by saying, " I know of no expression of public senti- ment except the laws." They are public sentiment crystallized. It has no other authentic and reliable expression. The few Christians who believe that civil officers should do nothing to protect the Sabbath, but leave it wholly in the realm of religious persuasion, would do well to ponder the course of Mayor Nehemiah, of Jerusalem. He not only remonstrated with Sabbath- breakers, but commanded that the city gates should be closed at the opening of the Sabbath, in order to shut out the Tyrian traders and others who had been accustomed to bring fish, figs and wine into the city to sell on Sabbath mornings. These traders, thinking to find some opportunity to sell their wares on the sly, despite the laws, lodged near the walls of Jerusalem once or twice ; whereupon Mayor Nehemiah " testi- fied against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye about the wall ? If ye do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time forth came they no more on the Sabbath." 30 Such a ruler can secure a quiet Sab- bath, even where three fifths of the population are Roman Catholics, as Montreal proves. The Law and Order Leagues, organized in many 124 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. cities, have done so much in creating public senti- ment, and in rousing in the police and courts a greater interest in neglected laws, and in promoting their enforcements, that this method of improving Sabbath observance can be heartily commended for universal adoption. Citizens enforcement of Sunday laws is wiser than churchly enforcement. An English lady says, " The Americans have the best laws in the world, if they would only e?iforcc them" Instead of that, the legislatures are contin- ually making new laws to throw on the large heap of "dead letters." In the United States, a party is needed whose whole platform shall be these three words : ENFORCEMENT OF LAW. The way to prove good laws and improve bad ones is to enforce them. 4. The Sabbath is in peril in the United States be- cause of the national habit of treating the laws as a bill of fare, from which each one can take what he pleases. Sabbath-breaking is but one symptom of the national disease of wholesale law-breaking. Tell a respectable Englishman that he is violating the law, and he an- swers, "I'm sorry there is such a law, but if it's the law, I must obey it." Tell a respectable American that what he is doing is against the law, and he an- swers, " I don't care if it is." According to the report for 1884 of the National Bureau of Education, even a law so important to the safety of the nation as compulsory education, is vigorously enforced only in Massachusetts and Connecticut, though twenty states have it on their statute books. In one of the quietest IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 125 country villages of the United States, where an un- usually large proportion of the population is religious, I recently saw repeated illustrations of this American disease of law-breaking in the fact that the town ordinance requiring the muzzling of dogs, which was posted in public places, was neither heeded by any considerable number of the people, nor enforced at all by the town officers. During the same summer, one of the wealthiest citizens of New York was drawn as a juror, but paid no heed to the summons, and the court paid about the same heed to his contempt of it. These are but samples at random. Thousands of respectable people violate laws habitually, and think no less of themselves, nor are they less esteemed by their neighbors on that account. This is especially true of the Sabbath laws. How many orderly and even religious people patronize newsdealers, tobacconists and confectioners on the Sabbath where the trade is illegal by civil as well as Divine laws ! How many respectable Americans fail to realize that they are bound to keep the Sabbath laws, whatever their theo- logical opinions, because they are the law of the land ! How few count the man who breaks a Sabbath law as a criminal! All sorts of apologies are made by respectable people for law-breaking Sunday excursions — " the laborer's hard toil, his need of country air, the oppression of the capitalists who refuse their work- men the Saturday half-holiday," etc. But a thief is a thief even if hunger impelled him to steal ; and the man who violates the Sabbath laws is a criminal, what- ever prompted him to do it. Laws might as well be abolished, if every man is to do what is right in his own eyes. One of the most radical cures for Sabbath-breaking 126 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. is to teach prompt and soldierly obedience to authority in the home, the school, the church, that it may be practised also in the State. To the compulsory educa- tion in the laws of health that is being introduced in the public schools of the United States, there should be added compulsory education in the laws of the land. But obedience to authority must be taught chiefly at home. Dr. Reuen Thomas, an Anglo- American, and so a friendly critic, says of the United States: "It is no secret that there is no country in the world where children have so much influence over their parents as in this. I presume, on the principle of development, it is assumed that the young of the rising generation must necessarily be wiser and better than the old of the generation that is passing away. Any way, the fact remains, that that which the chil- dren strongly desire, their parents are strongly inclined to grant ; and how ' to train up a parent in the way he should go ' is the assiduous care of the younger members of too many of our households." Rev. J. R. Bass, Chaplain o{ the Kings County Penitentiary, in Brooklyn, after seventeen years' study of criminals, says : "In almost every case the primary source of crime is the want of proper authority and restraint on the part of the parents, or disobedience on the part of the child." It is time that the new American gospel, " Parents, obey your children," should be changed back to the Divine original, that future citizens may learn in their homes the first lesson of self-governors — prompt obedience to law. 5. The Anglo-American Sabbath is most of all in peril of being changed into the Continental Sunday.' 1 '' That is more to be feared than the Continental IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? \2J plague, for its effects reach deeper, and last longer. Such a transformation of the Sacred Day would bring with it other transformations, moral, commercial, political. Continental novels, Continental toil, Conti- nental politics, travel as the suite of the Continental Sunday. What is the Continental Sunday ? Not as seen by that hurried tourist who went from England to the Continent for a few weeks, to get materials for a favor- able article about its Sundays, and relied chiefly upon his own casual observations that were not sufficiently sharp to find out by four Sundays in Spain that Sun- day bull-fights were a part of a Spanish Sunday. Mr. Rossiter, to whose article in The Nineteenth Century, of June, 1884, I here refer, is, however, obliged to ad- mit that the Continental Sunday means at least half a day of shop-keeping, with some servile labor, and a great deal of noisy amusement and drinking. I do not thus rely on that which he who runs may read, but have supplemented personal observations with the written testimony of long-time residents.' In the first section of this book we crossed Europe seeking elements of hope for the friends of the Sab- bath. We shall now cross it again, scouting for the perils that are enwrapped in the Continental Sunday, whose importation to British and American shores is seriously proposed. What is the influence of the Continental Sunday upon health, intelligence, liberty, morals, religion, in its own Continental haunts ? Bremmer, in his book entitled, " Excursions in Rus- sia," thus pictures the Continental Sunday in that empire : " People are everywhere busy at. work in the fields, and the market-places, in all the provincial 128 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. towns, are crowded with peasants selling potatoes, mushrooms, apples, turnips, cucumbers, etc., just as on the ordinary week days." The only difference, he tells us, is that there is more trading, by far, on the Sabbath than on any other day, as it is the favorite shopping day with all classes. Rev. Wm. Rice says that in Russia (as also in Poland and Greece, where the same church is dominant), " it is no unusual thing to see gross drunkenness and debauchery following the church service, and participated in by the clergy." To these testimonies, partly in the way of confirma- tion, partly of supplement, I may add the following statements from a letter of July nth, 1884, from the First Secretary of the Imperial Russian Legation at Washington : " The Russian Sunday is much similar to the French and German Catholic Sundays. It is a day of devotion and rest, but also of pleasure — and even of work, if there should be necessity for it. Wine-shops are closed during hours of Divine service by police regulation." The well-to-do people in Russia make the Sabbath a holiday, but to the poor it brings double work, instead of 'rest. No wonder a Sabbathless people, with no day of protected rest, no day for thought, for conscience, for home, for religion, has become a mass of volcanic discontent, ready at any moment to exchange the tyranny of a monarch for the greater tyranny of a mob, a reign of crowned despotism for a popular reign of terror. As to the Continental Sunday in Bulgaria, Rev. F. L. Kingsbury, a missionary at Samokov, writes me as follows : " Russian influence in Bulgaria is still power- ful. Last week a Russian M.D. asked me to ride on horseback with him on the Sabbath, and wondered at IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 129 my declining, ' for,' said he, ' the Sabbath with us is for the very purpose of a grand holiday.' The law in Bulgaria does not pronounce very decidedly on the subject. Recently, by a special ukase, Sunday drilling by the soldiers has been prohibited, which is a long step in advance. On stormy Sundays we generally have a larger congregation, because the people cannot go out so well for pleasure." The Rev. D. C. Challis, Superintendent of Methodist Missions in Bulgaria, contributes the following additional facts about the Continental Sundays of that country : " So far as I know, the Sabbath is on a level with all other holi- days. No visible work is allowed — that is, shops must be shut up until after church, when all* can do about what they please. In the Danubian towns many of the shops are open. In the interior only the saloons are usually opened on Sunday. I have never heard of any arrests for Sabbath work, but frequent arrests are made and fines imposed for work on saints' days, and even for work on some of the heathen holidays, which are observed quite strictly in the Balkan region, such as Hail-day, Wolf's-day, Mouse-day, Snake's-day, etc. If you remonstrate against the violation of the Sab- bath, or rather its degradation below saints' days, they are quite likely to reply, ■ Oh, we have Sunday every week, but Saint 's day only comes once a year ! ' Foreigners, as far as I know, do about as the natives do. The Bulgarian Catholics render the Fourth Com- mandment, Honor the Holy days.' A theological student in a dispute with one of our brethren recently denied that the Bible requires that the Sabbath be kept holy. From that you may judge of the quantity and quality of the orthodox teaching on the observ- ance of the Sabbath." 130 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Passing now into European Turkey, we have the following description of the Continental Sunday of Eastern Roumelia, by Rev. Robert Thompson, a mis- sionary in Philippopolis: " The organic statutes provide that all shall be free to follow their religious convic- tions, and shall be protected therein ; but when the Protestants of this province hoped to find in this pro- vision ground for their young men being excused from being called out on Sundays to take part in the drill of the Reserves, they found themselves sadly disap- pointed. If any law on this matter can be said to exist here, it is ecclesiastical law. The Sunday is one of the Church holidays, and has to be observed like all the rest of them. The Bulgarians have a name for holidays which is very significant, because it so exactly describes their manner of observing them, Sundays in- cluded. The word is literally ' empty day,' a day in which nothing is done ; a day passed in lazy or in gossipy idleness. Although the ordinary idea of the Sabbath is that it ought to be an ' empty day,' any infringement of this custom is easily condoned, if in- deed it attracts any attention at all. It is true that the shops of Christians are generally closed ; yet it is not uncommon to see shop doors open, though the windows may be shuttered, and to observe business being carried on within. The pious are expected to go, and do go to an early morning service on Sundays ; but, that done, they are free to spend the day as they like. Custom allows Sunday traveling, Sunday visit- ing, Sunday entertainments, both public and private — in short, anything. Indeed, Sunday and the other holidays are the great social days here, devoted to exchange of calls, etc. The reason for this is that people in the East arc yet only beginning to make use IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? I3I of their evenings, either for social or for any other purposes. It is the Eastern custom not to go out after dark ; and the ordinary hour for retiring is very early. And so, since the evenings cannot be utilized, and the daytime is devoted to business, these holidays must be seized for social purposes. The attitude of the Romanists is much the same as that of the Greek Church, which I have been describing. Perhaps they make a little more of their Sunday, services, but that is all. The attitude of foreigners is exactly the same ; unless, perhaps, they may be described as even more indifferent than the natives, because, not understand- ing Bulgarian, and rinding here no churches where services are conducted in their own language, they do not go to church at all, and quickly lose any little re- spect for the Sunday that they might have originally had. This attitude of the foreigners, especially when they happen to be American or British residents or travelers, the supposed representatives of Protestant- ism, is one great difficulty that we have to contend against." A native evangelical, Pastor Boyadjieff, of Yambol, gives further particulars about the Sundays of Eastern Roumelia. He says : " Many times when a holiday falls upon Monday, the people prepare for it on the Sabbath. Elections, with almost no exception, are held on the Sabbath, and much government work is done. The people are divided into the militia, who are in actual military service, and the reserve, which includes all the able-bodied men under thirty- four years of age. They are required to drill on the Sab- bath. On this account no young men can go to church. Men of authority say that these laws should be perpetuated, for the people are not profited by 132 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. attending church. In larger centres the places of amusement, drinking, etc., are all open after noon, but before noon they only open the door, perhaps that not very widely, and sell whiskey on the sly. This, however, is true only of three or four places, and these are the largest cities, such as Philippopolis, Bourgas, and Bazardjik. In the villages the people are very relig- ious, but are so ignorant that they hardly know what is their duty. The villagers generally assemble on the Sabbath in an open place, the younger people finish- ing the day with dancing. It is a rather curious fact that at times the priest of the village comes out to amuse himself as a spectator." Continental Sundays in Greece, despite the slight reform in the matter of closing shops at Athens, to which I have referred, are in general like the convivial Sundays I have just described. I saw a Greek Sunday in 1880 at Corfu. The city was filled with country people, who had come to enjoy the annual carnival. After the early mass these devout Greeks gathered in a public square to see men climb heavenward on a greased pole, and perform other amusing feats, which none seemed to enjoy more than the priests, who were as well represented in the laughing crowd as any other class of people. No wonder these modern Greeks are incapable of such republics as flourished in ancient Greece, incapable even of furnishing their own king, since they do not give one day in the week to thought, but fill their only leisure with child's play. Such people never get out of political babyhood, but are content with the rattles which kings give them instead of rights. As to the Continental Sundays of Italy, it is enough to say that I saw the duplicate of this Corfu carnival IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 33 at Naples on the preceding Sunday, only that the laughing priests at Naples were Roman Catholics. What are the facts about the Continental Sunday of the German-speaking peoples ? It is pictured at its best in the following letter from one of the smaller and quieter cities ; and yet, even at the best, it will be found a day of labor and business as well as of pleasure. Rev. H. S. Pomeroy, an American missionary in Prague, writes thus of the Continental Sunday in Austria: " It is customary to close shops at 1 P.M., and then the people go to concerts, picnics and thea- tres, which open twice on Sunday. I know of but one retail store which is closed here on Sunday morning. Many shops are open all day. The newspapers are pub- lished. The railroad trains run, and the mails are de- livered in the morning and early afternoon. Churches, both Protestant and Catholic, are open in the morn- ing, but not in the afternoon. The Sabbath-observ- ance (?) seems to be practically the same among Prot- estants and Catholics, though there are a few ' awak- ened ' parishes, with converted pastors, where one will find more regard for the Sabbath. The only days that seem at all like our American Sunday as regards outward appearance, are occasional saints' days. In a year there are two or three of these very holy days, — not Sundays unless by accident — which are nearly as quiet as our Sunday. As a rule Sunday is here a day quite free from unusual disturbances. It is a day of special amusement, a day when every one, at least in the afternoon, is expected to wear his best clothes, and do something to amuse himself ; but the Bohe- mian amuses himself in a rather quiet and orderly fashion. The strong arm of the law is ubiquitous, and 134 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. strikes promptly and severely. There are probably fifty brass bands of various sizes and degrees of merit playing in and about Prague on a fine Sunday in summer. Of course we require our members to keep Sunday. We have services forenoon, afternoon and evening, and no one of our people would think of keeping his shop open." Mary Gordon, writing for The Advance, of Chicago, gives, from personal observation, the following facts about the Continental Sunday in Berlin, as related to the workingmen : " Those who advocate the intro duction into America of the German Sabbath lay especial stress on its advantages for the working classes. They argue that it would give them more recreation and enjoyment, and that by thus throwing a weekly gleam of pleasure into their hard lives, the monotony would be broken up, and the men and women rendered healthier and better, both in body and in mind. They ask that the Sabbath be no longer called 'the Lord's-day, ' but 'the People's-day.' Germans will describe to you their charming coffee and beer gardens, with their merry Sabbath throngs. The picture is a bright one, but they only show you the foreground. Let us raise the curtain a little higher and get a glimpse of the background. There you find a perspective, stretching far back over Ger- many's past, marked by long lines of Sunday toilers, working on, as if the example of the Creator of the universe was nothing to be heeded. In the afternoon many of these laborers drop their spades, hammers and ploughs, and wend their way to some public place of amusement, but enough remain at work all day to keep the dark lines visible till the sun drops down be- hind the landscape. We will also look from a certain IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 135 familiar window in Berlin. It is Sunday morning, but yonder is a bricklayer at work on a new house. He makes trip after trip up the ladder with his heavy burden upon his shoulders, while the knight of the trowel sits aloft and fills the air with the metallic ring of his tool. In the yard below a sawyer keeps on hour after hour with the monotonous squeak of his saw, while his daughter, a girl of eighteen years, piles and cuts sticks into a large basket, straps it to her back, and carries it up two flights of stairs to the wood chamber. In the wash-house of a neighboring yard the women are scrubbing at their tubs. A noise in the adjoining apartment attracts your attention, and you find that the servants have been set to remove all the furniture and clean the paint, because the best time to do it is when the Americans have gone to church. The girl who has just brought in your pitcher of water says it will take her till noon to finish up the ironing left over from the day before. The same state of things prevails in the country. In going to church Sunday morning, we have passed fields where women were patiently hoeing endless rows of potatoes, often with children two or three years old clinging to their skirts, swaying about in the loose soil and crying to be taken up. So much for the Sabbath morning in Ger- many. The Germans themselves say these things are wrong ; still they are content to keep on in the old way. ' But look at our charming concert-gardens on Sun- day afternoon,' cries a German ; ' are they not the very pictures of enjoyment ? ' Let us pass into the concert-garden and see. First, we observe that a large proportion of the people there are not strictly from what is called-' the working class.' They are 136 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. from ranks of society where recreation during the week is much less rare, and therefore less necessary on Sunday. Then do not for a moment imagine that the poor man you see sipping his beer with his little Hans beside him is to be found in the concert-garden every Sunday. This is an ' outing ' for both him and his son. His Sabbath morning is spent working at his trade, or for his employers, and two thirds of the after- noons are occupied in planting, hoeing or harvesting his own little garden. He knows that work can be done on Sunday, therefore the odd moments of the week, when an American would set his house or gar- den in order, are spent in smoking his pipe or dozing over his beer. Almost every branch of industry has its hurried and busy season, when many of those em- ployed spend nearly or quite all their Sabbaths at work. Thus, though the places of public amusement are well patronized on Sunday afternoon by people who play cards, drink, or dance, till the small hours overtake them, we may safely reckon that for every workingman we see there taking one of the few air- ings of the season, there could be found three at home occupied in some kind of labor. For, as we have already seen, the same view of the Sabbath which makes beer gardens and theatres admissible on Sun- day, makes sewing, scrubbing, digging potatoes and building houses admissible ; and it takes no very deep thinking to see that poor people, in need of money, will for the most part stay at home to save or to earn, rather than go out and spend. Theatres and dancing arc not to be had gratis, and are by no means to be indulged in every Sunday by the- whole family. " We once hired apartments of a woman who kept an embroidery shop. We often passed through the store IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? I37 in going out, to have a pleasant word with the land- lady. Sunday morning always found her sitting in the same corner she occupied every day, bent over her work, counting threads and, stitch by stitch, wearily working her colorless life into gay flowers, destined to adorn some fine salon. Her face looked so wan that one day on returning from church we stopped at the counter and asked : ' Do you never have any Sun- day ? ' ' Oh, yes, one can have good thoughts while sitting at work,' was the evasive reply. ' And do you never close your shop and go out ? ' we continued. ' Seldom ; perhaps a few times a year, toward night. I can't afford it. I have my living to earn. That will do for rich people.' An American advocate of the German Sabbath, being present at the concert-garden, and seeing that tired face bent over a cup of fragrant coffee one of those ' few times a year ' might have ex- claimed, ' Behold, how good a thing it is to give these weary workers one merry day in seven ! ' But he would not, perhaps, have taken the trouble to go and learn from the old mother who was tending store mean- while, that forty-five of the Sabbaths of the year, and at least the mornings of the remaining seven, were spent by her daughter just as she spent the Saturdays and Mondays which touched them on either side. If shopping is done on Sunday, of course stores must be kept open. There is a law in Germany that no mer- chant shall sell anything during the hour and a half in which public worship is held. At that time, there- fore, most of the stores have half the door closed, and some of the merchants are conscientious to that mor- bid degree that the key is turned in the other half. But as soon as the service is over, the doors fly open with a promptness which suggests some one behind I38 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. each with the hand on the latch, saying, ' One to make ready.' We know a young man who, Sunday after Sunday, works all day at his figures. He gives as a reason for so doing that he earns extra money, and that he cannot keep his books in order without it. He frequently goes to the beer garden in the afternoon of his less busy season, but the days that find him there are less frequent than those which find him over his books. Sunday afternoon in the country is no less subject to invasion. We have counted thirty women in one grain field binding sheaves. The early morning of the day, ' so calm, so bright/ had called them to their labor, and as we saw them, the setting sun was throwing its slant rays athwart their weary faces. " But some one asks, ' Do not the Germans go to church ? ' They are not habitual church-goers as we understand the term. As we have seen, Sunday has too many other interests and occupations for that. You will hardly find any one in the middle or lower classes who does not attend church once in a while- — on a fete day, perhaps — and there are, of course, indi- viduals who habitually go to church Sunday morning ; but the majority of the people content themselves with an occasional visit to the sanctuary. There is but one service, and that is just as irksome to the Germans as our two services are getting to be with us. A merchant at whose counter we often made pur- chases, exclaimed one day, ' How can you Americans go to church every Sunday ! I go once a year, at Easter, and it gives me such gloomy thoughts that I do not get over it for a week.' Our landlady ac- companied us to church Whitsunday, and had been but once before since the last Whitsunday. The extra Sunday dinner, which is indispensable in a IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 39 German family, keeps the housekeeper from Sunday services. !< We may say, then, that for the lower classes in Germany, Sunday is only a half-holiday at best, often not that, and the religious element in it is like Grati- ano's 'two grains of wheat hid in a bushel of chaff.' This is the Sabbath that we are asked to transplant into American soil, nay, that is already transplanted into many Western cities. But will it meet .the wants of our workingmen, already restive under their bur- dens ? Take away the sanctity of the day, keep farm laborers in the field, open stores, mills, warehouses, and other places of business on Sabbath morning ; close them after dinner to open concert and dancing halls, beer gardens and theatres ; and would such a 1 People's-day ' be better than a ' Lord's-day ' ? We believe it to be in vain to think of introducing the diver- sions of the European Sabbath without its labor. Once take away the sacredness of Sunday, a?id you only open anotJier tzventy-four hours to the avarice and cupidity of man. This has been the unfailing result both in Cath- olic and Protestant countries ; even laws to the con- trary are of no avail." That the Continental Sunday of the Germans is a day of increasing toil to the poor, as well as a day of gayety to the rich, is still more impressively shown by numerous recent petitions and protests of the German people against Sunday work of which I have already spoken, and by many others to which I shall now refer. In Germany, in 1865, the Printers' Society of Berlin issued an appeal, in which they affirm the absolute need of mental and bodily rest after six days' hard work, both for the health and the elevation of the 'workman ; and that six days' wages should be enough 140 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. for seven days' support ; and that experience proves that a man is- not bettered in this respect by working seven days ; and they invite all labor organizations and well-disposed employers to join them in agitating against the disastrous custom of Sunday work in in- dustrial establishments. In 1872 petitions in favor of legal provisions for the Sunday rest of the working classes were presented to the Imperial Diet, and were advocated by General von Moltke and others ; but no action upon them was taken. The next year they were renewed^, with a much larger number of names. A prominent member of the Diet declared Sunday ob- servance to be "a fundamental right of the German people, the basis of the highest inalienable and indis- pensable human rights." A motion to take measures toward the substantial protection of Sunday rest for all workingmen in factories met with opposition, and was amended so as to apply only to women and chil- dren. " The ' German social-democrats ' have taken active part in these movements. At the Gotha Con- ference of the Communists, in May, 1875, at which was organized what is now called the ' Socialistic Labor Party of Germany,' a programme was issued of what they demand under the present state of society, one item of which is, ' the prohibition by the state of Sim- day labor.' ' "A mass-meeting of workingmen of all classes, held in Vienna, adopted resolutions in which they declare that the interests of working people are closely bound up with those of all classes, so that the whole community 'receives the benefit of whatever benefits them ; that hitherto the capital importance to workingmen of a regular day of rest, alike in its sani- tary, moral and intellectual influence, has not been generally recognized. They therefore resolved that it IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? I4I is the duty of all classes to work together to obtain it." 31 In all parts of Germany " workingmen and employes in stores are petitioning for their right to rest." " Petitions have been addressed to the Impe- rial Parliament asking for the suppression of Sunday work in factories and shops." " The German Society of Paper Manufacturers, at their general meeting at Nuremberg recently, agreed to seek by voluntary con- sent of the members the entire cessation of work on Sunday, except in cases of absolute necessity." 32 In 1883 " a petition signed by over six thousand persons was presented to the German Reichstag, asking for a law closing all commercial and industrial establish- ments on Sunday." One of many movements which manifest the grow- ing discontent of all classes in Germany with the Con- tinental Sunday is the " German Society of the Friends of the Workingmen and their Sunday," one of whose chief objects is thus stated: "To recover and conserve for the German people one day of rest after six days of labor ; to promote the observance of this rest day as a day of worship and religious train- ing, as well as a day of refreshment and pure and law- ful enjoyment." God grant that Great Britain and the United States may never make the blunder of Germany in losing the day of rest and religion. Let us prevent rather than repent. Let us retain and con- serve, lest, by and by, we find it next to impossible to ' ■ recover and conserve." " At a recent meeting of the General Synod of Prussia, representing twelve million adherents, to which all the provinces of Germany sent up loud com- plaints concerning the disturbance of Sunday rest, it was reported by the Supreme Council that in Saxony 142 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. especially household work goes on, like washing, bak- ing, or slaughtering animals. Large estates which give the good example of a Christian celebration of Sunday are very seldom found. In Prussia, Pome- rania, Brandenburg, and Posen, the laborers employed on the large estates do their own field work only on Sunday. The peddling traffic fairly blossoms on Sun- day, on account of the Jews, who observe their own Sabbath, but go through the villages incessantly on Sunday. Posen and Pomerania complain particu- larly of this. The Synods about Berlin have special grievances, as when the Berlin cattle show was opened on Ascension Day, and when Sunday horse races and Turner exhibitions take place in the very hours of Divine service. As consequences of the everywhere in- creasing Sunday desecration, the communication men- tions estrangement from God, unbelief, disturbance of the marriage bond and of family life, drunkenness get- ting the upper hand, unchastity, crimes against prop- erty, murder and suicide, rapid consumption of the life forces of individuals and of the people, injury to the commonwealth, multiplication of excesses, furthering of the Socialistic movement. The memorial of the Supreme Council closes with the remark that the growing complaints about this shameful state of things must be considered as a sign of reaction in the spirit of the people which yet remains sound. The wish is expressed that ' State and Church, school and home, work together that this now shaken ground-pillar of human society may again, in rejuvenated Germany, be fastened firm.' " This document is worth many times over all the observations of travelers who see only a part of the land, and that for only a little while. At this Synod, Dr. Bauer, court preacher, of Berlin, men- IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED ? I43 tioned, in an earnest appeal for better Sunday observ- ance, as indications of a decreasing sentiment of respect for the Sabbath, that respectable people used the day for hunting, turning, music festivals, noisy proces- sions, matinees, agricultural, industrial and artistic ex- hibitions, and for all kinds of labor and business. 33 Let those who think a Continental Sunday is only a play-day ponder these numerous protests and com- plaints about Sunday work, against which the work- ingmen of Germany have no legal protection. When there was a law against Sunday work, it was disre- garded, because the people were not taught to regard it as a law coming from God, but only from Church and State. The increasing drudgery of the Sabbathless Germans not only overtasks the body, but, by shutting off the opportunity for culture of conscience, undermines the morals. To this fact Prof. H. M. Scott, of Chicago, thus testifies from recent and thorough observation combined with the evidence of statistics : " Germany is probably sinking in immorality and crime more rap- idly than any other nation in Europe. In some of the cities half the births are illegitimate. In ten years saloons have increased by fifty per cent, and the peo- ple are fast becoming sodden with their immoderate beer-drinking." German papers paint quite as dark a picture. The London Times of April 18th, 1883, is quoted by The Christian as giving the following extract from the Krenz Zeitnng, of Berlin : " If we look at the moral condition of our country, must we not be horrified in our inmost soul ? What frightful barbarization ! What an increase of coarseness and bestiality ! Truly, not a few are taking their places at the head of their 144 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. brothers, the animals. Every newspaper tells us of murder, of suicide, of terrible derangement in houses and families, of unheard-of atrocities, of a moral de- generacy that must fill us with horror. ... And turning to our social state, we see ourselves going downward on the path of destruction." As to fhe effect of the Continental Sunday upon religion in Germany, it is rapidly demonstrating the saying of Montalembert, " No religion without wor- ship, no worship without the Sabbath." Germany is a nation where all are church-members, but few church-goers — fewer in proportion to the population than in any other Christian nation. In view of the fact that sixty-two and a half per cent 34 of the popula- tion' of any country, on an average, are able to attend church, New York is bad enough, with only twenty- five per cent of the people church-goers ; but in Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen they are only two per cent. Prof. Von Schulte, in a recent article in the Contempo- rary Review on the religious condition of Germany, declares that " the Protestant churches are often de- plorably empty, and are never crowded except when some celebrated preacher is expected." He states, also, that while it is true, as a rule, that " the Catholic worship throughout Germany is better attended than the Protestant, it is also true that there are many thousands in the towns who never enter a church, ex- cept now and then at weddings and funerals, and that this is true alike of Catholics and Protestants." In 1884, according to Dr. Stocker's statement in the German Parliament, "the large towns of Germany have a smaller number of churches in proportion to the population than those of any other country in Christendom." . IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED ? I45 There is hope in the fact that the earnest Christian leaders of Germany recognize these evils, and are seek- ing to remove them. Earl Cairns, in his speech in the House of Lords on May 8th, 1883, in opposition to the Earl of Dunraven's motion to open museums on the Sabbath, read the following extract from a letter written by a German gentleman of eminence, as to the Sundays of his country, in contrast with those of Great Britain : " We Germans are, to a great extent, far removed from such a celebration of Sunday. The Day of Rest and of most elevated joy is too often robbed of its honor. The forenoon of Sunday is given up to work, and the afternoon to pleasure. That which can elevate man is often despised, but that which degrades him is sought after. On Sunday the policemen reap their most abundant harvest ; on Sun- day children occasion the greatest anxiety ; on Sunday evening, above all other times, does the wife antici- pate the return of her husband with a foreboding heart. Drunkenness and rioting . celebrate their greatest triumph on Sunday ; and most of the mis- demeanors are committed on that day, or are in- timately connected with the misuse of it. We turn, therefore, to our countrymen with the urgent request that they would, in their various spheres, endeavor to procure for the Sunday a more honorable observance in our land. If the Sunday acquires a different char- acter, the national life will rest on a surer basis." Meanwhile, it is worthy of consideration whether it is wise, or safe, for British or American parents to send immature sons or daughters to schools in the Sabbathless atmosphere of Germany, or any other part of the realm of the Continental Sunday. In many departments of secular learning Germany is unsur- I46 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. passed, and for instruction in these, mature English- men and Americans may well make pilgrimages to her famous universities. But what has Germany to teach Great Britain or America in politics or religion ? Reuen Thomas, D.D., answers the latter part of the question by saying: "More than any other country Germany seems to me an illustration of St. Paul's words, ' The letter killeth.' Since Luther's time she seems to have been singularly distitute of what in Scripture is called ' vision ' — vision as distinct from that intelligence that comes of mental culture. ' Where there is no vision the people perish.' In the religious realm of things, Germany is much more of a warning than an example." As to the intellectual influence of the Continental Sunday in Germany, it is very significant that the Sabbathless Germans are becoming intellectually sub- ject to the Sabbath-keeping Jews, who have ninety per cent of the newspapers of Germany more or less under their control or influence, while they promise soon to lead also in the legal profession, and have much the largest percentage of pupils in the higher educational institutions, the largest percentage also of the fine residences, and a strong and increasing representation in the German Parliament. 35 One day's emancipation from toil and amusement, whatever it may or may not have done for the souls of the Jews, has certainly made them the intellectual masters of the grown-up children of Germany, who take no weekly respite for mental improvement. As to the political effect of the Continental Sunday in Germany, we need only to point to the fact that its chief movements for greater popular liberty are the ignorant and blundering efforts of suicidal Socialism, IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED. I47 whose abuse of liberty has seemed to justify the gov- ernment in abridging even the small liberties of the German people, in order to save the state from brainless conscienceless adherents of King Anarchy, whom, in the lack of thoughtful Sabbaths, they have been deluded into mistaking for liberty. Leveling all days to one plane prepared the way for the attempt to level all men to one plane, that the industrious might have no more than the idle, and the wise fare no better than self-made fools. A Christian Sabbath is the true leveler. On its platform the rich and the poor meet together in pro- tected rest, and equal opportunity for thought. It levels up the poor of to-day to make them the rich of to-morrow. " Denmark's Sunday is almost a duplicate of Ger- many's, with some slight variations for the better." So says one of its ex-pastors. Belgium verified its title as "Little France" by a political procession of clericals, and a consequent riot, on one of the Sabbaths of 1884, and so we pass on to France, of which Matthew Arnold remarks, " A nation without a Sabbath and a home without virtue cannot be atoned for by platitudes about ' ma mere.' ' As to Sunday in Paris, let me first give my own notes of a Sabbath in that city in 1873. — Sunday morning? No, it can't be that; look again at your calendar. All the stores are open ; the street traders are getting out their carts ; the cafes are preparing for larger crowds than usual at their trim tables on the sidewalks of the boulevards ; the open-air theatres are all arranging for exhibitions ; the cabs and 'busses are briskly driving ; even the soldiers are gathering for a street parade. Yes, but that is the 148 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Parisian Sunday, and only a little of it. You see few going to church, and many to saloons, theatres, and drives ; and, worst of all, there is a great time at the races, where the President of the Republic is to be found entertaining the Shah of Persia, and betting on his favorite horse. Why has France been such a de- moniac — " dwelling among the tombs, tearing and cutting itself with stones," burning its own most beau- tiful buildings, murdering its own best men? Visit Paris on what the almanac tells you is a Sabbath, and you have an answer. " What France wants is moth- ers-' and Sabbaths. Robert McCheyne's lament over the Parisian Sunday is still appropriate : " Alas ! poor Paris knows no Sabbath. All the shops are open, and all the inhab- itants are on the wing in search of pleasures — pleasures that perish in the using. I thought of Babylon and Sodom as I passed through the crowd. I cannot tell how I longed for the peace of the Scot- tish Sabbath !" E. W. Hitchcock, D.D., ex-pastor of the American Chapel in Paris, writes me thus of the French Sun- day : " Concerning the present observance, or non- observance, of the Sabbath in France, it may be said in general that Sunday is the Frenchman's holiday, not his holy day. The fetes, 'spectacles,' concerts, operas, and theatres are made doubly attractive on that day. It is the day for the public fetes, the popular elections [when Christians must electioneer and vote, or lose their political rights], the military reviews, the races, the illuminations, the exhibitions, the popular gatherings, political, socialistic, humanitarian, artistic. The Catholic Church allows great liberty to its mem- bers. Provided they attend early mass they may do IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED ? 149 what they please and go where they please the rest of the day. The Protestants, as a general thing, keep the day better, but they are far from being Puritanic in their ideas. They believe in ' making the Sabbath a delight ' — according to their own idea of delight — and would not hesitate to walk in the public parks, visit the picture galleries, attend concerts, receive their friends, etc. They realize, however, that Sunday is the Lord's-day as well as man's day, and that upon its observance is conditioned the moral and religious welfare of the nation." Intelligent and humane Frenchmen are as little pleased with the French Sunday as visitors from Sab- bath-keeping countries. Pierre Joseph Proudhon, whose communistic atheism precludes any theological sympathy with the Sabbath, nevertheless laments the restlessness and demoralizing influence of the French Sunday. He says : " Sunday in the towns is a day of rest without motive or end ; an occasion of display for the women and children ; of consumption in the restaurants and wine-shops ; of degrading idleness ; of surfeit and debauchery. The workmen make merry, the grisettes dance, the soldier tipples, the trades- man alone is busy." The Abbe Gaume, a Cath- olic authority, thus echoes this condemnation of the French Sunday : " Where now do these men, women, and children, free now as to their time, resort ? Ask the theatres, the taverns, the places of debauchery. The tables of surfeit and excess have with them dis- placed the holy table ; licentious songs are their sacred hymns ; the theatre is their church ; dances and shows engage them, instead of instruction and prayer. Thus by a disorder which cries for vegeance to Heaven, the Holy Day is the day of the week most profaned." 150 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. In such Sundays have budded and blossomed the bloody fruits of French communism. Not until we wish to cultivate that fruit should we import its seed — the Parisian Sunday. How such a Sunday, when it becomes national, grad- ually drags Christians downward until they participate in socializing and secularizing the day, is seen not only in what has been said of French Protestants, but also in the weakened Sabbath observance that is seen in many British and American tourists, when they return from a prolonged visit at Paris, whose Sunday they " first endure, then pity, then embrace." A recent Ameri- can Minister to France, although he paid some regard to the Sabbath when he first went to Paris, at length became so leavened by French ideas and habits, that he misrepresented his own Sabbath-keeping land by giving a banquet to the Monetary Commission on the Lord's-day. 36 Side by side with this we place an item clipped, in 1883, from The Independent : " And now we have won the race for the grand prize of Paris, Mr. Keene's Foxhall coming in ahead last Sunday amid enthusiastic applause from the Sabbath-breaking Amer- icans present. ' ' Such is the contagion of a bad national atmosphere. It is not hard to guess what would be the result of importing a Parisian Sunday. God grant that " American" may never thus be made to mean what " Frenchy" implies the world over ! But Sunday in France is not only a holiday to some, but a working day to more. In no land has the Sab- bath been stripped of its religiousness without strip- ping it also of its restfulness. Sabbath rest and rever- ence are bound in the bundle of life together. United they stand ; divided they fall. No bulwark, even of law, has been able to protect the workingman in his IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? I 5 I natural right to rest one day in seven, except when employers and employees have been made to feel that the law was founded on Sinai's granite of Divine com- mand. Those who will not have the Sabbath as a holy day cannot have it long as a rest day. When the Sab- bath is made not a day of prayer, but of play, it soon becomes to the poor a day of toil. Robert Collyer, D.D., Unitarian, who does not seem to see the relation of his oft-repeated defence of Sunday recreation to the Sabbath's extinction, said, in 1884, in The New York Tribune : " I remember when in Paris, in 1865, counting forty different kinds of workingmen busy at their tasks as I walked on Sunday morning from my hotel to a church not far away. I wondered where that would end, and saw the end in 1871 in the fires that had been kindled by the Commune." Shortly after the recent repeal of the French law against Sunday work, in a discussion of the question of the length of a day's work in factories, it was voted to limit the hours of work for all females, and for boys under eighteen years of age, to eleven hours per day, and to six days per week, without prescribing which of the seven days should be given for rest. For French workingmen there is no protected rest. They must work seven days for six days' wages. Making the Sab- bath a French holiday for the rich has made it a work- ing day for the poor, and that too with no gain even in money for the loss of health and morals. That chapter of French history is in danger of repeat- ing itself in Great Britain and the United States. If we are not blind to the philosophy which history teaches by awful examples, we shall learn without ex- perience that when the Holy Day becomes a holiday it ceases to be even a rest day. Taking religion out 152 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. of it, takes rest out. As little thieves, being lifted in through small windows, open the door for greater ones, so an opening in the laws for Sunday play allows that to open the doors to Sunday work, as on the Continent. Few contend for Sunday as a working day, but making it an ecclesiastical day or a holiday comes to the same thing in the end. The political fruitage of the French Sunday is nearly as bad as its commercial, moral, and religious results. A Sabbath-keeping republic could not have dealt with Madagascar and China as unjustly as France has done, nor with its own people as despotically as the earlier French Republic did at the Revolution. Colonel Forney, a man certainly not prejudiced by religion, writing to his Philadelphia paper from Paris, a few years ago, after describing the-various kinds of dissipa- tion he had witnessed on the Lord's-day, said, " This is Paris on Sunday. When that day of rest is dis- honored in America as it is here, freedom will have gone from us forever." Joseph Cook says: "Give to America from sea to sea the Parisian Sunday, and in two hundred years all our greatest cities will be under the heels of the featherheads, the roughs, the sneaks, and the money gripes." The Continental Sunday in Spain (which is dupli- cated in Portugal) is thus described in a letter from Marvin R. Vincent, D.D., of New York, based on personal observation (April, 1884): "The Sunday in Spain is much like the Sunday everywhere on the Continent. It is a holiday and a gala day. I spent a month in the French Basque Provinces just over the Spanish line, my headquarters being Bayonne. Here a great fair was in progress, being opened on Sundays as on all other days. The beautiful IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 53 promenade outside the walls was crowded with peo- ple, and shows of every description were in full blast. On two of the Sundays there was a grand re- gatta on the Adour, attended by thousands of people. It is no different on the other side of the frontier. The Spanish Basque are strong Ultramontanes, and for that reason hard to be reached by Protestantism. The Roman Catholic Sunday is in full vigor. Trade is carried on, or suspended only for amusement. If you go out into the country you find groups of peas- ants everywhere, dancing cr playing ten-pins. In town, wherever there is an open place and a high wall, you will see the favorite game of pelota or ball in prog- ress. The people are quiet and well-behaved. " Of course,, the churches are open for mass in the morning. The saying runs that the women go to the church and the men stand outside and smoke ciga- rettes. The bull-fights always take place on Sunday. While I was at San Sebastian, where there is a bull ring accommodating, it is said, ten thousand spectators, there was a course of fights extending over several days, including a Sunday. Special trains were run, and people poured into the town from every quarter. At Granada there was a bull- fight on Sunday, and I was much edified at the conversation of some English- men at the table, to the effect that, as it was one of :he national institutions, they must go and see it. I was delighted to hear one of them say next morning that he had not slept all night from the horror of the impression he received." Rev. William H. Gulick, a missionary in Spain, gives the following full and reliable report of Sunday in Spain among the Roman Catholics (May, 1884) : " I have lived in Spain twelve years, and in Spanish 154 ™ E SABBATH FOR MAN. America three years. " The result of my observations among these communities during these fifteen years is that the Sabbath as such is practically unknown in the Spanish Roman Catholic Church. If any difference is made in these communities between that day and any other of the days of the week in the suspension of ordinary occupations, it is not in deference to the Divine command to ' remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,' but because of the fact, or of the acci- dent, that it is one of the ' Feast Days ' of the Church. As such and only as such have I ever known any Spanish Roman Catholic to observe the day. Is the question then asked, How is the Sabbath observed by the Spanish Roman Catholic ? With those who are in the habit of keeping with a measure of strictness the general feast days of their church, the Sabbath comes in for its share of ' observance ; ' but it must not be overlooked that as a feast day it is, even with the most devout, probably the least important one in the entire Roman Catholic calendar — except when one of the great ' movable feasts' falls on that day — and then its extra observance is due to that accident, and not to its being the Lord's-day. In what manner, then, is it observed ? In Spain out-door work is generally sus- pended on that day, and all government offices are closed, as they are closed on all feast days. But, as a rule, stores and business offices of every kind (not governmental) are open until eleven or twelve o'clock. During the afternoon the entire community gives itself up to diversion. It is the day par excellence for the bull-fight, and the evening for the theatre and the opera. In short, all the devices of amusement and pleasure arc crowded into that day — these being more or less quiet, or more or less reckless and noisy, ac- IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 55 cording to the habits of the community or the accident of the season. Is the universal Sabbath-breaking by Roman Catholics due to the fact that it is considered only a venial sin ? The average Spanish Roman Catholic, be he priest or layman, does not consider it any sin at all. It is very frequently the -case that the parish priest, especially the priest of a village or town, is strenuously in favor of having the great market day held in his town on Sunday, because, by the greater gathering together of the people for business purposes, he thinks is sure to have a larger attendance at mass, and so correspondingly larger offerings from the con- gregation. But have we not seen the statement lately going the rounds of the press that a society has re- cently been formed at Madrid by eminent Roman Catholics for the better observance of the Sabbath ? That may be a new society in Madrid, or it may not be ; at any event, the idea, such as it is, is nothing new in Spain, and has no significance whatever. In the year 1872, in Santander, a society of exactly the same kind and intent was formed, that published a ten-page pamphlet entitled El Domingo. The larger part of the pamphlet was an able argument in favor of Sabbath suspension of work, and of Sabbath rest, chiefly based on French writings, but liberally fortified by the Sab- bath laws of some of the United States, and by Old Testament texts and arguments. It is almost Puritan in its severity, and one would say as he reads, ' Surely, the Spanish Roman Catholics are not as other Roman Catholics ; there must at least be among them an in- fluential body, who esteem the Sabbath as highly as the most orthodox Protestants do ! ' But when the last page is reached, and the argument is to be clinched, and the rules of the association are 156 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. announced, the illusion vanishes, and the aspiration of those who, with really devout intent, are trying to rally their co-religionist to a new crusade becomes ap- parent. They exclaim : ' Well known are the words that the one Most Holy Virgin spoke to the children shepherds of the Alps in the Mount of la Salette, and which she charged them to repeat to all men : Blasphemy and the profanation of Feast Days are the sins that most deeply arouse the indignation of my Son. Tell my people that if they do not cease from these sins great punishment will fall upon the world ; as also if they do depart from these evil things days of happiness will be their lot." Then follows the title of the society, ' Association para la Observation de los Dias Festivos,' and in the succeeding rules and regulations the Lord's-day is never once mentioned, only ' dias festivos/ among which it is hopelessly lost. ' But,' it is asked, ' is there not a manifest recognition of the Divine sanction of the Lord's-day, as such, in their extended arguments in favor of its better observ- ance ? ' None at all. It is perfectly obvious that the writer or writers of the pamphlet in question assumed the title, ' Sunday ' (El Domingo), and filled its pages with good arguments in favor of keeping it better, merely because those arguments are immeasurably more convincing of the common-sense of all men than the best that can be found or written in favor of any other feast day of the Roman Catholic Church. In their failure to discriminate between the Sabbath and the other feast days of the church they naturally take the most convincing arguments that they can find in support of keeping any feast day. And, further, they make use of the argument for the Sabbath because of IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 57 the notable support it receives from the stringent Sab- bath laws of the United States, and because it is the only feast day for which they can find Scriptural sanc- tion. And if, they argue, such good reasons can be given for the keeping of Sunday, one of the least im- portant feast days, how much stronger must be the reasons for keeping the much more important saints' days and holy days of the Church ! The grand ladies who have lately visited the store-keepers in Madrid, trying to induce them to close on Sundays, and threatening to withdraw their patronage if they do not do so, equally included in their promises and threats all the feast days on which suspension of busi- ness is inculcated by the Church. The valuelessness of this movement as one of true reform, and its mani- fest lack of religious sincerity, is shown by the com- ments on it of the independent press, which says, in substance : ' They call on the poor shop-keeper, who is struggling to supply his family with a mouthful of bread, to close his store on the very days on which he invariably makes his largest sales, while they — what burden do they propose for themselves in order to carry on their zealous crusade for the feast days? As every one knows, Sunday is ever for themselves the chosen day for the opera, for the theatre, for the ball, for the bull-fight, and for every amusement. Away with such a religion ! And may it not be added, They bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.' In this Madrid movement — undoubtedly as sincere and as good a one of the kind as has ever been attempted in Spain — we have a perfect illustration of what the 158 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Spanish Roman Catholic counts as ' keeping ' the Lord's-day, or a feast day — suspension of all useful business, and, if the individual so wishes to use his time, abandonment to any and every kind of amuse- ment that the world around him offers. ' The Spanish Protestants accept heartily the Biblical idea and teaching of the Sabbath, but it must be admitted that their practice generally is more after the Continental Protestant models than the old-time New England practice. And this is not perhaps to be wondered at when so many of their best pastors, and some of the foreign missionaries, who are of German, French, or Swiss origin and education, preach and practise regarding the observance of the day so differ- ently from what is generally considered orthodox on the subject by evangelical Christians in England and the United States." In view of the fact that when Spain had liberty thrust upon her a few years ago she proved morally and mentally incapable of retaining it, largely because her Sabbaths had been spent in child's play and vice instead of mental and moral culture, thoughtful Eng- lishmen and Americans will hardly feel that the Span- ish Sunday is a good institution to adopt in lands where the people are rulers, and so must spend at least one seventh of their time in the culture of brain and conscience, if they are to retain their liberties. A holiday Sunday, by corrupting the common peo- ple, blood-poisons the nation. As to the moral and social fruitage of the Spanish Sunday, it is all represented in the one fact that Spain is nineteen centuries behind the times, spending her holidays in bull-fights and other coarse festivities, such IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 59 as were seen at Rome in its Pagan days, while two thirds of her people 37 are unable to read or write. " Yells the mad crowd o'er entrails freshly torn, Nor shrinks the female eye, nor e'en affects to mourn." Is that description of a holiday in pagan Rome of nineteen centuries ago, or of a Sabbath in so-called Christian Spain of to-day? It is as true of one as of the other. The Lord's-day becomes the devils' day wherever it becomes a mere holiday. When Bacchus and Venus are given half of it, they take the whole. As a fallen archangel became the prince of devils, so a Sabbath profaned soon becomes the worst of days. Conti- nental history proves what Sir Walter Scott said of the Continental Sunday : " Give the world one half of Sunday, and you will find that religion has no strong- hold on the other half/' European Sabbath history proves conclusively that whenever the Sabbath is not considered a divinely ap- pointed day of rest and religion, but only an ecclesias- tical or national holiday : (1) The religious elements of the day grow less and less, until the day becomes a holiday for the prosperous, and a day of toil, like all others, to the poor, who do not even reap financial gain in return for their loss of rest and religion ; (2) the saloon usurps the place of the home as the centre of Sabbath life, with consequent increase of drunken? ness, unchastity, and other crimes, which empty the churches to fill the jails ; (3) the common people, by spending their Sabbath leisure in frivolity, remain un- fitted for the well-balanced civil liberty which the British and American peoples are enabled to enjoy, l6o THE SABBATH FOR MAN. chiefly by their thoughtful Sabbaths, which have made them in mind and morals capable of self-government. To put the historic development of the Continental Sunday more concisely, its downward steps from Holy Day, are : Holiday, Work day, Devil's day, Despot's day. Men propose, in the interests of workingmen, to in- troduce this Continental Sunday into Great Britain and the United States, as if it were not the proven foe of both labor and liberty. They have imported the Continental Sunday into Mexico. How does it work ? Two letters I have re- ceived from missionaries show that it does not zuork, but the people do. Rev. Rollo Ogden writes thus : " The Mexican Sunday is the Continental Sunday brutalized. It is the day for bull-baiting and cock- fighting. It is the time for especial license, for giving loose rein to the coarser passions, for drunkenness and brawling. The priesthood make no protest. If ' the faithful ' will only go to a hurried mass in the early morning, it matters not what they do the rest of the day. The disregard of the day has worked out into another evil. There is small cessation of labor. Shops and stores are open nearly as on ordinary days. The com- petition of employers results in robbing the working- man, more and more, of a day of rest. The great feast days are the only days that they suspend all work. There being about thirty of these, the result is that the Mexican workman is robbed of one half his rest days. This maybe one reason why he is of small stamina and short life. I consider this one of the IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? l6l most important lessons of the Mexican disregard of Sunday. The license of the few is not consistent with the liberty of the many. Rev. Samuel P. Craver, another missionary in Mexico, gives the following picture : " Sunday in Mexico is as far removed from our ideas of the Chris- tian Sabbath as can be imagined. Mass begins at 4 o'clock, or at the latest at 5 A.M., and continues at frequent intervals until noon. This gives a chance for various classes of people to attend to their religious duties before beginning the occupations of the day. The hucksters and market people are the first to attend mass, so that by a very early hour they can have their wares ready for sale. Then follow other classes of people, many of them carrying their baskets with them to church, so as to make their purchases after hearing mass. Some buy first, and carry their effects to the church with them. So at an early hour on Sunday morn- ing the streets are thronged with multitudes coming and going to church, to market, to the stores, many laden with their purchases, others crying their wares about the streets, and all intent on making the Sabbath the great day of the week for buying and selling, arrang- ing business affairs, paying debts and collecting bills, and, in short, doing all sorts of trading that can be de- ferred till that day. The stores of every description drive the most flourishing trade of the week on Sunday forenoon. By noon, or a .little after, dry goods, hard- ware, and most other stores close, leaving the field free for the grocery stores, liquor shops and cigar stores for the rest of the day, and till 10 o'clock at night. Of course liquor flows freely, and by noon or 3 o'clock drunken men and women abound on the back streets and low portions of the town or city. Having trans- 1 62 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. acted most of the business, and attended to spiritual interests in the forenoon, the afternoon and evening are given up to the pursuit of pleasure or entertain- ment, in drives, walks, shows, cock-fights, bull-fights, the ball, and the theatre. Manual labor is generally suspended, but not always. The Romish catechism in general use requires Spaniards and other white peo- ple to abstain from manual labor, but allows the native or Indian population to work if occasion requires it. In short, Sunday is the noisiest, busiest, most un- hallowed day of the week, known more by its noise and business activity than by the cessation of work. There are no laws for the public touching the observ- ance of Sunday, or, if they exist, they are never heard of. The Romish Church does nothing to promote the sanctification of the day, but, on the contrary, favors in many ways its desecration. Frequently, in building churches, the priests will call out the laboring classes on Sunday to carry stone, lime, sand, and other materials for construction, leading the gangs of bur- dened men and women with bands of music. In no sense does the Romish Church contribute essentially to the moral elevation of this people, but is doing much to sink them lower in degradation and vice." The Continental Sunday has been fully imported by South America 38 also, and the following letter from Rev. A. M. Merwin, missionary in Chili, will show what changes such an import would make with us in toil and trade, in morality and religion : " The general disregard of the Lord's-day on the west coast of South America is most painfully apparent. The police records in all the large cities show that the Sabbath is the day of all the week most noted for drunkenness and crime. It is the day usually chosen for elections, IS THE SABBATH IiMPERILED? 163 bull-fights, and horse-races. The theatres are open ; gatherings for secular purposes are frequent ; the markets do the most thriving business ; many retail stores are open at least half the day; the small grocery and liquor shops never close their doors until midnight ; the dancing houses are filled with noisy crowds ; and where railways are found, additional trains are made up for the accommodation of excursion- ists. Yet in some places there is apparently some re- gard for the observance of the Lord's-day. The majority of the people abstain from active labor, and appear in holiday attire. In the forenoon the churches are pretty well attended, mostly by women, who spend half an hour at mass. A few of the most conscientious Romanists will not go to a theatre on the Sabbath, and I have known several who endeavored to spend the day in a truly Christian manner and spirit. One rarely meets, however, with such examples. Great laxity is permitted by the priests. In Lima, for instance, priests are often seen on Sunday nights at the theatres, and sometimes with persons of low character. I know, however, of a Chilian priest, who, after a visit to the United States, protested against Sabbath desecration in his own country. " As to the observance of the Lord's-day by foreign- ers on the west coast, there is much to be deprecated as well as much to commend. Many Protestants, after a short residence on the coast, become indifferent to the obligations of the Sabbath, especially in the numerous ports where there are no evangelical services. Base- ball, cricket, lawn-tennis, card-playing, and other amusements are the order of the day among Anglo- Saxons in some localities. The Germans are still 164 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. more indifferent. They have some churches in their colony in the South of Chili, but even there they make the Sabbath a day of worldly pleasure, rather than of worship and spiritual improvement. In Valparaiso there was, some years ago, a German con- gregation of about one hundred persons, whose public service was held at 10 A.M. This hour interfered with the plans of many who wished to spend most of the day in the country. An earlier hour was appointed, but this was found too inconvenient. The congrega- tion dwindled away, until it was thought best to give up Sabbath services altogether, and the church edifice was sold to our Chilian Protestant congregation. Perhaps in this case the fault was more that of the clergyman, who was a rationalistic preacher, than of the people. Some of the more serious-minded Ger- mans have lately gathered for worship under the guid- ance of a more spiritual leader, and others are con- nected with the Union Church, where services are held in English. The Scotch, mostly Presbyterians, are, as a class, more scrupulous about the observance of the Sunday than are other foreigners on the west coast. This is especially so in Valparaiso and Santi- ago, where they form the majority of Protestant church-goers. Among these you will find men who will not become stockholders in establishments where unnecessary work is done on the Lord's-day ; young men who have resigned lucrative situations rather than violate the Sabbath ; prosperous business-men at work in the Sabbath-schools ; Christian families where the children are made to feel that the Sabbath is a delight ; and workingmen who count it a privilege to visit the sanctuary on the first day of the week. " The Protestant Chilians who have been gathered IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 165 into three or four churches by the missionaries of the Presbyterian Board have some difficulty in compre- hending the full weight of the commandment, ' Re- member the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.' Yet, on the whole, their observance of the day is commend- able. Some have given up good employments, rather than transgress the commandment. Others close their stores while rivals do a thriving business. Men and women patiently bear the sneers of relations and friends who would have them join in worldly festivities on that day, and some come from a long distance to attend Divine service in the Lord's house. " On the whole, you can form some idea of the condi- tion of affairs on the west coast of South America with regard to the Sabbath question, when you remember that among the ten or twelve millions of the people, Romanism of the worst type is the dominant religion, and that there are not more than a dozen Protestant congregations, most of them in Chili, and the majority quite small — only these to lift up the standard in favor of the observance of the day so honored by the Great Head of the Church, so necessary for the development of Christian character and the spread of the truth, and of such vital importance to the welfare of the nations. The outlook would be more hopeful if the leading men in those republics would adopt the following sentiment uttered in my hearing by a promi- nent Chilian journalist, ' Your Christian Sabbath is needed here to check this tide of materialism, infidel- ity, and superstition.' But is there any real danger that the Continental Sunday will invade Great Britain or the United States ? It has invaded the United States, and partly capt- 166 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. ured Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, San Francisco, and large country districts also in the south-west and north-west. California may be said to have the full-fledged Continental Sunday. The description of her Sundays given in a recent number of The Nineteenth Century is erroneous in three sen- tences out of five. It was favorable regardless of facts. Says A. T. Pierson, D.D. : " In California pleasure runs riot on Sunday, and there also is the American hot-bed of communism. No other state has had a Kearney or a Kalloch, and the very atmosphere is foul with lying, blasphemy and perjury. The foundations of the family are loosened ; conjugal in- fidelity is winked at as a common and venial offence ; gambling is so fashionable that fortunes won or lost by practices that mark a blackleg imply little or no disgrace. The shamelessness of vice at noon-day on the Sabbath, and on public thoroughfares, would have seemed becoming only in Sodom and Pompeii, and calls down similar judgments from Heaven. This was the impression made on me by weeks of obser- vation, especially in Sacramento and San Francisco, and confirmed by the testimony of some of * the best citizens on the Pacific coast. Has all this low state of social morality nothing to do with the disregard of God's Holy Day ? The decay of Sabbath observ- ance began in pleasure-seeking, in a disposition to turn at least a part of the day to the ends of worldly amusement. Then, in justification of this, a sufficient ground was sought either in the abrogation of the Sabbath altogether as a Jewish institution, or on the plea of the necessity of a day of diversion for the sake especially of the working classes. Then open infidel sentiment began the assault on the Sabbath as a relic IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 167 of superstition, insisting that all religious restraint is tyrannical and intolerant, and in the name of liberty demanding that there be no distinction between the days of the week, that every man has the right to do as he will, whether in business or pleasure, on Sun- day. " So the law was first neglected and then re- pealed. Rev. Dr. Cuyler, of Brooklyn, N. Y., writing from San Francisco, says : " By actual examination there are only 45,000 church-goers, both Protestant and Catholic, out of a population of 350,000." The editor of The Daily Times, of Watertown, N. Y., who is not at all a special advocate of Sabbath observance, found the sensibilities even of a secular journalist shocked by the convivial and commercial character of the California Sunday. He writes : " People who were very orthodox East are very liberal here. They do not consider that there is any harm in visiting friends and acquaintances. A great many retail stores are kept open, so that purchases can be made as well upon Sunday as upon a week day. A billiard saloon at the hotel at which I stopped in Los Angeles was open Sunday evening, and the crowd in attend- ance would have made a very respectable congregation in almost any church." A San Francisco minister says : " In many parts of California many businesses, otherwise honorable, have been impossible to Chris- tians because of Sunday work." Even the anti-Sab- bath San Francisco Chronicle admits that " a great offence against the proper observance of Sunday is made by the processions which march through the streets with bands playing martial airs.". This is declared to be "a nuisance which ought not to be tolerated, as it is offensive to many people, and cer- tainly does no one any good." l68 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. But this cyclone of Sabbath desecration is not ravag- ing California alone. Rev. D-. C. Leonard, of Salt Lake City, writes me that there is no Sunday in the mining districts, that the Mormons spend Sunday after the Continental fashion, in visiting, riding, and hunt- ing—the mission Sabbath-schools being well attended * ' when the weather and going are bad. ' ' A gentleman of Denver, Colorado, writes me that some business places of every kind are open on the Sabbath. The same is true of many Western cities, which have reached the third stage of the Continental Sunday — Holy Day, holiday, working day. One Sunday when there was a spasm of law enforcement in St. Louis, persons were arrested in connection with 786 business establishments, including 12 manufactories, all of which were requiring men to work illegally and unnecessarily in a very Continental fashion. When sensualism captures the Sabbath any- where, selfish industrialism soon hastens to share the spoils. A Dakota missionary writes: ' ' The hardest mat- ter we have had to overcome is the desecration of the Sabbath. People will hunt, and it is difficult to keep the stores shut. I find it so hard to establish anything like a religious sentiment and to hold on to the boys. The year has not been what I had hoped. The people have been so worldly-minded, that to keep up the reg- ular meetings is about all that we have accomplished." In not a few Western States and territories, Sunday is already a day for fishing, hunting, visiting, ball-play- ing, and marketing — a working day to thousands, and a demoralizing holiday to many more. Within a few years the Continental Sunday has made great headway in Chicago. A little effort by earn- est men might have mended the broken levee, when IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? v 1 69 the leak began, but now the city is flooded with both commercial and convivial Sabbath desecration. The Union Signal, in 1884, thus described the downward movement : M Nearly thirty years ago the perform- ance of a sacred drama on a Sunday evening threw the virtuous city into a fever, which in its course worked off the virus of the miasma. Ten years ago the low theatres and concert halls began to open slyly, then to illuminate their entrances, then to entice by the music of orchestras, and now nearly every theatre in the city, high-toned and low toned, flaunts its Sun- day performances in the newspapers, and makes the street approaches brilliant with electric lights and alluring with music. It goes without saying that every rum and beer shop is open, front door and back door. Grocery and provision stores drive a brisk trade on Sunday morning, side by side with the barber, the newsdealer, and the butcher, and for several weeks past the paving of an important thoroughfare has gone on seven days in the week, unchecked by civil authority or Christian sentiment. Good people, wake up ! or else for your long sleeping you will not even recognize, nor hear the voice of the angel who may in God's mercy be sent to warn you to depart from this Sodom." A distinguished New England preacher published not long since the following testimony : " I was in Chicago in July, occupying the pulpit of the Second Presbyterian Church for three Sundays. The First Presbyterian Church is within a hundred yards. Other influential churches are in that immediate neighborhood. But the whole of them together are not strong enough to prevent the opening of a huge beer hall and garden close to their very doors. This, be it remarked, in what is considered the most respect- I70 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. able part of the city, where some of the wealthiest Chicago merchants live. This beer hall and garden is open every day of the week, but it seems to be par- ticularly open on Sundays. On the Sunday in July to which I refer, it seemed to have a patronage far in excess of the most popular churches. And ' if these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? ' If they be done in the very teeth of the most influential religious men of the city, what will they do in those populous parts where the poorer men and women congregate, and from whence too often churches emigrate?" Rev. J. C. Armstrong, Superintendent of the Chicago City Missions, writes thus of the present Chicago Sun- day : " The great business houses are closed, but very many smaller ones are open. I see people carrying, packages of various sizes and shapes from dry-goods stores,but more frequently from grocery stores and meat markets. Squads of men repair our streets, lay gas pipes, etc. Some stone and brick are drawn, and some building is done. Beer gardens flourish like green bay trees, and the blame for this is due to a mayor in whose bonnet a large bee buzzes. Let a beer-garden procession start for Gehenna, and he is ready to honor it by his presence. The way he has stooped — no, crawled — to conquer, is pitiful." Arthur Little, D.D., President of the Chicago Sab- bath Association, gives a similar description of the Chicago of to-day, in a recent sermon : " I have no time to paint the monochromatic picture — all black — of Sunday desecration- — all the theatres open in the evening, and many of them in the afternoon — all the four thousand saloons, unable to destroy bodies and souls enough during six days and nights, demanding the IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 171 privilege, in defiance of law, of keeping open all day Sunday — the most of the multiplied railroads running their trains — the great daily newspapers issuing their largest edition, both as to bulk and numbers — proces- sions, civic, military, religious, socialistic, and avowedly for pleasure, with noisy bands of music disturbing those who desire to worship God, or be quiet in their own homes — excursion boats and trains in the summer, and parks and groves thronged with pleasure-seekers — avenues thronged with those riding for pleasure — socialistic and communistic gatherings in conspiracy against the existing order of society — and, quite as alarming as anything else, the amazing apathy of those who in their hearts revere and honor the day." In Chicago, as in San Francisco, New Orleans, Cin- cinnati, and St. Louis, Sunday is the weekly carnival of crime. Even in the Eastern States, the recent encroach- ments of traffic, especially in liquor, and of amuse- ments, especially Sunday excursions and Sunday con- certs, upon the rest and religiousness of the American Sabbath, have been very serious. One of the most no- torious of these was the transfer, in 1884, of the Wed- nesday and Saturday afternoon concerts in Central Park to Sabbath afternoon, by the Park Board, when there had been no general demand for such a change ; without even a petition for a transfer of the concerts, from workingmen or others ; without giving citizens who were conscientiously opposed to having their taxes used to support Sunday concerts a chance to be heard. This action, by which two concerts were taken away from the Sabbath-keeping people, to give one to Sabbath-breakers, at public expense — a use of public money as inconsistent with religious liberty as if it I ?2 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. had been used to hire a band of preachers to instruct the park crowds in Sabbath-keeping, instead of being used to hire a band to " shoot a breach into the bul- wark of American Sunday observance" (as the Staats Zeitung described it) — was unanimously commended by the Sabbath-breaking newspapers of New York, but as unanimously condemned by nearly all others, as ille- gal, 22 unfair and unsafe. The affair was a concession to the German idea of Sunday observance, wrought in German fashion, by the monarchical edict of the un- American Park Commissioners. Instead of being ^re- sistance to "the intolerance of a very small fraction of the population," it was a manifestation of just that — the intolerance of a few, who would not wait to hear the voice of the people. The Christian Union wisely suggested that " in seeking a remedy for such an evil, a negative protest would usually be less effective than a positive petition, for instance, in this case, for the restoration of the Saturday concerts, reciting that by the early-closing movement a large proportion of workingmen and women have Saturday afternoon free; that without notice or opportunity for discussion, they suddenly find themselves deprived of their Saturday afternoon music, and they therefore request that it be re-established." To this might be added reasons why the Sunday concerts should be discontinued. Similar concerts are given on the Sabbath in Bos- ton, and are being plotted for in Brooklyn and other cities. Let workingmen be warned that behind these Sunday bands the Continental Sunday is marching upon them, bringing Continental toil, Continental wages, Continental homes, Continental morals, Conti- nental "liberty" (?). The Sunday concerts in New York were followed IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 73 up, on October 12th, 1884, with a new inducement to Sabbath-breaking — the reduction of the Sunday fares and the increase of the trains on the elevated railroads, of which The Independent said : " The reduction adds another to the already numerous temptations to the masses to use the Sabbath as a day of frolic and dissi- pation. Those who want to preserve some vestige of the Sabbath of our fathers need to be active and watchful." The van of the Continental Sunday has even invaded New England, chiefly in the form of Sunday excur- sions, which are demoralizing the rural districts as well as the cities. One fact is ominously representative of New England's progress (?) in this matter. Clark's Island, near Plymouth Rock, the island where the Pilgrims shivered through their first Sabbath on shore, because they would not work on that day, even to shelter themselves, now resounds with Sunday sports. Twenty-five per cent of the population of Massachu- setts is foreign, and as many more are their children, so that the New England Sabbath is already in almost even-handed conflict with the Continental Sunday. It is often assumed, in defence of Sunday excur- sions, that they carry the degraded of the cities away from their bottles. Nay, they carry their bottles with them, and find more on the picnic grounds as readily as in the lowest city streets ; and not only so, they carry the hellish- uproar of the city haunts with them, and compel the quiet residents of their country resorts to share it. New England's Sabbaths will not much longer be her pride if these law-defying country excursions are allowed to continue their baleful educa- tion in lawlessness and immorality. The labor of the Continental Sunday, as well as its 174 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. •amusements, is beginning to appear in the United States. A rapidly- increasing number of workingmen and tradesmen, connected with railroads, saloons, newspapers, mails, expresses and cabs, confectioners, tobacconists, butchers, bakers, grocers, barbers, etc., are being robbed of their God-given right to the Sab- bath of rest, and so prepared by overwork and lack of moral culture for vice and revolution. In approaching Great Britain the Continental Sun- day puts its best foot forward — the request for the Sunday opening of museums, not so much that work- ingmen may get in, as that the Continental Sunday may get in. Even in Scotland and Canada the prow at least of the Continental Sunday has touched the shores in the Sunday trains, Sunday mails and Sunday excursions. It will be instructive to seek the origin of this Con- tinental Sunday which threatens the English-speaking nations. Such a study will show us that the Continental Sunday may reach us by Parliaments and pulpits as well as by museums and excursions. This Continental Sunday of to-day, with all its toil and turmoil, may be traced back to two "small foun- tains, one religious and the other political, which have each a warning for us. Constantine, 278 in the first Sunday law enacted in Europe, allowed the farmers to work on Sunday, and to make it their market day, thus permitting both Sunday work and Sunday trade, on a limited scale, which prepared the way for both on an unlimited scale — warning law-makers of to-day that only strict Sun- day laws will avail to protect workingmen against the tyranny of capital. IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 75 The other fountain of the Continental Sunday is the hazy view of the Sabbath held by Luther, 111 who, in the heat and hurry of his reaction against Romish festivals, too much confused the Sabbath with them, and at times seemed to deny its Divine author- ity. 926 He said: "Keep the Sabbath holy for its use both to body and soul ; but if anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's sake, if any- where any one sets up its observance upon a Jew- ish foundation, then I order you to work oh it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do anything that shall remove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty." In another place he says : " No day is better or more excellent than another. Some one day, at least, must be selected in each week for attention to these matters [worship and instruction], and, seeing that those who preceded us choose the Lord's-day for them, this harmless and admitted custom must not be readily changed. Our objects in retaining it are the securing of unanimity and consent of arrangement, and the avoidance of the general confusion which would result from individual and unnecessary innovation." If any are disposed to think Luther an almost apostolic authority on the Lord's-day, they would do well to recall his views of the Lord's Supper, which are rejected by most of the Americans and Englishmen who quote his views on the Sabbath as very weighty. It is not fair to expect noonday light in the early morning. Luther's views about the Sabbath are not any more weighty than his confessedly erroneous opinion that the Epistle of James was " an epistle of straw." It is strange, too, that those who claim the sanction of Luther's great name for the Continental Sunday have not noted his t?6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. condemnation of spending holy days in " idleness, drinking, gambling, by which God is more sinned against on holy days than on any others." In the letter to the German Emperor, in which this condem- nation of rioting on Sundays and holy days occurs, he says : " Let holidays be abolished and Sunday only be kept." He urged a sober, reverent, thoughtful, wor- shipful Sunday, but he put behind it, in place of the Pope's authority, not God's, but only utility, and so unconsciously prepared the way for the Continental Sunday. Calvin 772 uttered sentiments on the Sabbath similar to those of Luther, and, strange to say, those who con- demn him most bitterly for the death of Servetus, and repudiate altogether his theological system, quote him as an almost inspired authority in his careless state- ments about Sunday recreation. His mistaken words, with similar ones from Melanchthon, Tyndale, 39 and other religious leaders, 11 have caused many of their followers to deem it no sacrilege to spend in business or amusement a day whose sacredness they ascribe to nothing more than custom and the Church. We all need to use the prayer of Leighton, " to be delivered from the errors of wise men, yea, of good men." The few who advocate such views to-day as "advanced thought" are really four hundred years behind the times, groping in the twilight of Protes- tantism's early errors, which the Scotch, English, and American churches long ago left behind. The only reason that the American and the English echoes of Luther do not produce a Continental Sunday in their own lands, is that no one of them is a Protestant pope," whose opinions are received as the law of the land. IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 77 The Rev. W. H. Havergal finds the roots of the Ger- man Continental Sunday in the following facts, which are closely connected with those just mentioned : ' The decalogue is kept out of sight, and rarely comes within hearing. In neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic churches is any transcript of the Ten Commandments to be seen. Occasionally a copper- plate ornamental copy is hung on the wall in a Roman Catholic house, but then the version of the command- ments is false and treacherous, the second command- ment being altogether omitted, and the fourth abbre- viated to ' Remember the festivals.' Thus is Jehovah insulted by the omission of all allusion to His own day, and thus are the people brought to regard the festivals of the church in the same light as the Sabbath. The people even call a church holiday ■ Sunday.' For instance, they say, ' There will be no market on next Tuesday, because it is Sunday.' Thus, by bringing down the Lord's-day to a mere holiday, and elevating the mere holiday into a Sunday, the people are in- duced to spend all alike." God's law is broken to honor man's. History proves that a Sunday urged on ecclesiastical and humanitarian grounds alone, even when embodied in civil law, is powerless to halt unregenerated selfish- ness, even in its work and trade, for one day in seven. Only the Divine " Thou shalt" awaking the " I ought" of human conscience can enforce even the rest of the Sabbath, and make civil laws effective in- its protection. The dykes that protect our Sabbath against the seas of selfishness and infidelity, are : First and outermost, Sabbath laws ; second, an awakened public conscience ; - 178 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. third and innermost, clear views in the church. The workingmen of England recognize the danger of allow- ing even small breaks in these dykes, as is shown by their repeated petitions against the Sunday opening of museums. They see that secularizing the day would open the way for breaking down, first, its sacredness, and, second, its protected rest. Putting the implications of this petition with other facts to which I have referred, we have four unanswer- able arguments against the Sunday opening of libraries, museums, and art galleries in Great Britain and the United States 535 — the present point of attack of those who have made Sabbath-breaking a science, with organized societies 40 to make way for the Continental Sunday. (1) The workingmen neither ask for Sunday opening where it does not exist, nor do they use it to any large degree where it is already in vogue. In England an earnest canvass of workingmen's societies was made in 1883 by the friends of Sunday opening, and also by its opponents, each seeking the approving votes and signatures of workingmen's organizations. The result was : Against Sunday opening, 2412 organizations, with 501,705 members. For Sunday opening, 62 organizations, with 45,482 members. Of nine cities in England where the question of Sunday opening was voted on in 1883 and 1884 — workingmen in every case being the majority — only one city voted for it to eight against. Repeated canvasses have yielded similar results. Nine tenths of the workingmen of England not only do not want Sunday opening, but are opposed to it. Earl Cairns has very appropriately called attention to the fact that it is in the House of Commons, which IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 79 directly represents British workingmen, that resolu- tions for Sunday opening have been five times defeated by overwhelming majorities, while it is the House of Lords, less intimately familiar with the wishes of the laboring classes, that has almost passed such resolu- tions. It is all too evident that the House of Lords did not give the stronger vote for opening because it is in closer sympathy with the people r but rather because it has larger sympathy with the Continental Sunday. Mr. Charles Hill, Secretary of the Working Men's Lord's-day Rest Association, and others, have been to many of the English meetings in favor of Sunday open- ing, and have found a large proportion of the audience wearing eye-glasses, which are surely not the badges of workingmen. These idlers, not content with six days of play, want the museums opened on Sunday for their own amusement, but prudently ask it in the name of workingmen. If these pleasure-seekers but knew their own needs they would agree with that citizen of Paisley who responded to a circular asking what Sun- day amusements the people of that town indulged in, " We have amusements enough on week-days, and on Sunday are glad of a rest." In the words of another : " The amusement market is completely glutted ; it is one of the greatest industries of the country. The daily and other newspapers contain column after column devoted to advertising and reporting the recreations of the people on six days a week. Yet it is said that six days are not enough; the seventh and every day must be swallowed up by amusements. " It is an omen of a nation's degeneracy when its men and women deem ''one moment uriamused a misery," and devote their leisure to child's play rather than to self- improvement and helpfulness. l8o THE SABBATH FOR MAN. That Sunday opening does not prevail in the United States is itself proof that the workingmen do not want it. About all the Sunday opening that now exists is that of the reading-rooms of a few city libraries. 41 The principal art galleries and museums are not open. Doubtless the majority against Sunday opening in the United States is somewhat smaller than in England, on account of the large Continental element in the population ; but even in the United States, as in Eng- land, it is chiefly the aristocratic patrons of the work- ingmen, some impelled by infidelity and some by philanthropy, who have unequally yoked themselves together to thrust this undesired medicine upon the workingmen, of whom they understand neither the wishes nor the needs. Most of the projects for Sunday amusements that are defended as boons for the workingmen originated as money-making schemes, which have no more right to use the Sabbath for gain than other business estab- lishments. It is Dives' greed more than Lazarus' need that originates Sunday shows and excursions. ' The Sabbath was made for man," cries the Sunday show- man, but he means, "for money." If a majority of workingmen in any land should desire Sunday opening, it would not be a valid argu- ment for granting it, any more than the unwise desires of the French, German, and Irish peasants are a sufficient reason for breaking down other national safe- guards ; but as this is the chief argument of those who appeal for Sunday opening, it is appropriate to show that not only their conclusion but their very premises are inaccurate. This leads to the other fact that the workingmen not Only do not want Sunday doses of museums and fine IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? l8l arts, but will not take the medicine even when their kid-gloved patronizers have provided it for them. When the Academy of Design in New York was open for a Sabbath that the workingmen might, by their admittance fees, help on the fund for the harbor statue of French liberty, The New York Tribune (Dec. 24, 1883) said of those who came : " If the visitors were working people in the accepted sense of, the term, the working people of New York dress much better than is generally supposed, and know much more about art than they get credit for. Moreover, they hardly seem to be in crying need of Sunday privileges of this kind." Rev. Carlos Martyn, in a sermon reported in The New York Herald of Oct. 6th, 1884, says that when the Mercantile and Cooper Union 4 * libraries were opened in 1882, they were speedily closed, " because it was discovered that the reading-rooms had become lounging-places for bummers and tramps." Charles H. Payne, D.D., when a pastor in Philadel- phia a few years ago, said, in a published address : " The plan of Sunday opening has been tried in this city for two years in the Mercantile Library, under the most favorable circumstances it could hope for in any locality. It has been largely quoted in other cities as eminently successful. I have taken pains to investigate the case, and am informed by the officers of the institution, who have the best opportunity of knowing the facts, that, instead of bringing in the homeless, neglected ones, probably nine tenths of all who visit the rooms on Sunday come there from com- fortable homes. If we could know the exact facts I doubt not we should find that more are drawn into the libraries from the churches than from the streets." In England two of the institutions opened — those at 1 82 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Maidstone and Keswick — have been closed because they had become rendezvous for flirting young people rather than for working people, and the Sunday attendance on the six libraries of Manchester has fallen, as stated by Dr. Begg at Edinburgh, to an average of 407 each per Sunday, most of them being boys and girls occupied with looking at picture papers. Dr. Begg said truly that the workingmen " wish for something more pungent than a museum in their malobservance of the Sabbath.'' In a special plea for the Sunday opening of art galleries, museums, and libraries, by William Rossiter, which was pub- lished in the Nineteenth Century, June, 1884, in which nearly all such institutions which open on the Sabbath in any part of the world are referred to, with a description of their Sunday visitors, it is not even claimed that the so-called laboring classes use them even to a moderate degree, except in five places — Bucharest, Berlin, Bordeaux, Christiania and Genoa. In regard to other places where Sunday opening pre- vails, such admissions as the following are made : "The poorer classes do not attend them." 'The artisan class, but not the laboring class, use them to some extent." " Not much attended by artisans." " The number of artisan visitors is small." " Not used to any extent by the artisan or poorer classes." It is not claimed that these institutions are well attended, even by artisans, except in Brussels, Flor- ence, and Naples. It is admitted that laborers and artisans in most places prefer parks and beer gardens for their Sunday recreations. Those workingmen who do care to see an art gallery or museum — and none but special students care to visit one more than a few times — can spare an IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 183 evening, now and then, from the saloon or theatre, or use a Saturday half holiday, or the regular holidays, or the unoccupied days between jobs. As to libraries, those who care to read are the very ones who can make time to get their books and papers before Sun- day. The wisest method by which to give work- ingmen more time for self-culture is to work for the Saturday half holiday and " early closing," both of which reforms are delayed by agitations for Sunday opening. (2) A yet more weighty answer to those who would win men away from Sunday vices by Sunday opening of art galleries, and by Sunday concerts, is the fact that on the Continent, where such openings have been common for centuries, neither Italian sculpture, nor German music, nor French painting have checked the ever-rising tide of Continental vice any more than Mrs. Partington's broom has kept back the sea. The Nihilists and Socialists of the most extreme type, who seek to destroy all religion and morality as much as they seek to destroy social distinctions, who are atheists and advocates of the grossest sensuality, are found in the very towns where art galleries, music halls, and theatres are open on the Sabbath. In almost every art gallery and museum on either side the sea there is more to stimulate animal passions in the uncultivated, than to antidote them. Even in the best American art galleries there are pictures fit only for the walls of Pompeii — pictures that, so far from elevating character, can be seen without risk only by adults who are fortified in virtue. Dr. Gritton, of London, says of the moral influence of Sunday opening : " Without Sunday museums and art galleries to work reformation, we are becoming 184 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. steadily and markedly more temperate as a nation. With all the supposed advantages of art collections on the Sunday, drunkenness is growing quickly and dangerously in Belgium, Italy, France, Switzerland, Holland, and Germany. We need not trace this grow- ing drunkenness to the influence of pictures or statuary on the Sunday ; it is sufficient to assert that pictures and statuary have not prevented its increase, nor cured it where it prevails." Dr. William M. Taylor says on this theme : " All this talk about the refining efficacy of art is a bit of the ' cant' of ' culture,' which is as disgusting as the cant which claims to be religious. It is withal positively ludicrous to any man who knows what Athens was morally in the very heyday of its artistic excellence, or who has studied the history of Rome under Nero, of Italy under the Pontificate of Leo X., or of France under Louis XIV. If the originals did so little in the refining line, the fragments and copies of them in our museums will do less." 43 Of like import are the words of Mr. Hugh Mason, M.P. : "When the picture galleries in Manchester were opened for certain hours on Sunday, during that very period the apprehensions for drunkenness on Sunday were not fewer, but decidedly more numerous. Just as the places of amusement on the week days and evenings do not lessen drunkenness or empty the liquor shops ; just as on the holidays, with every amusement in full play, the liquor-sellers reap their richest harvest ; so would it be on the Sunday if it was filled with similar amusements." Why should it be supposed that a Sunday band will make others cease from beer, when it does not have that effect even upon the musical ar- tists themselves ? A similar query might be applied to artists of other kinds. IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 185 It would be amusing, if it were not so sad, to hear men who are old enough to know something of human nature, talking as if those who are thirsting for ale would be glad to take doses of art in its place. The staple argument for Sunday opening, that it displaces a greater evil by allowing a lesser one, needs only to be carried out to the full to be wrecked in its own absurdity. If Sunday opening of art galleries and Sunday picnics can be defended on the ground that it is better that men should be at these than in liquor shops, the same rule would justify Sunday theatres, ball games, and even Sunday races, while Sunday liquor-selling itself could be justified by the same spurious reasoning on the ground that the bar is better than the brothel ; or a manufacturer could justify himself for keeping his men at work seven days per week, on the ground that it was better for them to work Sunday than to drink away their health and money in Sunday sprees. Of two wrongs choose — neither. (3) But the chief and sufficient reason why working- men and Christians alike oppose the Sunday opening of museums and art galleries and Sunday concerts, is that such opening is the thin edge of the Continental Sunday, by which, if we consent, the rest and religious- ness of the Sabbath are both to be split to pieces. 44 ^The London Times (June 9th, 1877) says: "To open these institutions on a Sunday, by a formal Parliamentary vote, must of necessity have an exten- sive reflex effect. Where is the line to be drawn be- tween public and private exhibitions, between galleries and theatres, for instance ? In point of fact, in the parallel cases abroad, the line is not drawn, and we may be quite sure that if drawn in this country, it 1 86 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. would not be maintained. We should make a com- plete breach in the defences which now protect the Sunday as a day of rest, and should have definitely abandoned our general rule. Once throw open, by resolution of the House of Commons, all national museums and picture galleries on Sunday, and it is hard to see what institutions, public or private, w*e could insist on closing." The proposal to open museums and picture galleries on the Sabbath calls up what Balak said to Balaam, whom he could not persuade to curse the Israelites as a whole, and so urged to curse a small portion of them, in the hope that the curse might spread from that portion to the whole. " Come with me," he said, " and I will show thee a small part of them. It may be that thou wilt curse me them." It has been truly said by William Arthur : " The barrier between a day of rest and religion, and one of drudgery and dissipation, is only the sacredness of the day. Man's rights rest upon God's rights ; the repose of the Sunday on the religion of the Sabbath. De- stroy that in England, then the physical toil and the moral pest of the French Sunday will at once invade the nation. From the rough hodman to the accom- plished editor, the sacredness of the day is the laborer s only shield" Of like tenor are the words of the Duke of Argyle : " We know that there is a large portion of the artisan class who are not attached to any particular church, and who have no strong or definite theological opinions. Nevertheless, you will find among them the greatest possible jealousy as to all those notions tending to the alteration of the Christian Sunday. What is this instinct founded upon ? It is the feeling, perfectly well founded, that when you break down the IS THE SABBATH IMPERILED? 1 8/ religious sanction of the day, the legal sanction would be broken also. Reference has been made to the way in which Sunday is spent in other countries. In South Germany, the other day, I was much struck by the fact that works of construction were carried on as exten- sively on Sunday as on other days, and the scaffolding outside one of the finest churches was occupied with men who were at work on the building. The working classes of this country feel that if the regard for Sunday were broken down in one respect, it would be broken down in others. I think this is a well-founded jealousy." Rev. E. H; Shepherd has thus vividly pictured the work of the wedge of which Sunday opening is the thin edge : " You have but to intro- duce the Continental Sunday to establish among us the Continental home. You have but to get rid of the English Sunday, to blot the old English word home out of our vocabulary. Throw open, then, if you will, our museums and picture galleries on a Sunday after- noon, and, in the end, you will find that the true English home is to be found only in there presentations of the ' old masters ' which adorn the walls." 43 We shall never save men from breaking the Sixth and Seventh Commandments by joining them in break- ing the Fourth. When the ardent color-bearer outran his company in charging a hostile fortess, and his captain cried, " Bring back the colors to the com- pany," he replied, " Bring up the company to the colors." We are not to drag the Sabbath down to the level of the Sabbath-breakers, but by laws, leaflets, sermons, conversations, lead them to understand and appreciate the obligation and advantages of the Sab- bath of rest. "Sunday Afternoons" in "Society." — From four different sources testimony comes as to the increasing desecration of the Sabbath by the habit of devoting its afternoon and evening to social pleasures. Rev. Dr. T. W. Hamlin, of Washington, President Harrison's pastor, declared in a Sabbath convention in 1890, that he considered the habit of devoting Sabbath afternoons to social pleasures the most serious peril which then threatened the Sabbath. He men- tioned the fact that several fashionable families in Washington had boldly announced Sunday receptions, while others, more quietly, in increasing numbers, received their friends in the afternoon and gave Sunday teas, thus driving out the American Sabbath and introducing the Continental Sunday in the very Capital itself. Rev. Dr. John Hall has publicly lamented the increase of Sunday evening parties among fashionable people of the Metropolis. Mrs. Sangster, whose position as the editor of Harper s Bazar makes her an authority in this matter, also deplores the fact that even Christian women apolo- gize for, and participate in, these Sunday evening gayeties, which cannot fail to make an ever-widening breach in the wall that protects the Rest Day. An incidental confirmation of these three utterances came unconsciously in the answer of a dealer in bric-a-brac, who, being inquired of as to what is wanted of decorators, replied that "among the things that are most asked for just now are novelties for Sunday evening teas." These social pleasures on the Sabbath in the home of the rich are hostile to the whole spirit of the day, not only from a Christian, but even from the humane, standpoint ; for they open the way for the poor, who have no handsome parlors and attractive music, to demand the saloon and the Sunday theatre. This Sunday pleasuring of " society" is a bad case of Anglomania. At the very time when we are getting so much horrible evidence that the so-called " nobility" of England needs the moral culture of well- kept Sabbaths to improve reputation and character, they are multi- plying Sunday parties, at which theatrical performances, smoking concerts, comic recitations, exhibitions of jugglery, billiards, coach drives, lawn-tennis, boxing, and dancing turn the Lord's Day into a day of labor and revelry. Even the St. James Gazette (April 18, 1889), which is by no means Puritanic, is driven to the following pro- test : " Purely selfish amusements, which exact the labor of others, are more inexcusable on Sunday than on any day of the week. The silly and empty-headed ostentation often displayed in the so-called upper circles cannot be denounced too strongly. ' Society' — if one must use the word — might do far more than the Church ever can in this matter, by setting the example of wholesome, rational relaxation on Sundays. The utter absence of right feeling and good taste among people who might be looked to for refinement is nowhere more apparent than in the Sunday diversions of the rich and ' smart.' " Washington and New York " society" has not yet caught up with the lustful, drunken lords of London in this assault upon the Sabbath, but it is on the same road, and there is no logical stopping place between a Sunday dinner party and a Sunday dance or drama. The so-called Christians who sanction these Sunday parties are the super- latives of hypocrisy. The Sabbath More than a Holiday. — Those who believe in a Sunday observance have no desire to impose by law their belief on others. They have no desire to compel reluctant fellow-citizens to make it a day of worship and attend church services with them ; but neither, on the other hand, we are persuaded, are they content to de- mand for it only the recognition accorded to a holiday. They expect the law to recognize in the Sabbath something more than a legal holiday, and in our judgment this expectation is an entirely just one. Sentiment is a somewhat impalpable thing, yet the law does practically take cognizance of sentiment, and it does so rightfully. Our Fourth of July is a witness to the sentiment of patriotism and an undying love of liberty. We do not ask that the monarchist who happens to be with us should be required to join in the procession, listen to the oration, or hurrah at the fireworks. But, however little sympathy he may have with free institutions, if he makes his home in America, he must respect not only those institutions, but the public sentiment which makes them possible and the public day which symbolizes that sentiment. . . . Now, Sunday is the greatest symbol in our national life, grander than any cathedral, than any creed ; it interposes its hush in the midst of the week's busy babel ; it silences the clanging factory bell and substitutes the church chimes ; it turns the key on marauding cares, converts the market-place into a cloister, and bears its sacred and eloquently silent witness to the Divine in man, and man's conscious need of the divinity above and about him. No one imagines for a moment that the sentiment thus sacredly symbolized can be forced into human souls by legislation. We have gone a long way past that epoch of folly. But, on the other hand, we are not content with a legislation which merely protects the laborer's right to his rest day ; we demand, and we have a right to demand, a legal recognition of this common if not universal senti- ment. We demand, and we have a right to demand that those who do not share it shall at least not obtrude discord upon those who desire it. As a foreigner landing on our shores on the Fourth of July would find in its changed activities an evidence of national patriotism, or on Decoration Day a witness to the value which it sets on self-sacrifice and' heroism, so in the very silence of the Sabbath he perceives a witness to the esteem in which the Nation holds the moral and the spiritual life. For that life he may have no esteem. However much we may pity his intellectual poverty, we shall not condemn jt and seek to punish it as a crime ; but he must not so embody his contempt for that which the great mass of the American people hold sacred, as by his very act to destroy the day which symbolizes, and so the sentiment which is symbolized. . . . Modern political economy holds that the community has a right to act as a unit ; to determine that public health, wealth, and welfare de- mand one day in seven for rest and the higher life ; and, determining that, to determine that all the industry of the community shall be so Adjusted that this end may be secured. — Christian Union, The Earliest Law Against vagran- cy : against cruelty to animals : in favor of aliens : in favor of work- ingmen : Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest ; that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy maid- servant and the foreigner may draw breath — that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. — Ex. 23 : 12 ; Deut. 5 : 14. The first settlers of this country were a body of select men. They were profoundly impressed by the conviction that a weekly Sabbath was essential to the highest welfare of the communities which they established, and they therefore enacted laws to enforce a proper observance of that day. It was not more upon theological considera- tions than it was upon secular and social that they framed those laws, and enforced strict obedience to them. The Sabbath so observed, no one can doubt, contributed largely to the formation of that character which has stood us in so much stead in our own history, and which has been the admiration of the world. — Hon. William Strong, Justice of the United States Supreme Court.™ The stability and character of our country and the advancement of our race depends, I believe, very largely upon the mode in which the Day of Rest, which seems to have been specially adapted to the needs of mankind, shall be used and observed. — John Bright. I am no fanatic, I hope, as to Sunday ; but I look abroad over the map of popular freedom in the world, and it does not seem to me accidental that Switzerland, Scotland, England, and the United States, the countries which best observe Sunday, constitute almost the entire map of safe popular government. — Joseph Cook, in the Christian Union. The crisis has come. By the people of this generation, by our- selves, probably, the amazing question is to be decided whether the inheritance of our fathers shall be preserved or thrown away ; whether our Sabbaths shall be a delight or a loathing ; whether the taverns on that day shall be crowded with drunkards, or the sanctuary of God with humble worshipers. — Lyman Beecher, Sermon of Oct. 27th, 1813, on Reformation in Morals, ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? An intelligent workingman of foreign birth tells me that the conception of liberty which is generally, though not universally, held in the steerage of the ocean steamers that ply between European monarchies and the American republic, is, that one can do what- ever he pleases in " the Land of the Free." Only the intelligent emigrants realize that personal liberty is bounded on every side, like a circle, by the liberties of others, and that personal rights can not eclipse society rights. To the ignorant, liberty is an un- fenced prairie of license and lawlessness. They do not realize that every person must everywhere have a cer- tain amount of government for the protection of society, and that he must choose whether he will be governed from within himself or from without. Every one who is not self-governed by inward integrity and equity must be governed by the outward restraints of civil law, for the protection of others, in a republic as surely as elsewhere. The difference between a monarchy and a republic is chiefly that in the former one man or a few men put these outward restraints upon those who are not self-restrained, while in the latter it is the everybody who knows more than any- body who makes and enforces these legislative rules of conduct. I92 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. On the steps of a certain city hall I once saw this sign : Gentlemen will not, and others must not loaf on these steps. Civil law is simply the expression of what just men will not, and others must not do. The man who has no will to do ill is free, because such laws bring him no restraint. Love to man is in him the fulfilling of the law. He never seeks to break down his neighbor's fences, and so never finds them in his way. The man who is enslaved to selfishness and vice con- stantly encounters the outward restraints of law, and so can not be free anywhere. Coming to a republic changes the form, but does not lessen the degree of his bondage. If in Europe he was degraded by des- potism, here he is in peril of self-degradation by the abuse of liberty. Among the colored people of the Southern States there is said to be rnore of drunken- ness and Sabbath-breaking than in the .days of slavery. Liberty is a gain, but it has its perils. Many Ger- mans who were never intoxicated or arrested in Ger- many in a score of years, have both experiences in their first year of American freedom. Being their own master puts them under a worse ruler than Bismarck. A large degree of freedom is not safe for children, large or small. Even a republican government is com- pelled to parent such of its people as are not capable of self-government, until they have learned the art. False ideas of liberty made Lucifer and his followers ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? I 93 into devils, and caused them to be exiled from Heaven for their lawlessness ; and false ideas of liberty have made many native and foreign devils in the United States. ' That central truth of statecraft, liberty under authority, imperatively calls for reaffirmation."™ The Puritan fathers of America sought its shores through love o.f liberty, but a large number of the emi- grants of to-day make the same voyage through love of license and lawlessness. 46 The warden of the Sing Sing Prison once said to me : " The first thing that prisoners have to learn here is obedience. The lack of that brings them here." The first thing that emigrants of the baser sort need to learn on arrival in America is that American liberty includes obedience to the laws which protect the rights and liberties of all. Nowhere is a statue of " Liberty enlightening the world" more appropriate than in New York harbor. It is well that those emigrants who. have false ideas of liberty are re- minded in the very harbor of America that their liber- ties are bounded on one side by laws for the protection of the public health. No one is at liberty to land until the health officers of the harbor have ascertained whether there is any contagious disease on the vessel on which he has arrived. If there is, each passenger must surrender his liberty to land for the general good and wait at Quarantine. The public takes " the right to dictate how he shall spend the day," for its own preservation. Having settled in America, emigrants are soon re- minded that even in " the Land of the Free" they are not at liberty to keep their children in ignorance, be- cause that endangers the life of the nation, by fostering corruption, both moral and political, and so compulsory education again limits their personal liberties, that the 194 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. liberties of their children and of their neighbors may. not be destroyed, and that crime may be prevented. ■ If an emigrant attempts to open a lottery he is re- minded that he is not at liberty to do so, because gambling has been found to be an indirect form of robbery, and one of the demoralizing influences that endanger the very existence of society. If one of the emigrants be a Tuik, he finds that he is not at liberty to keep a polygamous harem in his own home, because it has been found that monogamy is necessary to the preservation of pure homes and of national virtue. On the 4th of July and the 22d of February, although he has no interest in American history, his business liberties are abridged in the matter of paying notes, making bank deposits, using the courts and public offices, bylaws appointing these holidays for the culture of patriotism. No one argues that it is incon- sistent with liberty to thus close the court-houses, " be- cause, being national property, the people (who are the owners), should be able to enter at any time they desire, in any number" — an argument for the Sunday opening of national museums in England, whose fal- lacy at once appears when otherwise applied. All reasonable men consider the laws that protect public health, compel elementary education, forbid gambling, protect the home, and set apart special holidays, not as barbed fences to limit liberty, but rather as its bulwarks. Sabbath laws belong to this same class of protective legislation, as they too have close relations to health, education, morality, home virtue, and patriotism. At first thought they would seem to be religious laws. Men who have not had the culture of thoughtful Sab- ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 1 95 baths, and so have acquired little of either religious or intellectual discrimination, charge that Sabbath laws are inconsistent with the American theory of separat- ing Church and State, and especially inconsistent with liberty, as if Americans, reared in the atmosphere of freedom, had been self-deceived into enslaving them- selves by Sabbath laws, and so needed lessons in liberty from the emigrants of to-day. Whether strict Sabbaths are consistent with liberty or not, holiday Sabbaths have certainly been found consistent with despotism. If, as the emigrant in- structors in the science of freedom declare, only law- less Sundays are consistent with civil liberty, how does it happen that in such an absolute government as Russia, and in so restrictive an empire as Germany, such Sundays can be had without stint ? On this point Hugh Miller 47 says aptly :." The old despotic Stuarts were tolerable adepts in the art of kingcraft, and knew well what they were doing when they backed with their authority the Book of Sports. The merry, un- thinking serfs, who, early in the reign of Charles the First, danced on Sabbaths round the Maypole, were afterward the ready tools of despotism, and fought that England might be enslaved. The Ironsides,- who, in the cause of religious freedom, bore them down, were staunch Sabbatarians." Hallam says that European despotic rulers have cultivated a love of pastime on Sundays, in order that the people might be more quiet under political distresses. America was founded by men who rebelled against these Sundays of despotism and the devil — " The pilgrim bands who crossed the sea to keep Their Sabbaths in the eye of God alone, In His wide temple of the wilderness." 48 lg6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. It is too much forgotten that the New England found- ers of the American republic came to its shores chiefly because they knew there was no hope of freedom where the Sabbath was a holiday. 49 It is bad for the argument for unrestrained Sabbaths in the name of liberty that nations which have had such Sabbaths never have had safe and abiding liberty. If any one replies, " France has a Continental Sun- day and a republican government," I answer, Yes, but it is a republic good for this day only. A very able correspondent writes from Paris to a London paper: "There is a widespread feeling of uneasiness, in Paris especially, which nothing can allay. Not that people apprehend immediate trouble, but they feel that though the republic is established, it offers no security for the future. Consequently there is a disinclination to embark upon new commercial and industrial enterprises, and the hoped-for revival of business is still to come." When Sabbathless France indulges in a spasm of popular government it is usually in the strange form of a despotic republic, a million-headed Nero 50 bearing the torch of arson and the dagger of murder through its own streets, and prosecuting foreign wars so unjust as to call down upon itself, as no Sabbath-keeping republic ever did, the imprecations of mankind. The outcry against Sabbath laws as inconsistent with liberty is generally based on the false idea that they are laws for the enforcement of religion : at- tempts to make men religious by law. This is not so at all. There is a religious Sabbath and a civil Sabbath. It is only witJi t lie latter that the civil laiv has to do. The Sabbath was established in rjart to teach man his duty to God ; hence the command, ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? I97 " Remember the Sabbath day to keep it /wfy." This theological part of the Sabbath the civil government leaves to the churches. But the Sabbath has also im- portant bearings upon the relations of man to man, expressed in its commands about work and rest. The Sabbath is found to be of advantage to public health, to public education, to the checking of crime, to the preservation of the home and the nation, and therefore Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws, which the majority of the people consider necessary to their nat ional self-preservation. "Sahts populi suprema lex. The issue is not, Shall we adopt the Sinaitic Sab- bath ? It has been observed for thousands of years. Christian nations have adopted the day into their laws and customs. It has been thoroughly tried and proved. Those who seek to ostracize such a Sabbath from Great Britain and the United States will have to show that in its practical workings, as tested in history, it has proved a disadvantage. "It is not to be dispossessed by showing some flaw in the arguments of its defenders. Nothing will persuade practical people in a practical age to give up the Sab- bath, except to show that it has not worked well. Those who would banish the Sabbath are many of them actuated by motives similar to those of the corrupt Athenians who ostracized Aristides because they dis- liked to hear him called " the Just." Men whose days are notoriously unholy do hot like to hear the laws and bells so often speak of a ' ' holy day. ' ' Sabbath bells, ex- cept those at unseasonable hours, disturb none but un- easy consciences. The people will not give up the Sab- bath simply because a few loud infidels hate it. They ask of those who would crucify the day, " What evil 198 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. hath it done ?' ' They must be shown that the practical fruits of the day are evil before they will cut it down. While it yields such wholesome fruit as rest, health, order, morality, liberty, they will say, not in tones of entreaty but of command, to -any one who lifts his axe against it, " Woodman, spare that tree." Its wholesome fruits, its advantages to individuals, families, and nations, in physical, mental, moral life, will be brought out incidentally in showing how Sab- bath laws are consistent with liberty. 1. Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty, in their lower phases, in the same way as other taws for the pre- vention of cruelty to animals. When God proclaimed the law of the Sabbath, He gave as one of the reasons, " that thine ox and thine ass may rest. " The same reason, whether expressed or not, enters into modern Sabbath laws. It is cruelty to working animals to refuse them their natural right to rest one day in seven. It is a significant fact in this con- nection, that Sabbath laws, in so far as they require a man to rest his horses and cattle on the Sabbath, in- flict upon him no financial loss, but rather bring bene- fit to him as well as to his animals. 61 It has been abundantly proved by many experiments and much reliable testimony that horses will accomplish a long journey more quickly by traveling six days in the week than if they travel seven. Often in the journeyings of emigrants to the Western States in their " prairie schooners," the Sabbath-resting horses, in fine condi- tion, have at last passed the jaded horses of their Sab- bath-breaking neighbors who started with them. At a hotel in Pennsylvania, a man who had arrived the evening before was asked on Sabbath morning ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? I99 whether he intended to pursue his journey on that day. He answered, " No, because I am on a long journey and wish to perform it as soon as I can. I have long been accustomed to travel on horseback, and have found that if I stop on the Sabbath my horse will travel farther during the week than if I do not." Bianconi, the great Irish car proprietor, who owned fourteen hundred horses, would never employ them on the Sabbath. ' No one of his cars ran on the Day of Rest. He began life as a poor organ-grinder, but by his reverent observance of the Sabbath he M got on." As the result of his enormous experience, he said : "I can work a horse eight miles a day for six days in the week much better than I can six miles a day for seven days a week. By not working on Sun- days I save at least twelve per cent." 52 An anti-Sab- bath convention, 793 held in Boston in 1840, although it opposed all Sabbath laws, nevertheless admitted in its address that " a day of rest from bodily toil, both for man and beast, is not only desirable but indispen- sable." A farmer in East Lothian, Scotland, one Saturday evening overheard his ploughman say, when he thought no one was present, as he removed the harness from one of his team, " God be thanked, beast, that there's a Sabbath for you and me." Sabbath laws, then, are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws for the prevention of cruelty to animals. 2. Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws for the protection of the public health. In a letter from the wife of the late Dr. Willard Parker, written a few days before his death, she says : " I know that it was his opinion that men and animals 200 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. could do more good work in six days than in seven, and that in his practice the men who had paralysis and broke down early were those who carried home their books and business letters for Sunday." # A few years before Dr. Parker himself wrote : " The Sabbath must be observed as a day of rest. This I do not state as an opinion, but knowing that it has its foundation upon a law in man's nature as fixed as that he must take food or die." Dr. Henry Foster, of Clifton Springs, N. Y., writes me (1884) : "It is a law of God, established in our physical constitution, that demands rest as often as one day in seven. Any infringement upon that law weakens the constitution and lowers the physical and moral tone "of the being." Dr. J. S. Jewell, of Chicago, an eminent specialist on nervous diseases, testifies in regard to those who engage in secular employments seven days in the week, that " in almost alt cases physical health has suffered, and morals also. " Dr. Edmund Andrews, another of Chicago's foremost physicians, gives substantially the same testimony, and also Dr. N. S. Davis, who was president of the International Medical Congress at Philadelphia in 1876. Dr. W. S. Hall says : " The highest perfection of physical being can best be obtained by a strict observ- ance of the letter of the commandment uniting bodily rest and relaxation with religious services. If there was no Sabbath, it is very clear that the poor would not live as long as they do now." Dr. John Richard Farre, 514 of London, in his famous testimony before a committee of the British Parliament, appointed to in- vestigate the relations of the Sabbath to health and morals, 702 in 1832, said, among other things : " The ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 201 ordinary exertions of man run down the circulation 'every day of his life, and the first law of nature, by which God (who is not only the giver, but is also the preserver of life) prevents man from destroying him- self, is the alternating of day with night, that repose may succeed action. But although the night ap- parently equalizes the circulation well, yet it does not sufficiently restore its balance for the attainment of a long life. Hence, one day in seven, by the bounty of Providence, is thrown in as a day of compensation, to perfect by its repose the animal system." 511 Dr. Farre's words call up the fact that lack of ade- quate rest is becoming a serious peril to the general health in large American cities. Even at night there is little quiet, and that is cut off at both ends. If young people will keep on courting until midnight, let them at least stop their love songs at the piano at honest bed-time, lest they make hate outside while they are making love within. " Can a man be a Chris- tian and belong to a brass band ?" asked a correspond- ent of an editor, who replied, " Yes, but his neigh- bors can't." Families in almost every block thought- lessly proclaim their shiftlessness by regularly splitting their kindling at unseemly hours of the morning, which is shortly followed by the milkmen's war-whoops : then those who wish to go to mass or factory early, instead of having a private alarm-clock, are called-by bells and whistles that wake up everybody in the neighborhood, sick or well. When to these daily subtractions from nature's legitimate rations of rest, Sundays of exciting business or pleasure are added, it is no wonder that health of body and mind soon sur- renders to the almost ceaseless bombardment. It is said of one of the early Lord Treasurers of 202 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. England, Sir William Cecil, that when he retired for his night's sleep, after the business of the day, he would throw off his gown of office, and say, " Lie there, Lord Treasurer !" as bidding adieu to all state affairs, that he might the more quietly repose himself. Never was it so necessary to physical and mental health as in this rushing century, that men should say each week- night, and with double emphasis on Saturday night, as they lay down the daily pen, or plane, or pleasures, Lie there, busy world, while I take my God-appointed rest. ' We would not question a law intended to protect the opportunity and the right to sleep. That other law, which require^ that one seventh of the time shall be a rest for the body and the soul, is just as much a part of our nature, and it is so recognized by the universal concession of the world." 817 Scores of testimonies might be given from the most eminent physicians, proving beyond question that those who keep the Sabbath, as a class, are more healthy and longer-lived than those who do not. A prize essay 931 by Dr. Paul Niemeyer, professor of hygiene in Leipsic University, on " Sunday Rest from a Sanitary Point of View" (1876), has attracted much attention. It mentions the striking fact, confirmed by Dr. Richardson, of London, in his " Diseases of Mod- ern Life," that the average life of Jews, who are strict Sabbatarians, is ten years longer than that of the Christian population of Continental Europe, few of whom make use of the. Day of Rest. This fact about the Jews finds emphasis in the news that, as always before, so in 1884, in Toulon and Marseilles and other places the Jews escaped the ravages of the cholera. Dr. Niemeyer says significantly that if the religionists ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 20J call the Sabbath the Day of God, the hygienist may name it the Day of Man. Dr. Muzzey, of the Ohio Medical College, a close and enlightened observer of nature, affirms : " There can not be a reasonable doubt that under the due observance of the Sabbath, life would, on the average, be pro- longed more than one seventh of its whole period.'* Then Sabbath-breaking is slow suicide. The Specta- tor, speaking of the people of India, in an article on industry, which had no religious purpose, makes these two statements : " They take no weekly holiday. They wear themselves out too -early." In 1853, six hundred and forty-one medical men of London, in a petition to Parliament against the opening of the Crystal Palace on the Sabbath for profit, said : " Your petitioners, from their acquaintance with the laboring classes and with the laws which regulate the human economy, are convinced that a seventh day of rest, in- stituted by God and coeval with the existence of man, is essential to the bodily health and mental vigor of man in every station of life." In connection with the testimony of physicians, the suggestive fact should be mentioned that health is im- proved by a cessation of one's " usual occupation" on the Sabbath, even when that " usual occupation" is taking medicine or treatment for a chronic disease. Dr. S. E. Strong, of Strong's Remedial Institute, Saratoga, writes: "In our own and in some other sanitariums, the routine of treatment in the cure of various chronic diseases in omitted on the Sabbath day, to the physical advantage of the invalid and the hastening of his cure. Monotony breaks down the human system, and regular rest is imperative." To these testimonies of physicians I may appro- 204 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. priately add the words of Alexander von Humboldt, who has left little if any evidence that he had any interest in revealed religion, but who recorded his scientific testimony to the sanitary value of the Sab- bath in a letter to a friend in 1850, in which he said : " However it may seem to lie, and in one respect really may lie, within the power of fhe will to shorten or lengthen the usual period of labor, still I am satis- fied that the six days are the really true, fit, and adequate measure of time for work, whether as re- spects the physical strength of man or his perseverance in a uniform occupation. There is also something humane in the arrangement by which those animals which assist man in his work enjoy rest along with him. To lengthen beyond the. proper measure the periods of returning repose, would be as inhuman as it would be foolish. An example of this occurred within my own experience. When I was in Paris during the time of the Revolution, it happened that, without re- gard to the divine institution, this appointment was made to give way to the dry, wretched decimal sys- tem. Every tenth day was directed to be observed as the Sunday, and all ordinary business went on for nine days in succession. When it became distinctly evident that this was far too much, many kept holi- day on the Sunday also, as far as the police laws al- lowed, and so arose on the other hand too much lei- sure. In this way one always oscillates between two extremes, so soon as one leaves the regular and or- dained middle path." 53 To the same effect is the tes- timony of the eminent French political economist, Michel Chevalier : " Let us observe Sunday in the name of hygiene, if not in the name of religion." In 1883-84 six of the United States passed laws re- ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 205 quiring teachers in public schools to teach hygiene, with special reference to the effects of alcohol and tobacco. Teachers should also explain the relations of Sabbath laws to the preservation of health, to pre- vent their being as much misunderstood and neglected in the next generation as in this. That such teaching is needed also in England is evident from the statement of the Lancet (March, 1883), that there has arisen a new school of specialists, who treat the numerous diseases of overwork, and find abundant practice, as might be expected when so many, by getting Sunday mails or Sunday papers, if not by going to their offices, refuse themselves a rest- ful change of thought even on the Sabbath. Brain as well as brawn needs the tonic of Sabbath rest. At one time it was thought that Sir Robert Peel's health could not stand the heavy cares laid upon him as Prime Minister of Great Britian. The Standard re- plied : " Sir Robert does not work seven days in the week — full assurance that his work will not impair his health. Every Sunday finds him on his knees at pub- lic worship, with his family about him. We never knew a man to work seven days in the week who did not kill himself or kill his mind. We believe that 'the dull English Sunday,' as it is stigmatized by fribbles and by fools, is the principal cause of the su- perior health and longevity of the English people." Sir Robert Peel himself said : " I never knew a man to escape failure, in either body or mind, who worked seven days in the week." You are thinking of another Prime Minister, the foremost man of all the world to-day. You wonder how he can bear the burdens laid upon him. The Standard's answer for Sir Robert Peel answers our 2o6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. anxiety about Gladstone, who says of the Sabbath : " Believing in the authority of the Lord's-day as a religious institution, I must, as a matter of course, desire the recognition of that authority by others. But over and above this, I have myself, in the course of a laborious life, signally experienced both its men- tal and physical benefits. I can hardly overstate its value in this view, and for the interest of the work- ingmen of this country, alike in these and in other yet higher respects, there is nothing I more anxiously de- sire than that they should more and more highly ap- preciate the Christian Day of Rest." As the Iowa farmer who hung in his melon patch the sign, " Boys, don't touch these melons, for they are green, and God sees you," presented a double- barreled argument, in order that those who would not feel the higher argument might at least be reached by the lower one ; so all forms of secular excitement on the Sabbath, whether commercial or convivial, stand condemned not only as displeasing God, but also as unhealthy for man. That the public health requires the people shall rest one day in seven is admitted even by infidels ; but some of them would not make this law of health com- pulsory, and put it among the civil health laws, l?ut leave it to be arranged by moral suasion and general agreement, as if it had not been overwhelmingly proved by experiment that " the right of rest for each requires a law of rest for all." Leonard W. Bacon, D.D., reminds us that " This principle gets its liveliest illustration when, from time to time, some one of those vocations which the general convenience allows to be excepted from the general law of Sabbath rest, seeks to be included ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 207 within the law. Repeatedly, for instance, there have been memorials from all the barbers of a town, asking to have their own shops shut by law. Very absurd, isn't it ? If they want their shops shut, why don't they shut them ? This was the view taken by one enter- prising young colored man in a Connecticut town long ago. There was a movement among his competitors in the profession to have all the barbers' shops shut on Sunday. ' All. right,' he said ; ' you go right on and shut your shops. Nevermind me.' And so all the shops had to be kept open. Another illustration of a like character comes to me from a similar quarter. A coal dealer near a certain steamboat landing finds that in the competitions of business his Sabbath rest has been completely taken away from him. All the little tugs and propellers find that they can get their coal put in on Sunday, and so they come Sunday in preference to any other day. Says he : ' I don't so much as get time to go to early mass, and I am compelled to keep busy from morning till night. I can't refuse them, for if I do, they will quit me altogether, and I shall lose my business. / wish to heaven that some one zvould prosecute me.' A clearer illustration of the value of rest for all, in securing the liberty of rest for each, can hardly be asked for, than this case of a man who wants to be prosecuted himself in order to be protected from the necessity of doing what he does not want to do, but has to do because he is at liberty to do it." 54 Few have the courage to keep the Sabbath at the peril of business losses, and so " the liberty of rest for each depends upon a law of rest for all." No law, no day. Laws requiring that the people shall rest on the Sabbath from the exciting pursuit of gain and amuse- 208 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. ment are, then, consistent with liberty in the same way as other health laws. Common justice requires that if some are required to cease their work for gain, all should do so, except those whose works are clearly those of necessity or mercy. No one claims that the doctor should be for- bidden to do his work on the Sabbath, since it is in part the same as the work of the Sabbath itself, to minister to the public health. Ought the manager of Sunday excursions to be exempted on the same grounds ? Are Sunday excursions arranged by pro- prietors and patrons as water-cures and sun-baths ? One might fairly suspect that something else than rest and health are the real objects of Sunday excur- sions, when the largest excursion to Coney Island in the year 1884 was not from the unhealthy slums of New York City, but from the country districts of Pennsylva- nia, of which excursion 2000 spent the Sunday in New York City ; and when so many of the Sunday excur- sionists in every State are either country people or city folks in good health, many of them already overdosed with rest. Not rest and health, but money- making and excitement are evidently the chief motives of Sunday excursionists. It is money that makes the excursion go. It is the love of a " racket" that makes the young men go. What it is that draws some re- spectable ladies and old men into such law-breaking expeditions is a conundrum I leave others to answer. A local paper, quoted by The Congregationalist \ re- ports that a certain steamer was obliged to make several extra trips one Sabbath, to accommodate the crowds going to a seaside resort to partake of a free clam-bake. It is not surprising to turn the page and count one suicide, three clubbing affrays, and several ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 209 arrests for drunkenness among the four thousand in- habitants of that little town. The Nezv York Sun, notwithstanding its very lax views of Sunday amuse- ments, published the following editorial statement on Sunday excursions, in September, 1884, after one of these excursions had resulted in riot, robbery, and murder : " Every Sunday from twelve to twenty such excursions start, and many of them become a terror to waterside settlements. It is not often that any one is killed at them, but riotous conduct is not infrequent." And yet, the editor of The Sun and many others •would tolerate the excursions, with all their lawless- ness, on the theory that they afford healthful rest to working people. But are these Sunday excursions restful or health- ful ? . I have received written answers from about one hundred and fifty persons, many of them manufact- urers, to the following question : In your observation of clerks, mechanics, and other employees, which class are in the best physical and mental condition for the renewal of business on Monday mornings, those who are church-goers, or those who spend the Sabbaths in picnics and other pleasures ? The general answer is, " Church-goers." One busi- ness man says : " Leaving rum out of the question, I can not say that I have ever noticed any difference that would warrant such a classification." But how few Sunday pleasurists " leave rum out" ! Here are some other answers : A New York man, who has been an employer of about two hundred men for many years, says : ' The church-goers are worth twenty-five per cent more on an average." A German pastor says : ' Those who spend Sunday in picnics, etc., usually 210 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. require all of Monday to ' get over ' Sunday's ' recrea- tion,' and are all the worse for it. The other class resume work in good trim." Hon. Darwin R. James, M.C., of Brooklyn, who has had abundant opportuni- ties for observation in this matter as a business man, as the superintendent of a mission Sabbath-school, and as a Congressman, says : " The Sabbath observers and church-goers, whether laborers, mechanics, mer- chants, or professional men, are in far better con- dition to enter upon work on Monday morning than those who spent Sunday in pleasures, even of a com- paratively innocent kind. The ordinances of God's house tend to physical as well as moral improve- ment." Another answers : "Church-goers. Their conscience is void of offence. Their mental peace and comfort imparts increased power and endurance to the physical system." " Many workingmen have told me," says a worker for their moral improvement, "that a short, practical sermon rests them. Picnics are tiresome to both parents and children. But our people who work in shops must spend Sunday after- noon largely in the open air." ' The church-goers," says Dr. J. E. Rankin, " are as fresh as larks, while the pleasure-goers have aches in the head, heart, and home, and so come into the week all out of breath." Says another : " Church-goers can be rec- ognized in a crowd — clean, healthy, prosperous." Mr. Clem. Studebaker, the famous wagon manufact- urer, says : " My observation is that clerks and mechanics who spend their Sabbaths in church and Sabbath-school work are the best fitted for the duties of the office or shop on the Monday morning." Col. Franklin Fairbanks, one of the manufacturers of the Standard Scales, says : " Those who attend ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 211 church and Sunday-school on Sunday are the most valuable in our business. I can tell the difference be- tween them and others by their work in the shop." Scores of manufacturers and merchants, on both sides of the sea, agree that " those who go to church on Sunday are best fitted to go to work on Monday." The Christian Union, whose theory of Sabbath observance is by no means strict, after giving an ac- curate report of one of the most orderly of Sunday ex- cursions, makes this editorial comment : " We leave this photograph to produce its own impression on our readers. But if it produces on their minds the same impression which it has produced on ours, it will tend to the conviction that there is more fancy than fact in the popular plea for Sunday excursions — viz. that they afford the wearied workingmen and their wives and children an opportunity to commune with nature, and * look up through nature to nature's God,' etc., etc., and that, on the whole, the clerks and working girls who do not go to Coney Island on Sunday will come back Monday to their toil more refreshed and better fitted for it than those who do. As to the spiritual results of such a day as our correspondent describes, there can hardly be two opinions about it." Hugh Miller, the learned workingman, thus de- scribes a crowd of Sunday excursionists just leaving the train by which they had returned from the country to the city : " There did not seem to be much of enjoyment about the wearied and somewhat draggled groups ; they wore, on the contrary, rather an un- happy physiognomy, as if they had missed spending the day quite to their minds, and were now returning, sad and disappointed, to the round of toil, from which it ought to have proved a sweet interval of relief. A 212 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. congregation just dismissed from hearing a vigorous evening discourse would have borne to a certainty a more cheerful air. Among the existing varieties cfl the genus philanthropist — benevolent men bent on better- ing the condition of the masses — there is a variety who would fain send out our working people to the country on Sabbaths, to become happy and innocent in smelling primroses and stringing daisies on grass stalks. An excellent scheme theirs, if they but knew it, for sinking a people into ignorance and brutality, for filling a country with gloomy workhouses, and the workhouses with unhappy paupers. The mere animal, that has to pass six days of the week in hard labor, benefits greatly by a seventh day of mere animal rest and enjoyment : the repose according to its nature proves of signal use to it, just because it is repose according to its nature. But man is not a mere animal ; what is best for the ox and the ass is not best for him ; and in order to degrade him into a poor unintellectual slave, over whom tyranny in its caprice may trample roughshod, it is but necessary to tie him down, animal-like, during his six working days, to hard, engrossing labor, and to convert the Sabbath into a day of frivolous, unthinking relaxa- tion." 47 In the agitation for the Sunday closing of liquor shops in England, one of the arguments put forward for keeping them open on Sunday was that Sunday excursionists were found to be so wearied by their day's pleasure as to need the help of stimulants. So far from resting the weary workingman from his week's toil, Sunday excursions make an " idle Mon- day" necessary to rest him from his " pleasure exer- tions" of the previous day. Sunday picnickers are not got the is not for the of the ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 213 only worn out on Monday, but disgusted also that they have emptied their pockets of Saturday wages for no satisfactory return. A fashion of speech in some quarters, when referring to the workman who does not appear on a Monday morning, is, " He's Monday blight." The real " blue Monday" that of the minister, 53 who has worked hard good of others on the Sabbath, but that picnickers, who have worked more exhaustively in try- ing to recreate themselves by forbidden amusements. Sunday excursions, then, cannot fairly be exempted, either in the enactment or enforcement of the Sabbath laws of health, which require the cessation of all work for gain, save works of necessity or mercy. Although I am now dealing only with the relation of Sunday excursions to health, the whole indictment against them may appropriately be summarized here. Why should Sunday excursions be suppressed ? I. Because they rob one class of workmen of their Sabbath rest to minister to the lawless pleasure of oth- ers. 2. Because such excursions, as a matter of fact, are fruitful in disorder, vice, and crime. 3. Because such excursions invade the Sabbath quiet and the morality of the places to which they go. 56 4. Because they secularize the Sabbath, and, by breaking down its reverence, prepare the way to break down its rest. 5. Because, especially, such ways of spending the Sab- bath have, in Europe, proved themselves favorable to despotism, by keeping the people in perpetual childhood, incapable of self-government for lack of mental and moral manhood, such as thoughtful Sab- baths would help to produce. Just as New York City, to protect the public health, dumps whole boat-loads of stale fruit into the harbor, 214 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. depriving its owners of their gains, and those to whom they would have sold it of temporary and perilous pleas- ure, so the people in nearly all of the United .States compel themselves to stop business and public amuse- ments on the Sabbath, because a cessation from these for one day in seven has been found necessary to the preservation of the public health. As the United States may legally protect itself against the Continen- tal plague, it may protect itself against the equally unhealthy Continental Sunday. As Chicago prohibits the importation of San Francisco lepers, it should yet more earnestly protect itself against the health- destroying San Francisco Sunday. If there were no other vindication for Sabbath laws, they would be sufficiently justified as consistent with liberty because they are health laws. 3. Other health laws are often carried out at consider- able expense to the State and to the individuals involved, but the Sabbath is medicine without cost ; indeed it in- creases both production and profits, and so is no more inconsistent with liberty than an appropriation bill. Dr. Farre, 514 in his testimony already referred to, showed not only that men who labor but six days in the week will be more healthy and live longer than those who work seven, but also "that they will do more work, and do it in a better manner." Before that same Parliamentary Committee, 792 J. W. Cunningham, Vicar of Harrow, testified as to a public institution which employed more than two thousand laborers. 11 The quantity of work done by the same men under the system of employing them six days of the week was rather more than the labor done on the system of employing them the seven days." A flour mill was ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 21$ once worked without a Sabbath, under an infidel manager. The same mill, with the same men, ground much more during the year under a Sabbath rest. Amos Lawrence, his son tells us, wrote to the agent of a manufactory in which he was largely interested : " We must make a good thing out of this establish- ment, unless you ruin us by working on Sundays. Nothing but works of necessity should be done in holy time, and I am a firm believer in the doctrine that a blessing will more surely follow those exertions which are made with reference to our religious obligations, than those made without such reference. The more you can impress your people with a sense of religious obligation, the better they will serve you." 281 Unwise as it is to interpret every drowning of a Sab- bath-breaker as a special miracle of judgment, as if most of the Sabbath-breakers did not escape accident, and as if ministers did not sometimes fall dead in their pulpits, there is abundant warrant for the belief that Providence blesses the business that is carried on with due regard to the Sabbath and other religious obliga- tions. A correspondent of the California Christian Advo- cate, writing from Stockton, gives this testimony of a mine superintendent : " When I close the mine on Sabbath regularly, I get a better class of workmen, moral and religious. They do as much work in six days as most others d© in seven, take it month in and month out. Then there is no quarrelling, no fighting, no drunkenness. The employes feel an interest in the work. It is money in our pockets to shut down on the Sabbath" Did you ever hear of the meanest of pickpockets ? A man who had but seven dollars, gave him, in his 2l6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. apparent poverty, six of them, and he, watching his opportunity, picked his benefactor's pocket of the seventh. Sabbath-breaker, thou art the man ! God has given you six days for your own interests, to speak your own words, and go your own ways, and think your own thoughts, and then you have turned about and robbed Him of the seventh. But not only that, you have robbed yourself ', your body and mind and pocket as well as your soul. At a meeting in Hastings, England, whose purpose was to check the Sunday work of the fishermen in that place, " a fisherman from New Romney asserted that Sunday fisl ling kept down the price of fish, and that the general interests of the fishing community everywhere would be promoted by Sunday rest from fish-catch- ing." M * The famous radical of France, Louis Blanc, in his vain effort to save the Sabbath law of France, said : " The diminution of the hours of labor does not in- volve any diminution of production. In England a workman produces in fifty-six hours as much as a French workman in seventy-two hours, because his forces are better husbanded." 57 Dr. Guthrie, writing of France and Scotland, says : " It is certain that the foreigner is a much less efficient workman than our laborers, as an English company lately found, who were engaged in constructing a railway in France, and found it»cheaper to carry Eng- lish navvies across the Channel and pay them five shillings a day, than to employ Frenchmen at half the wages."™ It appears, then, that Sabbath rest, so far from re- ducing the productions of a community one seventh, really increases them ; while adding Sunday work to ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 11J that of the six days, so far from increasing produc- tions, lessens them. " By exacting seven days' labor per week one gets less than six days' work." While Sunday work fails to increase the products or profits of the employer, it adds nothing to the wages of the employees." The words of John Stuart Mill have become a Sabbath proverb : " Operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if there were no Sunday rest, seven days' work would have to be given for six days' pay." 69 Paley put the same truth still more strongly, long ago : 4< The addition of the seventh day's labor to that of the other six would have no other effect than to reduce the price. The laborer himself would suffer most and gain nothing, while capital would be proportionately endangered." 60 "A large portion of every population, under the existing circumstances of society, must always be supported upon the minimum of pay. They will be remunerated for their labor by receiving barely what will supply them with food and raiment. This they now receive for six days' work. They would receive no more for seven." 63 We notice the statement that with the first encroach- ment upon the New England Sabbath for business and pleasure, those employed on that day received double pay for their labor. Then the compensation came down to that of other days ; and now the men are generally hired by the month, and get no more than other workmen of the same grade who rest on the Sabbath. Let workingmen choose whether they will do seven days' work for six days' pay, or get seven days' pay for six days' work. They are making this choice when they decide whether they will support or break down the British American Sabbath. 2l8 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. To the direct financial gains of Sabbath-keeping should be added also the pilfering avoided by the cul- ture of conscience which the Sabbath gives to employ- ees ; 62 the doctor's bills saved ; the depreciation of prop- erty prevented. 62 Justice Strong, of the United States Supreme Court, quotes with emphasis the saying, ** There is profound political economy in the question, What would a house and lot be worth in Sodom, with- out a Sabbath, a church, and a preacher ?" 63 He adds : 11 If those things which- engage and engross the atten- tion of the community, whether they be business or pleasure, during six days of the week, are dropped on the seventh, and dropped because it is a Sabbath day, it can hardly be that the thoughts will not be turned upward, and conscience and a sense of moral obligation will not assert their power. The restraining influence of churches and good men will be felt, and more or less control the conduct during the following week. But we need not speculate upon .this subject. Our eyes are better than our speculations. There are unhappy com- munities to be found in our own country where Sunday is not observed as a day of rest for the people, where it is totally disregarded. What is the condition of morals there ? What protection is there given to life, the person, or property ? I verily believe, were our civil laws prescribing observance of Sunday as a day of rest for all our people universally obeyed in their true spirit, life, liberty, and property would be far more secure than they are now." 81 " The following incidents suggest yet other financial gains to both employers and employees from a well- kept Sabbath. A German manufacturer in New York, after a period of vigorous enforcement of the excise law, said that his employees all came to the ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 219 shop early on Monday morning, and in good health and spirits, while before they had been accustomed to come late, half drunk, and unfit for work. He said further that at first they abused the law, but after a time they felt its real benefits, and were contented with it. 64 So will it be elsewhere when German citizens, and others who clamor for unrestrained license on the Sabbath, shall begin to reap the fruits of the whole- some safeguards with which it is proposed to protect their own highest interests. At the same period of real Sunday closing, a German workingman who had been accustomed to spend his Sundays in the beer saloons, finding it difficult to gain acess to his old haunts, quietly accepted the situation, and on being asked on Monday " how he felt," replied, ' Very well ; I have no headache to-day, and no black eyes. I have my pocket full of money, and can comfortably support my family during the week." To this may be added, as a testimony of the same kind on a large scale, an incident recently sent me from Louisville. " A few years ago in a mercantile establishment employing about two hundred persons, male and female, it was found that nearly all spent Sunday in pleasure excursions. Many were thus unfitted , for Monday work, and were absent from their place on Monday. A Christian man in the concern resolved to use individual effort among them. He invited each one to go to church and to Sunday-school, and, unless they had preferences for some other church, cordially urged them to come to his own. At the same time he persuaded the managers to change the time of weekly payment to Monday instead of Saturday evening. Patient perseverance in all this soon told for the Sab- bath, the Gospel, and the temperance cause, and 220 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. financially a success for all concerned. Less money went for Saturday night indulgences, Sunday picnics and concerts ; a better tone of morals pervaded the whole establishment. More conscientious services secured better pay ; comfort came to some neglected homes ; young men and women were won to habits of economy and of religiously spending the Sabbath. Some began the Christian life and are now consistent church members." The familiar fact that Sabbath-keeping and poverty seldom live together is suggested by the reply of Charles Loring Brace, author of " Gesta Christi," and president of the efficient Children's Aid Society of New York City, to the question, " Where have you seen the best Sabbath observance?" He says : "It may be patriotic prejudice, but I think I prefer the New England methods of observing the Sunday to any, in (i) the freedom from labors and cares ; (2), the attention to cleanliness and a neat appearance ; (3) the family sociality and pleasant walks ; (4) the closing of liquor places, and quietness of streets ; (5) most of all, the worship, instruction, thought, and reading ; (6) its blessed charity. I think the Sunday should be, first, for worship and moral stimulation ; second, for charity, aid, and teaching the poor ; third, for quiet family meetings and home life under a Chris- tian feeling." Homes that observe the Sabbath seldom have any relation to aid societies, except as contributors. The penniless are mostly the Sabbathless. These facts prove and illustrate the words of Hon. Carroll D. Wright : " The ethical side of political economy makes it an axiom that where the best moral conditions are to be found, there also is to be found ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 221 the best industrial prosperity. " Well-kept Sabbaths, by improving the moral conditions, advance the indus- trial prosperity. Witness the villages of the Briggs Brothers and of Sir Titus Salt in England, and of the Fairbanks and Cheneys in the United States. It was excusable for Seneca 66 and other pagans of nine- teen centuries ago to charge that the Sabbath, by halting industry, antagonizes national prosperity, but when the pope of American infidelity reissues the pagan slander in the face of British and American history, there is no explanation but demagogism. Rev. George T. Washburn, missionary to India, says on this point : " If Sunday observance is a weight on the national prosperity of a country, then the nations which do not know a Sunday ought in the long run to accumulate far more than the nations that observe the Sabbath and rest from labor one seventh of the time. There are thirty millions in the Madras Presidency. It has been for one hundred years under the English Government, and profound peace has reigned. Thirty million people have had one seventh more time to devote to labor than the people of the United States have had in the same one hundred years, and they ought to have accumulated a vast amount of property more than we. What is the fact ? There is not a non- Sabbath-keeping nation that is not abjectly poor, and in this respect India and the Madras Presidency is no exception. With natural advantages for accumulating wealth as good as we enjoy, the Madras Presidency has not to-day one hundredth part as much fixed capital and floating wealth as the people of the United States, and yet all this latter has been accumulated in the last two hundred and .fifty years, and by far the greater part of it in the last hundred 222 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. years. I believe the Sabbath, and what legitimately springs out of the Biblical Sabbath, may be credited with a large part of the great difference." 'Never perhaps has this great truth that Sunday rest really increases the products and profits of an individ- ual or nation 82 been put more forcibly than by Lord Macaulay, in a speech in the House of Commons in 1846, in favor of the Ten Hour Bill, in which he said : " For my own part, I have not the smallest doubt that if we and our ancestors had, during the last three centuries, worked just as hard on the Sundays as on the week days, we should have been at this moment a poorer people and a less civilized people than we are ; that- there would have been less production than there has been ; that the wages of the laborer would have been lower than they are, and that some other nation would be now making cotton stuffs and cutlery for the whole world. Of course I do not mean to say that a man will not produce more by working seven days than by working six days ; but I very much doubt whether at the end of the year he will generally have produced more by working seven days a week than by working six days a week. . . . We are not poorer, but richer, because we have through many ages rested from our labor one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, is repair- ing and winding up, so that he returns to his labors on ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 223 Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporeal vigor. Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger and healthier and wiser and better can ultimately make it poorer." 66 Lord Macaulay argued that a ten hour law would be no more illegitimate or unprofitable than the six-day law already in force. The argument works both ways. These facts in regard to the financial relations of the Sabbath prove that Sabbath laws are no more incon- sistent with liberty than an appropriation bill. 11 Never regard the Sabbath as a restriction of liberty, an invasion of your time, a sacrifice to be offered, a cross to be borne. No ! it is one of God's best gifts — ' the couch of toil,' the truce of care, the sunshine of home, poverty's birthright, the golden chain let down from Heaven to link men with angels and with God." 67 4. Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in the same way as other educational laws. b2b It is found that ignorance imperils the State by furnishing prepared soil for devils and demagogues. In self-defence and for self-preservation every wise State makes provision for general education. No in- telligent man for a moment thinks of such laws as un- warranted interferences with personal liberty. They involve the very foundation of law— the right of a State to protect its own existence against any peril that threatens it. Ignorance, dangerous in any land, is doubly so to a self-governed people. Rulers must be educated or they will abuse or lose their scepfres. Public-school education reaches only a part of the children, and most of those very imperfectly. Poverty or greed snatch them from the schools when 224 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. they have barely learned enough to count their wages and read their ballots. Evening schools are but a ripple on the ocean of ignorance. All these leave the highest elements of intellectual training untouched. Something more universal is needed to teach all, old and young, how to be useful citizens, faithful husbands and fathers, honest neighbors, all of which is necessary to the preservation of society. The Sabbath meets this want. It is the universal common school of the nation, its mightrest educational agency. The one hundred and ten thousand 68 Protes- tant churches of the United States that hold Sunday services for rich and poor, young and old, are doing more for the mental as well as for the moral culture of the people than any other agency. De Tocqueville said, in contrasting our Sabbat!) with that of France, that it was a matter of no slight importance that our workingmen on the Sabbath wash and put on clean clothes. The act is not only sanitary but educational. As of old, so to-day, outward clean- liness suggests inward purity. It is a mighty educa- tional force to give men one day per week in their homes with their wives and children, the touch of whose gentle virtues they so much need. Men need a day to think of duty, a day for the culture of con- science, a day to climb into the hilltops of their highest capacities. 69 A gentleman walking near a Pennsylvania coal-mine saw a field full of mules. The boy who was with him said : " These are the mules that work all the week down in the mine, but Sunday they have to come up into the light, or else in a little while they go blind." Wherever the people of a nation do not climb up once a week from their convivialities and commer- ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 22$ cialities into the quiet of a Sabbath, into the refining influences of the home and the Church, they remain generation after generation "dumb driven cattle," bli?id mules for despots to ride, because incapable of self- government, verifying the words of Edmund Burke : ' They who always labor can have no true judgment." Sabbath-keeping gives two thirds as much time for mental growth in the course of the year as pupils get in their school-rooms — allowing five hours of schooling per day for nine months, excluding vacations and holidays, and counting thirteen hours of each Sab- bath's twenty-four as the mind's opportunity. In twenty-one years the Sabbath gives to the mind as much time for thought as the studying days of a col- lege course, so that a life of seventy years of well- spent Sabbaths will have afforded one's mind oppor- tunities for improvement equal in time to three college courses. The Sabbath is the workingman's college, and gives him an opportunity to acquire the power which alone can elevate him — more knowledge power. Dynamite will not do it. What workingmen need to do is not to pull down others, but to build up themselves by using the free school of the Sabbath for self-improvement in body, mind, and soul. Professor Sumner, in a strong article on sociological fallacies, says : " A man is good for something only so far as he thinks, knows, tries, or works. If we put a great many men together, those of them who carry on the society will be those who use reflection and forethought, and exercise industry and self-control." 70 The Sabbath-keeping workingmen of a few years ago are many of them the capitalists and leaders of to-day. As Dr. Spring says : " Many a sleeping genius, repos- ing within the curtains of its own unconscious powers, 226 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. has been awakened to hope and action by the instruc- tions of the sanctuary. It were a curious and not unprofitable inquiry to institute, How many well-edu- cated men in Christian lands have received the first impulse and suggestion in their lofty career from the instructions of the Sabbath ?" Blind to these great facts, a Shoe Lasters' Union in Brooklyn, at the publication of the new Penal Code of New York in 1882, adopted a paper which thus describes the Sabbath laws : " We learn with regret that the churches are joining hands with tyranny and capital for the purpose of suppressing liberty and oppressing the laborer" — sentiments representative of many labor organizations, which show that holiday Sundays prevent those who follow them from learning the A B C of political science, and keep them in such ignorance of the true meaning of liberty that they mis- take its champions for oppressors. Even educated men sometimes make the same blunder from infidel prejudices. John Stuart Mill characterizes " Sabbatarian legislation as an illegiti- mate interference with the rightful liberty of the in- dividual," and with strange intellectual perversity affirms that " the only ground on which restrictions on Sunday amusements can be defended must be that they are religiously wrong.'' And yet, in the same treatise, where he deals with " applications" of his principles, we have a vigorous defence of " compul- sory education." He regards it as " almost a self- evident axiom, that the State should require and com- pel the education, up to a certain point, of every human being who is born its citizen." He declares that " the objections which are urged with reason against State education do not apply to the enforce- ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 227 ment of education by the State, but to the State's tak- ing upon itself to direct that education, which is a total- ly different thing." 71 Precisely so is it in respect to what Mill stigmatizes as "Sabbatarian legislation." " The State ought not to give, in the United States the State is prohibited from giving, and from requiring to be given, any distinctive form or species of religious instruction ; but if it can and ought to enforce educa- tion of the intellect, it certainly can and ought at least by legislation to recognize and protect by law from abuse a day which may be set apart for the education of the moral affections." 72 One of the most serious objections to Sunday amusements is that such a use of the Sabbath is an interference with the chief element in the nation's education of its citizens. A German lady who had visited Paris and London on her way to America said to me : " When I reached Paris everything seemed to say, ' Give yourself to pleasure ;' but when 1 reached London it cried out with every stone, ' Think, think, think.' The fact that the French Sunday is childishly given to pleasure by most of the people, and the English Sunday is manfully given to thought by a large portion of the population, explains the mental and moral babyhood of the French people as compared with the English. Unless Great Britain and America wish to exchange true liberty for the communistic counterfeit that abounds in Paris, they should not exchange for the thought- less French Sunday the British-American Sabbath, over whose portals are written, " Think, think, think." As men rest the soil by an exchange of crops, so the man who works with his hands six days in the week will find rest in the change to work with the 228 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. mind and soul on the Sabbath. To those whose daily occupation is thought, the maxim of Sir William Jones is appropriate : " Change of study is recreation enough." There is more real rest in change of thought than in thoughtlessness. Recent statistics show that while the foreigners in the United States, who come mostly from Sabbathless countries, are only one eighth of the population, they furnish one third of the insane, as well as one-third of the paupers and criminals. Thoughtless, revelling Sabbaths give neither mental health nor strength. Sabbath laws, then, are as consistent with liberty as other educational laws. 5. Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws for the conservation of the home, which all such laws recognize as " the unit of society" whose purity is to be guarded because it is essential to the preservation of the State.™ " A peculiar Christian law, you say, justifies Sunday observance in this country. A peculiar Christian law justifies monogamy, and we have lately had a decision from the Supreme Court itself, that polygamy can be opposed under the law of this nation. Monogamy is a distinctively Christian institution ; and if, according to the highest authority known to our courts, we have a right to oppose polygamy and uphold monogamy, we are in that doing something as distinctively Chris- tian as we are when we uphold fair tolerant Sunday laws." So reasons Joseph Cook. It is not accidental that in Eden, as soon as God had established marriage, he fortified it by the institution of the Sabbath. These two earliest and most funda- mental institutions of human society, that come to us ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 229 from the days of man's lost innocence, are to-day the two greatest helps for its restoration, and are still in- separably interlocked in destiny. Only by the help of the home can the Sabbath be perpetuated ; only by the help of the Sabbath can the home be preserved. Who can not see that the Sabbath, by its restf ulness, by its stirring of best thoughts, is calculated to wash away the family discords of the week, between hus- band and wife, between father and son, which other- wise might grow into divorce or disgrace ? Sabbath laws are closely related to laws of marriage and divorce, with which they co-operate in preserving the homes of the land. Unless work and pleasure are legally suspended on one day in each week, so that men will naturally spend that day with their families, of whom many of them see very little at any other time, marriage fails of its highest purposes, and divorces are promoted by the absence that conquers love. There are few divorces in Sabbath-keeping families ; but in France, when the Sabbath was abolished, there was one third as many divorces as marriages. Only good homes can make a strong and enduring nation, and only in Sabbath-keeping countries can such homes be established and continued. Emma Louise Barr says of German homes : " In the general home life we fail to detect any of the marks so familiar in the American Christian home. And all of these are in name Christian homes, for it is a nation of church members. The Bible is seldom seen ; hymns rarely, if ever, sung or played ; family worship unknown. The sewing and knitting and buying and selling are not suspended to hallow the Lord's-day." Professor von Schulte says there is in Germany an 230 * THE SABBATH FOR MAN. entire lack of religious home culture. In 1878, when a bill was before the Imperial Parliament of Germany- providing that, except in cases of necessity, manu- facturers may not compel their workmen to labor on Sundays and festivals (a bill which did not pass), a Jewish Liberal deputy, Dr. Lowe of Berlin, said : "I have had occasion in my career as a physician to visit more tiian nine thousand workmen who worked on Sundays in their shops or at their homes, and I have it on proof that the Sunday labor has the most disas- trous effect. In their homes slovenliness and discord reign / tlie life of the wi7ie shop has supplanted the family life." In every land it is so in Sabbath-breaking homes. At Boston a woman who had been left a widow with four little children said : " I lived ten years with that husband, sir, and I never knew him to have a sober Sunday." The man who breaks the Sabbath breaks up at the same time the peace and purity of his home. " Honor thy father" and " Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy," stood close together in the Law. Why should a man whose example teaches his son to despise the Fourth Commandment expect him to keep the Fifth, which rests on the same authority ? Where the Sabbath is not " remembered," parents are seldom " honored, " and when a boy has learned to break these commands, it is not strange that in many cases he goes on to break others, until Sabbath-break- ing leads to heart-breaking. The mother element in training a family is not enough. The father element is also needed, and this can not be effectually given without a legally-protected Sabbath, the home day of the nation. ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 23 I Biography underscores the words of Chalmers : In every Christian household it will be found that the discipline of a well-ordered Sabbath is never forgotten among the other lessons of a Christian education." Even in families that are not religious, the Sabbath is an ally of harmony and of conscience, when it cen- tres, not around the saloon, but the home. 6. Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws which are enacted for the mutual protection of capitalists a?id laborers.™* Even the infidel legislators of France, after repeal- ing the Sabbath laws in 1880, found it necessary to require employers to allow working-women and working-children one day in seven for rest, although they refused to specify the Sabbath as the day for such protected rest, or to include working men. Anti-Chris- tian associations of workingmen in France and Ger- many, and an anti-Sabbath convention in the United States, 73 have made the right to such a rest a plank in their infidel platforms. In spite of their antagonism to the religious elements of the Sabbath, they call for Sabbath laws to the extent of protecting the laborer's Sabbath rest. Seventh-day worshipers agree with these infidel associations and the great body of workingmen that every one should have the oppor- tunity to rest one day in seven — differing only as to the day of the week to be chosen. " Is there really any great difference between the feverish, intense desire for the acquisition of wealth which has become an American — shall we say vice, or call it virtue ? — and the greedy acquisitiveness of the Hebrew, which induced the most ancient, if any should doubt him to be the wisest, lawgiver of the world to 232 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. insist so strenuously on the day of rest ? . . . Is the slave more helpless than the laborer, the clerk than the overseer, ay, the employer 575 himself, under the crush- ing power of competition in the struggle for existence and the acquisition of wealth?" 848 Employers, by the aid of managers and clerks, could sometimes get a day of rest without the help of Sabbath laws, and therefore such laws, as far as cessation of labor is concerned, have always been pre-eminently laws for workingmen. The reasons given by Moses, whom Henry George calls " the first labor agitator," for the Sabbath law proclaimed at Sinai — the first law ever enacted for the special benefit of workingmen — were, " that the son of thy maidservant and the foreigner may draw breath"; " that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou/' 74 They were also urged to observe the law by an . appeal to the memory of their own hardships as Sabbathless servants in Egypt. "The first laws upon the observance of Sunday are especially in the interests of the working classes."' That of Constantine "forbade other labors than those of the fields on Sunday, and all civil public acts except emancipation." 276 The Sabbath laws of Charlemagne' 85 and Alfred evince the same interest in the toilers. Even now, the only barrier between laborers and the slavery of ceaseless toil is the Sabbath. " Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor." 76 In a certain coal-mine in England there is a curious formation that is called the " Sunday stone." There is limestone in the mine, and the water that trickles down constantly carries with it this limestone, and all along the bottom of the pit it is continually making a ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 233 layer of white, which gradually hardens into stone. But when the miners are working and the coal-dust is flying about, it mixes with the limestone, and there is a black layer formed. Day and night are shown as clearly as possible by the black and white layers, but the Sabbath is marked by a white layer three times the usual width, as a threefold rest, except when the miners work on that day and so turn their white day black. A little boy who spent his days from the early morning twilight until the evening in the darkness of a coal- mine, and never saw the sun except on the Sabbath day, said, suggestively, " I think they call it Sunday because the collier boys can see the sun all day long on that day." Workingmen may well beware lest their desecrations of the Sabbath shall cause its eclipse, as in other lands where Sunday pleasures have led to Sunday work. There is no law for regulating the relations of capital and labor so important as a well-enforced Sabbath law. Such a day brings the capitalist into the court of conscience, and checks his tendencies to injustice. Such a day causes rich and poor to meet together on the platform of religious equality, "both children of the same dear God," and so softens the asperities of their relations. Such a day checks the vices that are the very roots of the workingman's poverty and discontent, and gives him time for that culture of brain and heart that will change him from a hater of capital to become a capitalist himself — a change constantly occurring among Sabbath-keepers. The workingmen may be sure they will get land sooner by Sabbath-keeping and self-improvement than by social- ism and assassination. Patriots and Christians should use the press and platform more diligently than they 234 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. have been used, to prove to workingmen the value as well as the obligation of their Sabbath. If any one objects to an appeal for Sabbath observ- ance based in part on its earthly utility, it may be re- plied that the Bible affords abundant precedent for showing men that " God's commandments are not grievous," but " have promise for the life that now is as well as for that which is to come." The United States should not forget that the riots of 1877, which threatened the peace and prosperity of the country, were carried on by workingmen whom rich corporations had been allowed to rob of their Sabbaths. A boatman, whose Christian master had required him to work on the Sabbath, and who had therefore been unrestrained in his vicious tendencies, in his dying moments said to his master, who, at that late hour, sought to speak to him about religion : " You forced me to break one of God's commandments, and when I broke one I thought there was little use in trying to keep the others." 77 Another inci- dent for Sabbath-breaking employers to ponder is the following : " The crew of an American vessel in harbor was ordered by the captain to labor on the Sabbath in preparation for a voyage. They refused, assigning as a reason their right to rest on the Sab- bath while in the harbor, and to attend to the ap- propriate duties of that day. The captain dismissed them and attempted to procure another crew. He applied to several, who refused. He then met an old sailor and asked him if he would ship. ' No !' ' Why not ?' ' Because a man who will rob the Almighty of His Day, I should be afraid would rob me of my wages.' The captain could not find a crew, and on Monday was glad to take the old one. They ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY { 2$$ engaged again, and showed by their conduct that the keeping of the Sabbath had fitted them the better for the duties of the week." 78 Let Great Britain and the United States cherish and enforce, as the best of all remedies for the conflict be- tween labor and capital, their Sabbath laws. The Sabbath is needed also to regulate the relations of workingmen to each other. Without it, their plans of co-operation, which depend on mutual confi- dence, and that in turn on conscience, can not be carried out. Workingmen who use the Sabbath chiefly for the business meetings of their trades-unions, and for money-making picnics, can not fairly expect to develop sufficient conscience or character in their fellows to risk their money with them. By their secularizing of the Sabbath, workingmen are girdling the tree that shades them. It is passing strange that those labor unions which meet regularly on the Sab- bath and use it for corporate money-making by work- ingmen's excursions and otherwise, do not see that corporations of capitalists have an equal right to use the Sabbath for money-making by keeping their fac- tories going. It is a further reason why workingmen especially should keep the Sabbath, that otherwise they inevi- tably rob some of their fellows of their Sabbath rest. If one workingman will buy on Sunday, another must sell. If one travels, another must lose his Sabbath to serve him. If one will be shaved, another must slave. Trades-unions try to shorten the hours of labor by early closing on week-days. Friends of the Sabbath add to that and the Saturday half-holiday, an effort to lessen the hours of work still more largely and effect- ually by stopping Sunday trade and Sunday travel. 236 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. The Golden Rule as well as the law requires the workingman to avoid spending the Sabbath in such a way as to interfere with the Sabbath rest of his fellows. Sabbath laws are, then, consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws for the mutual protection of capital and labor. 7. Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws for the prevention and pun- ishment of crime.™ " The object of Sabbath laws is not so much to regu- late private action as to preserve public order." 79 Sabbath laws are injunctions against disturbers of the public peace, to prevent destruction of property and life, and so the New York Sabbath law of 1788 was very properly named " An Act for Suppressing Immorality." Judge Allen, of the Supreme Court of New York, in sustaining one of the Sabbath laws, said : " The act complained of here compels no religious observance, and offences against it are punishable, not as sins against God, but as injurious to and having a malignant influence on society. It rests upon the same foundation as a multitude of other laws upon our statute book, such as those against gambling, lotteries, keeping disorderly houses, polygamy, horse-racing, etc. . . . The laws of the State and the require- ment of religion may in some instances coincide. Thus, each forbids murder, stealing, incest. But the law forbids these, not as offences against God, but as crimes against man. The law has to do with the rela- tions of men to each other, and not with the relations of men to God." 819 In the language of Hon. R. W. Thompson, ex-Secretary of the Navy : " Nobody will question the right of society to demand, for its own ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 2$? protection, that there shall be laws to prohibit those things which are calculated to demoralize it, because demoralization, if unchecked, has always and inevitably led to destruction." 818 Daniel Webster rightly be- lieved the Sabbath the bulwark of our liberties, be- cause the bulwark of morality. 80 It is enough, there- fore, to justify the prohibition of public amusements and excursions on Sunday, that " it has been found that where the Sabbath is perverted to mere pleasure and recreation, more drunkenness keeps up the orgies of hell, more foul immoralities rot into society, more revelry and carousal and fighting debase mankind, more crime riots, and more blood reddens the earth on that day that God commands to be kept holy, than on any other day of the week." 81 Apart from all reasons previously given, it would be sufficient justification of Sabbath laws that enforce rest and quiet, and forbid public trade and amuse- ments, and protect public worship, that it has been found that when such laws do not exist or are not en- forced, far more crimes are committed on the Sabbath than on any other day of the week, while it has also been found that where such laws do exist, and are even mod- erately enforced, there are fewer crimes on the Sabbaths than on other days. That one sentence has argument enough to vindicate Sabbath laws, Biblical and civil. A man came very near being drowned because the rope they threw him was too long. He caught it easily, but it tangled his feet and hands as he tried to swim, and he was finally drawn on board the rescuing boat almost lifeless. " Shorten the rope" was the cry, and not quite too late. Some of those who are floundering in doubts about the rightfulness or utility 238 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. of the Sabbath laws will be tangled or drowned, if we throw them at first, in books and sermons, a long argu- ment reaching from Creation to the present, but may be rescued by this short and strong line — vice and crime increase wherever the Sabbath is desecrated, and diminish wherever it is well observed ; therefore the Sabbath laws should be retained and enforced. The Havre Chamber of Commerce (Dec. 21, 1870) said : " The Sunday rest is not only a Divine law, but is most imperatively demanded by mental and moral hygiene. Men the most actively engaged in political affairs agree with moralists and men of science in demonstrating the accord of this law of nature with the laws of a sound political economy." 82 Judges have "maiden circuits" only in districts where the Sabbath is strictly kept. Such " maiden circuits" are not infrequent in Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland. In December, 1882, when the Sabbath laws were for two weeks vigorously enforced in New York, the re- porters of The Tribune found everywhere among the police the report that these Sabbaths had been the quietest they had eve*r known. The Tribune itself said, on the Monday following the first Sabbath : ' * It is many years since the city has presented so quiet an appear- ance as it did yesterday and last evening. . . . The streets of the city, except for the frequent cars, were as quiet as those of a country village. The law was very generally respected. ... A rural visitor, who had the usual idea prevalent in the country in regard to the wicked- ness of the metropolis, while walking down Broadway yesterday remarked : ' Why, it's just as quiet here as in Garden Street in our village. ' This remark would apply to nearly all the streets in the city yesterday" ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 239 On the other hand, Prof. Curtis, of Chicago, quotes standard German authors, who say of their Sabbathless land that the larger proportion of criminal and dis- graceful acts is committed on Sunday, such as im- morality and drunkenness. Many a maiden has lost her virtue on that day ; many a youth has seized the murderous knife. Most of the suicides occur on " blue Monday." 83 It is a significant commentary on- the moral influence of the Continental Sunday as com- pared with the British, that while the percentage of illegitimate births in London, a few years since, was only four per cent, in Paris it was thirty-four per cent ; in Brussels, thirty-four per cent ; in Monaco, forty-nine per cent ; in Vienna, fifty-four per cent ; in Rome, seventy-two- per cent. 84 In 1832 the special Sabbath Committee of the Eng- lish House of Commons, 792 after much investigation, said in its report : " It appears in evidence that in each trade, in proportion to its disregard of the Lord's- day, is the immorality of those engaged in it." 85 Another significant item of evidence against the Continental Sunday is that contemporaneously with its partial introduction in the larger cities and the '* New West" of the United States, crime has in- creased, until the number of deaths by violence, very many of them on the " free Sunday," is greater in proportion to the population than in any country of Europe, except Italy and Spain. 88 Sabbath-break- ing is not the only cause of this epidemic of crime, but it is clearly a leading one — the chieftain who rallies in his train, drunkenness, corrupt reading, dishonesty, unchristian sentimentality, and leniency.' These and thousands of other facts, as horrible as they are familiar, illustrate Blackstone's statement ; 240 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. " A corruption of morals usually follows a profanation of the Sabbath." 87 The same statement is further illustrated by many testimonies I have collected from judges, prison chap- lains, and others familiar with criminal affairs, unani- mously testifying that one of the first steps toward the prison cell is Sabbath-breaking. A man who had committed murder was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. A few days before his execution he drew upon the walls of his prison a gallows with four steps leading up it. On the first step he wrote, Disobedience to parents. On the second step, Sabbath-breaking. On the third step, Gam- bling and drunkenness. On the fourth step, Murder. That picture epitomizes the testimony of all who deal with crime. " When Hogarth, who is so cele- brated for his striking delineations of human life and manners, wished to give a portraiture of a veteran criminal, he made him commence his career as a boy lolling on the tombstone of the churchyard on the Lord's-day. " 8b Justice Strong, of the United States Supreme Court, has said : " Those who have observed the administration of criminal law or been familiar with prison discipline have often heard the sad con- fession of a convicted criminal, that his career down- ward commenced with Sabbath-desecration." 818 Judge Hale once said that of those who were convicted of capital crimes while he was upon the bench, he found very few who would not confess, on inquiry, that they began their career of wickedness by neglect of the Sabbath." S. Cutter, agent of the New York Prison Association, writes me : " Sabbath desecration is almost always connected with crime and is the fore- runner of it." ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 24I Of one hundred men admitted to the Massachusetts State Prison in one year, nine out of ten had been habitual violators of the Lord's-day and neglecters of public worship. The keeper affirms that hundreds of convicts have lamented their desecration of the Sab- bath as the first and fatal step of their downward progress to ruin. The chaplain, Rev. J. VV. F. Barnes, writes me, in response to inquiries : " When a man comes to prison who has been a church-goer, it makes a sensation. Why should it do so, saving for the reason that the idea of a church-goer and the idea of a criminal are so totally unlike ? The overwhelming majority of criminals hereabouts are Roman Catholics. They have holiday instead of holy day after mass." Similar testimony as to the relation of Sabbath- breaking to crime is given by Rev. J. G. Bass, chap- lain for twenty years of the King's County Peni- tentiary, in Brooklyn, and many others. 89 The Thirteen Club of New York are seeking to prove that thirteen is not an unlucky number, but they will not do it by holding their convivial gatherings, as they do, on the Sabbath, for it is already proved that Sun- day pleasuring is unlucky, physically, financially, and morally. Now we begin to understand what is meant by the "free Sunday" which liquor-sellers and the French apes in British and American which is half the size, forty thou- 244 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. sand troops of the line and sixty thousand national guards are necessary. But the stranger who arrives in London on a Sunday morning, when he sees every- thing of commerce suspended in that gigantic capital in obedience to God ; when, in the centre of that colossal business, he find silence and repose scarcely interrupted by the bells which call to prayer, and the immense crowd on their way to church, then his astonishment ceases. He understands that there is another curb for a Christian people besides that of bayonets, and that where the law of God is fulfilled with such a solemn submissiveness, God Himself, if I dare use the words, charges Himself with the police arrangements." 90 The riots of 1877, carried on mostly by Sabbathless workingmen, are likely to be repeated unless the nation more generally enlists for its protection the only ade- quate police, the moral restraint of quiet Sabbaths. A New York millionaire, being asked why he did not build himself a large palace like Van derbi It's,- replied, " I do not wish to have a home that can be found so easily when the tigers break loose." Cincinnati has felt the touch of its ten thousand tigers. New York, as has been recently shown, has eighty thousand of them — men who have nothing to lose financially by disorder, and everything to gain by it. Nothing can keep these tigers in check save the restraint upon them and their children and their employers and their rulers, of quiet Sabbaths : nothing less than one day of such enforced quiet as will at least give them the opportunity to ponder what Daniel Webster said was the grandest thought that ever passed through his mind — " in- dividual responsibility to God." A great statesman is reported to have said to one who sought of him an ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 245 interview concerning secular matters on the Lord's- day, " I must keep one day to realize what I am, and whither I am going." The Sabbath is a nation's chief of police. In the language of Justice Strong, then, " There is abundant justification for our Sabbath laws, regarding them as a mere civil institution, which they are, and he is no friend to the good order and welfare of society who would break them down, or who himself sets an ex- ample of disobedience to them. They appeal to each citizen as a patriot, as an orderly member of the com- munity, and as a well-wisher to his fellow-men, to uphold them with all his influence, and to show re- spect for them by his conduct and example." 818 The Communists of France are reported by the Scotch missionary, Dr. McAll, whom the police recog- nize as their " faithful ally in keeping the peace," as saying that they would have made no outbreak in the recent war if the gospel had previously been preached to them. 91 Mr. Beecher, who holds Sabbath views far from strict, nevertheless says of Sunday saloons : " In them indolent men hatch out treasons against society, load down the Monday court calendars with crime, and de- velop into enemies of the law, soiling men and tempting children. It is right to shut them up on Sunday, and on any day. But on Sunday especially, for then they are nests of devils, impeding the prosperity of the community. It is in the interests of order, of peace, of protection of life and property, to close them on Sunday as on election-day. Public sentiment should make the work easy and thorough. Policemen should not be made catspaws to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, In the community all men should support 246 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. their efforts. There would be no difficulty then." It is chiefly from these nests of devils that the cry against Sabbath laws is heard. " The Sabbath must go" is mostly a hoodlum cry, loudest among the lowest. This fact was unconsciously emphasized in 1882, when a meeting in Cooper Union in the interests of the Sab- bath was interrupted by fifty unwashed Socialists, who noisily rose during a speech by Judge Noah Davis and followed their leader out of the hall, like a tableau of Falstaff's ragged recruits. " The meeting," said The Observer, " brought out the grand fact that the opposition to Sunday laws comes from the lowest and vilest class of the community, men who are opposed to all law, human or divine." The few respectable .men who oppose Sabbath laws may well suspect the correctness of their opinions when they see into what company they bring them. In the early days of Christianity it was charged by the pagan writers that the Lord's-day was to Chris- tians a day of concealed impurity and crime. Not Justin Martyr and Tertullian only, but history yet more strongly has proved that the relation of a well- kept Sabbath to crime is that of preventive, not incen- tive. Morality is advanced by such a period of rest, not only for the reasons already named, but also because it gives the bodily powers opportunity for recupera- tion, when otherwise they would cry out for the stimulation of alcohol and lead to intemperance. As John Foster has said, "The Sabbath is a remarkable appointment for raising the general tenor of moral ex- istence." " History shows that the nations which have been strict without narrowness in the observance of the ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 247 Sabbath have had the purest morals, and have clung to their faith in times of religious decay." 92 Sabbath laws, then, are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws for the prevention of vice and crime. 8. Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in ' the same way as other laws for the protection of institutions deemed by the majority of the people important to the zvelfare of society, such as the setting apart of the Fourth of July and the Twenty-second of February for the culture of patriotism. 6S0 Many of the foreign one seventh of the population of the United States have no interest in the national holidays, and would prefer to pay their notes that come due on the Fourth of July on that day rather than on the previous one. They would also like to use the banks and courts on that day, and to be able to find public servants in their offices. But few of these guests would say that it was inconsistent with liberty for the native majority of the population to set apart these days for lessons in liberty. Most of this native majority, with a third of the foreign population added, have another institutional day whose observance they regard as essential to the preservation of the Republic — the Sabbath. Liberty forbids them to enforce upon any one the religious features of the day. Church-going is not re- quired by any of the State laws. Seventh-day Advent- ists argue that our present Sabbath laws are moving toward compulsory church-going ; but history shows that they have all moved from it. Charlemagne seems to have originated it, long before the Puritans. All Sabbath laws once required it ; now none. Liberty 248 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. allows the majority no right, and it has no disposi- tion, to enforce its religion upon others. But in- asmuch as more than three fourths of the popula- tion of the United States are members or adherents of Christian churches, and so accustomed to set apart the first day of each week for rest and religion ; and inasmuch as it is the conviction of this majority that the nation can not be preserved without religion, nor religion without the Sabbath, nor the Sabbath without laws, therefore Sabbath laws are enacted by the right of self-preservation, not in violation of liberty, but for its protection. " They aim simply to protect from disturbance those who observe the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship." 93 Justice William Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, said in a speech at Washington : " The majority of our people are firm believers in the Christian religion and wor- shipers of God on the Sabbath. Wherever gathered together, they have a right to protection against dis- turbers and a right to worship God ; ay, as -good a right as to enjoy any portion of their property." 818 These Sabbath laws are not Puritanical. If they were, it would no more be a valid argument against them than it is an argument against the American Constitu- tion, its common schools, and its homes, that they are of Puritan origin. But the main features of American Sabbath laws came from the predecessors and the per- secutors of the Puritans. If there was to-day in the United States less reading of romance and more of history, speakers would be laughed down for their ignorance whenever they quote the "blue laws," ex- cept as a fiction. 321 If the old law requiring people to go to church is Puritanic, how did it happen to be found on the books in so anti-Puritan a State as South ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 249 Carolina ? Before the word Puritan was invented, England had Sabbath laws forbidding labor, trade, festivities, games, and sports, and requiring church- going, 294 and from these ante-Puritan laws, which were in force in America up to the Revolution, the Sabbath laws of the United States were chiefly patterned. Un- puritan English rulers and law-makers long ago recognized that the prevailing religion had a right to protection on its day of worship, but carried the law too far in requiring church-going, which requirement the nineteenth century has canceled on both sides of the sea. 94 But the nineteenth century, so far from canceling, confirms the essential features of Sabbath laws, by re-enacting and reaffirming them in the legis- lative and judicial assemblies of its most enlightened nations. In a monarchy the chief perils are from without ; in a republic the only peril is of inward corruption. The republics of Rome and Greece and Spain, and the former one in France, all died, not of wounds, but of moral cancer. The devil can not cast a republic down from its high estate by any external blow. He can only say, "Cast thyself down." If he can persuade the people to adopt the holiday Sabbath, and put the saloon and the shop in place of the home and the church ; if he can stop the Sabbath's weekly diffusion of intelligence and conscientiousness, and put frivolity and greed in its place, he will at length raise up a peo- ple among whom ballots will be given in exchange for beer and bank-bills. Even a Jew does not care to sell goods on credit in a town where there are no churches. Who would want to invest his property or to rear his family in a Sabbathless republic, with liberties as im- perfect and as uncertain as those of France, whose 250 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. political volcano is liable to eruption at any moment ? Burke said it was easy to have freedom and to have a government, but to have a free government was very difficult. ;< Without religious sanctions," says Professor Gold- win Smith, " men have never been able to live under a government of law." And, we may add, that with them a good government may live forever. In the words of Earl Russell : " There is no necessity in the nature of things that nations should die. History points to no people which, while strong in faith, in reverence, in truthfulness, in chastity, in frugality, in the virtues of the temple and of the hearth, has sunk into atrophy and decline. We may decide, therefore, that, so long as moral energy fails not, the life of the nation will not fail." General morality is one of the necessities of life to a popular government, and such morality has never yet been secured except through churches and Sabbaths. Popular government can not live by bread alone : it must have also' morality and religion. " Despotism may govern without faith," said De Tocqueville, " but liberty can not." 95 It was the conviction of this truth that forced Mirabeau, the eloquent orator of the French Revolution, to exclaim, " God is as necessary as liberty to the French people." Another French- man, La Place, wrote : " I have lived long enough to know, what at one time I did not believe, that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiments of religion." These utterances have double force coming from France, the only nation that, having received the Sab- bath, has ever legally and deliberately murdered the messenger of God, and thus crushed the religious in- ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 25 I stinct of the people, which it did at the Revolution by appointing a tenth-day rest, thus bringing on the wre'ck of liberty in a "reign of terror." Neglect of Sabbath rest produces not only personal but political insanity. De Tocqueville said to an American, when the American Sabbath was stricter than it is now, M France must have your Sabbath or she is ruined." It might be added that America must restore her Sabbath or she is ruined. The venerable historian, Hon. George Bancroft, in 1884 wrote to the New York Christian Advocate his conviction of the inseparableness of liberty and re- ligion, as follows : " Certainly our great united com- monwealth is the child of Christianity ; it may with equal truth be asserted that modern civilization sprung into life with our religion ; and faith in its principles is the lifeboat on which humanity has at divers times escaped the most threatening perils." Religion is, then, necessary to the preservation of the State ; but is the Sabbath necessary to the preser- vation of religion? Voltaire answers : "There is no hope of destroying the Christian religion so long as the Christian Sabbath is acknowledged and kept by men as a sacred day." The reverse is also true, that there is no hope of preserving it in any community where the Sabbath is not observed. Even a clergy- man, visiting in Venice, who had lost his reckoning of days, found through an American friend whom he met at evening that he had unconsciously spent a Sabbath in sight-seeing, having observed no closing of shops or cessation of work or amusement to suggest that it was a Holy Day. This gives point to Calvin's saying that " if the Lord's-day was abolished the Church would be in imminent danger of convulsion and ruin." 252 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. At a recent gathering of Lutherans, in Germany, Dr. Bauer, court preacher, began an address with the strong assertion that though Dr. Luther had declared the doctrine of justification by faith to be the doctrine of a standing or falling Church, he could not regard the sanctification of the Sabbath as any less a ground pillar of the Church and of our whole social life." Dr. Mark Hopkins, in an able address on " The Sabbath and Free Institutions/' 815 has laid down and proved the following propositions : " (i) A religious observance of the Sabbath would secure the perma- nence of free institutions. (2) Without such observ- ance such permanence can not be secured. (3) That the civil, as based on the religious, Sabbath is an in- stitution to which society has a natural right precisely as it has to property." He declares that there has been no instance of a people that kept the Sabbath that has not been free. He shows from history that " God has joined liberty with the Sabbath," that the Bible is God's educator for the conscience, and that the Sabbath is His appointed school-day for the race. History authorizes us to add that mental education is not enough to make good citizens. Ninety-four per cent of the criminals of New York State are able to read. Although ignorance is the handmaid of vice, as learning is of piety, yet no degree of intellectual .education can counteract the evils resulting from a lack of the moral education which the Sabbath affords. " No republic has yet perished in which intelligence was not more general and higher at its overthrow than at its founding." 9 " Free governments can not go on without morality. In the words of Franklin, '.' What are laws without morals ?" And, we may add, Whence shall we get morals except from religion ? ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 253 Let Washington answer both questions. He says : " Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." 97 To this agree the words of Justice McLean, of the Supreme Court of the United States : " Where there is no Christian Sabbath, there is no Christian morality ; and without this free insti- tutions can not long be sustained." 98 Hon. John Randolph Tucker, M.C., of Virginia, has ably en- forced this same great truth : " Ah ! my friends, break down the fence of Christianity, and liberty and law and civilization will perish with it. I wish to testify my belief, that the institutional custom of our fathers, in remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the conservator of their Christian religion, is the foundation of our political systemj and the only hope of American freedom, progress, and glory. Just in proportion as man is governed by his sense of right and duty, or by the religious principle in some form or other, he is capable of and fitted for duty. . But, on the other hand, in proportion to his disregard of moral law, or the law of conscience, does the need of external power increase. Liberty must grow less, and power tend to despotism. When the consti- tution and laws of a country, therefore, protect re- ligion, they conserve that internal power over the man which saves liberty and makes despotism impos- sible." 818 Sir John Sinclair wrote an essay against what he then considered a too strict and Puritanical observ- ance of the Sabbath in Scotland. His friend, Dr. Adam Smith, although himself the apologist of Hume, said to him, "Your book, Sir John, is very ably composed, but the Sabbath as a political institu- 2 54 TH E SABBATH FOR MAN. tion is of inestimable value, independently of its claims to Divine authority." Let us not call the Sabbath, in legal parlance, a dies non ; British and American history prove it, even as a political institution, the day of days. 11 But," say some who admit that the State cannot be preserved without religion, nor religion without a Sabbath, " the Sabbath may be preserved without laws." France and Germany answer, " No. " Neither rest nor religion can use the day to advantage without legal protection against greed and passion. Where there are no Sabbath laws there is practically no Sab- bath. Sabbath laws for protecting the worshiping day of the prevailing religion from disturbance, then, are vindicated as belonging to society's laws of self- preservation. As courts have often decided, these Sabbath laws are not in violation of that much misunderstood article in the American Constitution : " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." 99 President Charles E. Knox, D.D., of the German Seminary at Bloomfield, New Jersey, in a very able paper on ' The Attitude of our Foreign Population toward the Sabbath," 853 urges that this amendment needs to be thoroughly expounded to the foreign population of the United States. " It should be shown to them," he says, " that while Congress possesses no law-making power in respect to an establishment of religion, it may and does and always has passed laws which have respect to religion. It may and does and always has passed laws in respect to those phases of religious convic- tion zvhich have to do with the self-preservation of the ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 255 ?'epublic. Whatever makes the best citizen, Congress has a right to prescribe. Whatever attacks the vitalities of citizenship Congress has a right to prohibit." It should be shown to them also, that while liberty allows no State church, and can compel no worship, " Christianity is a part of the common law of the land/' as the highest courts have often decided. That Christianity is interwoven with the entire struct- ure and history of the American government is shown by the following facts, among others : The Pilgrims founded the nation through a desire for freedom to wor- ship God, and especially for freedom to keep the Sab- bath holy. 100 The Declaration of Independence recog- nizes the inalienable rights of citizens as proceeding from God. The Articles of Confederation of the States, and the charter of the Northwestern Territory con- tained in their provisions for education and for chari- table and reformatory institutions a recognition of the laws of religion. Congress, State legislatures and some courts are opened with prayer. The President annually proclaims to the entire nation a Day of Thanksgiving to God for His mercies. Upon some of the coins of the nation is engraved an expression of our trust in God. Each branch of the General Govern- ment has its chaplain, andthe army and navy are also supplied with chaplains as regularly commissioned officers! The President, members of Congress and of the judiciary, governors of States, legislators, and ' other officials, are sworn into office in the use of the Bible .and by an appeal to ^the God of Christians, Witnesses before courts of law are required to make oath in the name of God that they will tell the truth. Churches and property used exclusively for purposes of worship are exempt from taxation. Ordained min- 256 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. isters of the gospel are declared to be competent to solemnize marriage. The State provides religious instruction for the convicts in its prisons and for the youth in its reform schools. Wherever public schools have been established, instruction in Christian morality has been enjoined. Nearly all the States pro- hibit secular labor, noise, and confusion on the Sabbath, and (with certain recent exceptions) have always held that all civil contracts made upon that day are void. The federal laws of the United States also recognize the Sabbath by forbidding distilling on that day, and by intermitting the studies in the national academies, and by counting out the Sabbath from the ten days allowed the President for signing an act of Con- gress. 101 American Sabbath laws do no injustice to those emigrants who do not believe in quiet Sabbaths ; first, because they knew or might have known before- hand of the existence of these laws, and are under no compulsion to come or remain unless they can do better in their adopted country with the Sabbath laws than elsewhere without them ; second, because the Sabbath laws are one of the chief forces that make America a good place to emigrate to ; third, because the nine tenths of the people who have tested the personal and political value of the British-American Sabbath have ^ome rights which the other tenth, chiefly composed of guests, are bound to respect ; fourth, because the Sabbath law, in the language of the Supreme Court of California, "leaves a man's religious belief and prac- tices as free as the air he breathes." 102 It only forbids the carrying on of certain kinds of business on a cer- tain day in the week, and the day selected in defer- ence to the feelings and wishes of a large majority of ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 257 the community is the day commonly denominated the Christian Sabbath or Sunday. A man may worship the Sun on Sunday if he pleases, only he can not legally do it by noisy excur- sions, because these interfere with the right of others to rest and quiet. Europe itself has no greater despotism of the few over the many than the Sabbath-desecrators who have fled from its tyranny seek to establish ill America. The one tenth of population who want to make the Sabbath a day of noisy and demoralizing amusements seek to set up a foreign oligarchy over the nine tenths that have established a quiet Sabbath — the brazen despotism of a loud and low minority over a too com- promising majority, who endanger liberty by conces- sions, for fear of being misunderstood in their methods of protecting it. In California this oligarchy of foreign liquor-sellers has actually been allowed to re- peal the Sabbath law as a" League of Freedom." This oppression of masses by margins in the name of liberty should be stopped. Americans have already changed the plans of national housekeeping too much at the discourteous dictation of the most disorderly of foreign visitors. Let those who wish a Continental Sunday stay where it is. The United States want neither it nor its moral and political fruits. Mon- archies can live, even though the masses are only animals and children, such as thoughtless Sabbaths make them, but in a republic the masses must be men, such as only quiet Sabbaths have ever been able to produce. But how is it consistent with liberty that those whose religion requires them to rest on the seventh 258 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. day should be compelled by law to give up public business and public amusements on the first day also ? The case of Jewish emigrants is not as difficult as many have thought. Every Jew who determines to come to Great Britain or the United States knows, or might know, that, while his religion forbids him to do business on the seventh day, the laws of the countries to which he proposes to go forbid the same on the first day. If he can not do more business' in five days in Great Britain or in the United States than in six days elsewhere, he is free to remain elsewhere. If, when he has come into Great Britain or the United States, he finds by experiment that " a conscientious Jew cannot make a living/* the world is all before him to choose where he will dwell. Jews seem to forget that their Mosaic law compelled not only native Israelites to rest on the seventh day, but also their servants, native or foreign, and ' the stranger within their gates.' It is passing strange that a people whose ancient law compelled the Gentile worshipers of the Sun who happened then to be in Palestine, although they kept Sunday, 135 if any day at all, for their worship, to rest on the seventh day also, out of respect to the -prevailing religion, should object to Great Britain and the United States following the example of their fathers, only making the rule work the other way. The only nations that have not mobbed and robbed the Jews are those which have forbidden them to trade on the Christian Sabbath, that the people might re- ceive their weekly lessons in justice. It is not sufficiently emphasized that the Jew is left absolutely free to observe the seventh day. He can close his shop ; he can refuse to work. It would not be reasonable for legislatures to compel the ninety- ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY? 259 nine one hundredths of the population who do not regard Saturday as a sacred day to stop business for the less than one per cent who do. If this were done, the Mohammedan emigrants of the future would soon be asking for laws halting industry on their sacred Friday also. As the national welfare of the Jews called for a legally-protected Sabbath, which the minority of other faiths were not allowed to disturb, so America's national welfare calls for similar laws, in which the Jew must play the part of ' the stranger within the gates.' Rabbi Gottheil, of New York, though by no means pleased with Christian Sabbath laws that prevent the Jewish peddler from selling his goods to " working people on that day," yet says: ''We are willing to submit to reasonable restrictions upon our liberty for the sake of our Christian neighbors." That last admission is exactly the American theory of Sabbath laws, the only difference of opinion being as to what " restrictions" are " reasonable," a ques- tion which the majority, of course, must answer for itself. 355 The laws of many of the United States, and the cus- toms of all, allow, what Jewish laws never allowed, that the stranger, who keeps another day as holy time, may engage in private labor on the national Sabbath, provided it be done in such a manner as not to dis- turb the community in its rest and worship. 103 The Jew may not keep his shop open, because trade is a public disturbance of the general rest, and involves persons who do not keep Saturday as holy time ; but he may work in his home in making clothes or other- wise, and rely upon the fact that he regularly inter- mits such work on Saturday as his defense in 2CO THE SABBATH FOR MAN. case of prosecution. The majority have been very generous to the Jews in their laws, and still more in their practice, but this generosity has not been re- ciprocated. No people have so persistently violated the Sabbath^ laws as Jews of the baser sort, who would sacrifice the interests of the nations which have most heartily befriended them for their own private gains. They are not willing to lose a day's profits per week to perpetuate in their adopted countries the institution of a regularly-recurring day of rest in each week, which they believe necessary to a nation's per- petuity — the neglect of which, according to their own prophets, was the chief cause of their own national ruin. If the Jews could but take the scales of personal -selfishness from their eyes, they would rejoice to bear some slight loss in aiding the Sabbath-keeping nations in perpetuating substantially the same institution as that whose faithful observance was the secret of their former national prosperity. A few of the better class of Jews rise to this consistency. A Jewish mayor, as I have said, enforced the Christian Sabbath law in Jacksonville, Florida ; and the Jewish deputy Lasker, supported, in the German Reichstag, a bill reducing the mail distributions on Sunday in Berlin to one. The lower grade of Jews, such as have robbed the less shrewd peasants of Russia and Germany by wholesale, and have come to England and America for the same purpose, such as habitually violate the Christian Sabbath laws, are not a kind of emigrants that should be enticed by concessions and special privileges. Dr. L. Wintner, of Brooklyn, a Jewish Rabbi, whose synagogue I have visited on the Jewish Sabbath ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 26 1 with pleasure and profit, has sent me an abstract of a recent lecture on the Sabbath, which questions of mine led him to give to his people and their Gentile neigh- bors. In these notes I find three interesting and significant admissions : (1) " With a great number of Israelites the Saturday Sabbath is not a day of rest, as the commercial circumstances of the present are such that Jewish business men here and in Europe are obliged to keep their places of business open on Satur- day. " 104 (2) " Sunday morning lectures have [there- fore] been instituted in several Jewish congregations, as in Chicago, Philadelphia, and perhaps some other places," a movement which even the conservative Jewish Messenger, of New York, is advocating. 105 (3) He hopes a compromise may be made between Chris- tians and Jews by agreeing on "a neutral day in the middle of the week" as the Sabbath. for all — showing that he is willing to give up Saturday and take some other common day, his national prejudice against the Christian first-day Sabbath being his only reason for preferring the third or fourth day to the first — a prejudice which few would claim was an adequate reason why a whole nation should change its day of worship and rest. These three admissions suggest that by influences now at work all difficulties in the rela- tion of Sabbath laws to the Jews will soon be self-ad- justed. The one or two very small sects of Christians who worship on Saturday, holding as they do that the observance of one day in seven for rest and worship is necessary for personal and political self-preservation by a law of God as old as the race, are not less in- consistent than the Jews in seeking to break down such an observance in all who will not observe the day 262 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. which their method of Bible interpretation has pointed out. The tendency of legislatures and executive officers toward those who claim to keep a Saturday- Sabbath is to over-leniency rather than over-strict- ness. For instance, the laws of Rhode Island allow Seventh-day Baptists, by special exception, to carry on public industries on the first day of the week in Hopkinton and Westerly, in each of which places they form about one-fourth of the popu- lation. 397 Instead of reciprocating the generosity shown toward them by the makers of Sabbath laws, these seventh-day Christians expend a very large part of their energy in antagonizing such laws, seeking by the free distribution of tracts and papers to secure their repeal or neglect, seemingly on the policy of rule or ruin. They not only fight the Lord's Day, but fight it under false colors. For instance, the Seventh-day Adventists put the Stars and Stripes and the American Eagle at the head of their " Religious Liberty Associ- ation" leaflets, although, next to Saturday-keeping, their chief doctrine is that the United States Govern- ment is the " beast" of Revelation that " spake as a dragon," and although their prophetess kept them from carrying the flag in the war for ' ' liberty. ' ' (See "The Third Message," Pacific Press Pub. Co., Oakland, Cal, 4 cts.) They persuade very few to keep the seventh day ; they only succeed in confusing the consciences of many about the first. They increase the desecration ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 263 of the Lord's-day, but not the hallowing «of Satur- day."' Perhaps the Saturday half-holiday movement, which is well established in England and well started in America, may afford partial relief to the seventh-day people of all kinds in their conscientious perplexities, as they sfand halting every Saturday between worship and work. We rejoice in the prospect that overworked Americans whose products are cheapened by over-pro- duction, will erelong, not by law but by commercial agreement, very generally add a large part of Saturday (in Pitcairn's Island, the Paradise of the Pacific, it is the whole) to the legal rest day, thus greatly improv- ing the Sabbath by bringing people to it less jaded, giving the people a half-holiday with the whole Holy Day, and incidentally relieving the few seventh-day worshipers from the great moral peril to which they are exposed by their weekly battles between conscience and commerce. Meanwhile it should be remembered by all who do not feel bound to cease from public labor and trade and amusements on the first day of the week because of any other Bible commands, that they are bound to do so in Great Britain and America by the passages 107 in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian's Bible that re- quire obedience to the powers that be, except when their laws break God's laws, which can no more be said of the six-day laws for restraining labor than of " ten-hour laws," since Sabbath laws require no man to worship on any day. Sabbath laws, then, are found to be consistent with liberty in that they are laws for the prevention of cruelty to animals, in that they are laws of health, in that they are laws for increasing the national wealth, 264 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. in that they are laws for harmonizing the relations of capital and labor, in that they are laws for the pro- tection of the home, in that they are laws for the pre- vention of crime, in that they are laws for the protec- tion of one of the chief historic institutions of the nation, in that they are, in short, laws of national self- preservation. . These planks form a platform on which all who be- lieve in the utility of a quiet Sabbath can stand to- gether in its defense : those who believe it rests for its authority on the Church or on natural law, as well as those who recognize it as having also the authority of the New Testament, or of the Old, or of both. How firmly a Unitarian can stand on this platform may be seen from the following letter of Thomas A. Hill, D.D., ex-president of Harvard University : ' You must be aware that the Unitarians prefer, first of all, freedom in private judgment ; and neither I nor any other man can say, with authority, what the views of Unitarians are. Yet they have been, so far as my knowledge goes (and I have been deeply interested in them for fifty years), nearly unanimous in basing the observance of Sunday upon its intrinsic value, and not upon the Fourth Commandment. They have reverently and firmly held that Sunday has been a more blessed day to the Christian Church than the, Sabbath was to the Jews. While, therefore, they have deprecated the views and efforts of Sabbatarians, they have with equal earnestness deprecated any opening of Sunday to secular pursuits and mere amusements. For my own part my opinion is very decided, and my feeling very strong in both directions — first, for free- dom from undue restraint on Sunday ; and secondly, for freedom from anything that could shock or disturb ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY ? 265 a thoroughly Christian community. I remember the earnestness with which a lovely old Spaniard said to me, ' When I first came to New England I thought your Sunday was a very gloomy day, but now it is the most blessed and joyous day of the week to me.' The doctrine of Roger Williams, that the civil magis- trate has no authority over offenses against the first table, is worthy of all acceptance ; but it must be in- terpreted and applied with common-sense. The Mormon is not to claim, under it, a right to bigamy and polygamy ; nor the railroad and the theatre managers a right to run excursion trains and have ball matches and opened theatres on Sunday. The State has a right to protect the morals of the com- munity. It may not punish me for refusing to believe that the observance of Sunday is required by the word spoken on Sinai, but it may and it should punish me if I by any overt act attempt to injure and overthrow the customs of our Christian society, which make Sun- day a day of rest from manual labor, and a day appro- priated to the teaching of religion and morality. Freedom can not endure without virtue, nor virtue without religion ; and virtue and religion are interests too important, even in their effect on social order and civil liberty, not to demand a weekly day of attention to them. The voice of history is emphatic : make Sunday a holiday instead of a Holy Day, and you infallibly injure public morality and destroy the safe- guards of public liberty." As the railroad train speeds across the country, it stops ever and anon, not merely to take and leave passengers, but also to cool its wheels and to have them examined, that any crack or flaw may be dis- covered in time to prevent disaster, and that the 266 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. passengers themselves may enjoy their journey the more by the occasional change and airing. So amid our British and American life, with all its conflicts, commercial, political, and social, we need to call a pause as often as one day in seven, that our machinery and our animals and our own bodies and minds may rest ; that we may start again in our week refreshed by the change, and encouraged by the thoughts and words that have come to us at our sacred resting- places ; saved also from perils by the examination which such times allow in our moral life. To give up the Sabbath would be to destroy our national progress with hot boxes of ignorance and vice, and broken wheels of immorality and financial disaster. History proves that while " a holiday Sabbath," as Hallam has said, " is the ally of despotism," a Chris- tian Sabbath is the Holy Day of freedom. Liberty, in the very nature of it, absolutely requires, and even sup- poses, that people be able to govern themselves in those respects in which they are free ; otherwise their wickedness will be in proportion to their liberty, and this greatest of blessings will become a curse. — Bishop Butler. Lincoln's immortal declaration expresses the American idea of gov- ernment, " A Government of the people, by the people, and for the people." If any of these individuals casts aside or loses his power of governing himself by himself, then, for the public good, he must be governed. What the individual does not or cannot do, which can be done by the authority of the precinct, is done by it. If it cannct be done by the precinct authority, it is done by the county government. And when things arise that cannot be settled by county authority, the State authority is asserted, and must be. And when anything arises that cannot be settled by the State Government, then the authority of the national Government is employed. — American Sentinel (Seventh Day Adventist), April io, 1890. Liberty, License, and Law. — I thank the Lord for the red flags, bombs, and brickbats of Chicago. The anarchists have spoken ; yes, but the Lord has spoken, and there has been a quaking among us almost as palpable as the quaking of the granite when Jehovah came down on Sinai. Incomparable indeed is the Lord's object-teaching. It did more in one week to clarify our philosophy, take the kinks out of our thinking, and send us groping after the eternal foundation of things, than the rattling of all our pulpits could avail in a score of years. It has bent our minds with quickened earnestness to the problems of liberty, and license, and law, the area within which the three are to be grouped, and the rock-bed of God's righteousness up- on which that area must in all just thinking be projected. If we are true to our make, we are locomotives on the railway, if only the loco- motive had the power to move itself. That is moral liberty, self-en- ergy clinging to the rail and sliding along a clear track. And self- energy jumping the rail, thumping on the ties, and going over the embankment, that is license, lawlessness, anarchy, and all disobedi- ence is anarchy, young anarchy, anarchy in the green. Conscience is the flange with which we rim into the irons. The irons are there, been there, there before Sinai, there before the granite was hot that cooled into Sinai. " Free, but bond-servants." But have we as moral beings no right to choose what we will do ? Yes, we have the right to choose what we will do when we choose to do what is right ; and there is the track again bolted into the universe. Yes, choice, if you call that choice. But the fact is that the finer the type of integrity, the smaller will be the margin of choice. I have known men, I have one particular man in mind now, in regard to whom you could prognosticate what position he would take in regard to a given matter, with the same absolute confidence with which an astronomer would prognosticate what would be the right ascension and declination of a given star at a particular instant. Have you never thought of it, that the most glorious freeman of history, the Lord Jesus Christ, allowed to Himself absolutely no option, no nar- rowest margin on either side of the unswerving track of God His Father's will ? Our legislators, even in their best moments, do not make law ; and the only just and effective service they can render, is to mount up into the will of God, and translate that will into terms adjusted to instant need, and suited to common intelligence. — Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, D.D., in Sermon ; May 15, 1886, The taskmasters hasted them, saying, Fulfill your works. ... Ye are idle ; therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice unto the Lord. —Exodus 5 : 13, 17. A friend of mine told but the other day that every Sunday morning a crowd of merchants and bookkeepers and confidential clerks throng the precincts of the post-office to get their letters. If a sense of de- cency keeps them from taking down shutters and opening wide the doors, they yet must plan the work of the week to come. There is not a physician in Chicago who does not know that those men are on the high road to softening of the brain and the wreck of every men- tal power. There has been a great deal said in the public prints of cases of insanity growing out of " religious excitement." But for every mind deranged through excess of religious emotion I will show you ten who have set at naught the divine provision for a respite to the weary brain on one day out of seven. Nine tenths of all the suicides that our papers record are those of men and women who habitually pursue their calling seven days in every week. — Bishop Charles E. Cheney, D.D. If you English people do not take heed, the railway system will be a battering-ram to break down your Sabbaths. — Merle d'Aubigne. Sunday is worth more than Sunday journalism. What Sunday journals displace is worth more than what they supply. They displace rest. They displace the mood of religious thought fulness and worship, without which no civilization can be maintained at a high level. The most influential dailies of the world do not issue Sunday edi- tions. Civilization would stand higher than it now does with us if all Sunday journals were now stopped, as both industrial and moral nui- sances. The deepest rest comes from the harmonized activity of all the faculties, especially of the highest. The worship of the devout is the subtlest rest. The change of posture of the soul from the drill of the six days of work into the mood of worship is productive of more rest than the filling up of the Sabbath with anxious brooding over week- day affairs and the settling of small matters, or work left over from the other part of the week.— Joseph Cook. When public opinion shall have taken hold of this matter, as it has taken hold of the dram-shop being open on Sunday ; when men will learn that the laws of the Creator are immutable ; when each man, for himself and for others, discountenances the abuse of Sunday, even though it may be to the detriment of his comfort or his pocket ; we may expect a change which will give to the railroad man the same precious rest enjoyed by all other classes. — President H. B. Led- YARD, Mich. Central R. JR. WHAT OF SUNDAY MAILS, SUNDAY TRAINS, AND SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS? The refusal of the Egyptian government, in the days of Moses, to allow its Hebrew slaves a day of respite Jrom their hard labor, for rest and religion — a refusal which brought disaster to the nation — has a self-evident message to the governments, and to the railroad and newspaper corporations which are to-day holding mill- ions of employees — two millions at least in the United States alone in 1892 — in the slavery of Sabbathless toil. 181 Although I refer to this Biblical analogy, I propose to treat the subject of Sunday mails, Sunday trains, and Sunday newspapers wholly from a humanitarian standpoint, as an advocate of the right of workingmen and all others to rest on the Sabbath from all unneces- sary labor and business. These three industries are so closely connected with each other that they can hardly be considered except together. On many railroads the first Sunday trains, and on some roads the only Sunday trains now on, were provided to carry the mail. The Congress of the United States has the honor, if honor it be, of intro- ducing and " expediting" the Sunday railroading of many if not all the American lines. Courts declare that the United States mails give the trains which carry them right of way, regardless of State laws. Railroading, except what begins and ends in the same 270 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. State, even apart from the carrying of mails, is declared by the New York courts to be " interstate commerce," and as such not under the control of the State but of Congress. Sunday railroads and Sunday mails, then, need to be treated of together as phases of Sunday work which Congress alone can effectually and fully regulate ; while Sunday newspapers are coupled with them inasmuch as they are promoted by Sunday mails, and themselves greatly increase Sunday railroading, which in turn increases the Sunday mail service. For instance, as I learn from The Christian Statesman and other papers, whose statements I have verified by correspondence with Postmaster Pearson, when the New York dailies secured- extra trains and pony ex- presses in the summer of 1883 to carry their Sunday papers into country towns about New York hitherto unreached by them, and even as far as Saratoga, the city postmaster co-operated by sending mails in their trains and expresses to places where no Sunday mails had previously been sent, making extra Sunday work for railroad men, for postmasters, for newsdealers, and carrying the noise of trains and newsboys and the excitement of newspapers and mails into scores of villages that had previously enjoyed a Sabbath of rest for body and mind. The Chicago Times ; in 1884, se- cured from the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad a Sunday morning train to carry its three blankets full of Sunday gossip and scandal to every village and town from Chicago to Milwaukee, eighty-five miles away. Here is a fragment of their own description of the result : " All along the route copies of The Times had been distributed ; every village, however small, had been fully supplied with a great daily paper giving them the entire news of the day, and finally the train swept SUNDAY MAILS. 2J\ into the Cream City. Circulators were waiting with wagons to receive their allowance of the paper ; news- boys crowded around in eager contest, intent upon getting the first quota, while citizens of the town stood around rubbing their eyes in mild wonder and gazing at a train that had brought them in time for their breakfast-tables copies of a paper printed eighty-five miles off, and which were yet as complete editions as circulated in the great metropolis. All Milwaukee voted The Times Sunday train a great success." To lessen the expense of such trains, efforts are con- stantly made by the newspapers of all large cities to increase the Sunday mail service, thus increasing Sab- bath work in post-offices, on railroads, and among news- dealers, as well as in newspaper establishments. Sun- day mails and Sunday newspapers increase Sunday rail- road work ; Sunday trains and Sunday mails increase newspaper work ; Sunday newspapers and their trains increase post-office work ; and so this triumvirate of Sabbath desecrators must be considered together. This is called a " Railway Age" by some, a " Paper Age" by others. It is both. The steam that prints the paper and draws the train is the partner of the Sabbath in making our modern civilization. Whether these partners shall co-operate or oppose each other is a very important question. SUNDAY MAILS. Sunday mails in the United States, as far as transpor- tation is concerned, are ' ' coeval with the Constitution. " At least the Postmaster-General of 1815 so declared. There are no reliable records of such mail transporta- 272 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. tion during the early years of the nation's life, but it is probable that mails were carried on the Sabbath, from the first, on a few of the most important stage routes. It was not until April 30, 18 10, however, that any Sun- day delivery of mail was authorized by Congress, and its action met with, such vigorous protest from the people in all parts of the country, that it would proba- bly have been rescinded but for the breaking out of the war of 181 2, which made an excuse for its continuance as a war measure. The opposition to Sunday mails was renewed in 1828-29, when 467 petitions against them were sent to Congress from 21 States. The arguments then used 851 need to be urged anew. It was claimed by the petitioners that Congress had received from the States no power to authorize such work on the Sab- bath as had been always illegal in nearly all of them, and that the law requiring Sunday mails was therefore unconstitutional. 108 It was urged also that to require any class of government officers to work on the Sab- bath was an infringement on their rights of conscience, and also, in this case, as all other government officers were excused from Sunday work, an infringement on their right to equitable treatment. It was urged that the measure was not only needless but harmful, phy- sically, mentally, morally, both to the postmasters and to the people, and that, while discarding the union of Church and State, the nation could not ignore the connection of morality and the State. Another strong argument appears in a petition from Kentucky: "Your Memorialists protest against the States supporting, aiding, or being united to the Church ; and they also protest against the civil power being used to trample down or persecute the Church, or to weaken and destroy one Church duty. ' ' Another SUNDAY MAILS. 273 petition says : " When the Constitution provided that Congress should pass no law establishing religion, it surely was not intended to vest that body with the right to pass a canon desecrating one of the most sacred in- stitutions of the religion of the nation. This law is against religion/' Yet another forceful argument of the petitioners was the following. ''During the ses- sion of Congress in 1838 (on the 12th of May and the 8th of July) the House was not permitted to pro- ceed with business on Sunday morning by the steady and firm resistance of a large number of members, who refused to recognize the propriety of proceeding with their ordinary business on that day. The votes for adjournment were nearly equally divided, and more than once lost by the casting vote of the chair. Members then declared that they would leave the House, and not return before Monday morning, unless brought in by force, and very properly contend- ed that no authority existed to compel their attendance on the Lord ' s- day ; and the House on both occasions was compelled to adjourn. . . . Now, since those men would not consent to labor a few hours on one or two Sabbaths in a year, with what consistency can they compel many thousands of their constituents to labor every Sabbath in the year ? Among the amend- ments to the Constitution, and equally binding, is the following — Article I.: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or to prohibit the free exercise thereof. ' Now place beside this the clause : ' and it shall be the duty of the postmaster, at all reasonable hours, on every day of the week, to deliver on demand, any letter, or paper, or packet, to the person entitled to, or authorized to receive the same,' and see whether they are consistent with each 274 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. other ; see whether a conscientious Christian can be a postmaster and at the same time enjoy the free exercise - of his religion. If Congress has a right to require such labor, can not it require many other things contrary to the Christian religion, as that every member of Con- gress, of the Executive, and every officer of the Gen- eral Government, shall on every day of the week at- tend to the duties of his appointment, until every Christian shall be excluded from office ? But would not such laws prohibit the free exercise of religion, and be unequal and unconstitutional ? Would not this be as effectual a ' religious test' as to require a be- lief in a particular system of religion as a qualification for office ? . . . But if the clause complained of be not a violation of that instrument [the Constitution], it is against the constitution of Heaven. And what people ever prospered legislating against God ?" These arguments, which were apparently almost vic- torious when first presented, would undoubtedly have triumphed long since but that the petitioners lacked that persistency which inherits the 'promises. These Damascus blades of logic, never out of date, wait for strong hands to wield them once more. Section 525 of the present " Postal Laws and Regula- tions" of the United States says : " When the mail arrives on Sunday he [the postmaster] will keep his post-office open for one hour or more after the arrival and assortment thereof, if the public convenience re- quires it, for the delivery of the same only. If it be re- ceived during the time of public worship, the opening of the post-office will be delayed until the services have closed." Section 974 forbids the transaction of money-order business on Sunday, and Section 811 says: "Postmasters are not required to receive other SUNDAY MAILS. 275 matter for registration oji Sundays," which last is small protection, as it puts the responsibility of refus- ing such work on each postmaster, whose political in- terests warn him not to offend any one. Whether the mail " arrives on Sunday" or not depends on the Post- master-General, who has full power to make no further contracts which shall include the carriage of mail on the Sabbath, and to provide that hereafter no mail matter shall be collected or distributed on that day ; ,00 ° but as a Postmaster-General holds office only during the pleasure of the President who appoints him, and as he is largely guided in his plans by the action of Congress, the American people, through their repre- sentatives at Washington, are at last resort the power to decide whether mails shall be handled on the Sab- bath. The clause in the law, " if the local conven- ience require it," would seem to give every town local option as to the opening of its post-office on the Sab- bath. If a majority of the citizens of any place should request the Postmaster-General to keep the local post- office closed all through the Sabbath, it would doubt- less, be done. That there is not a larger number of postmasters resting on the Sabbath from business, and of communities resting from the perplexities and cares that letters bring, is doubtless due to the fact that the few who want Sabbath mails make a louder demand than the many who do not. It is also to be noted that so long as the mails are carried on the Sabbath, they will, in most towns, have to be received and delivered on that day. The only effectual remedy is to stop the Sunday carriage of mails. I have received information, in response to a circular, from about two hundred cities, and towns in all parts of the United States, in regard to the Sunday opening of post-offices. 2j6 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Only a few do not open, -and these in very small towns, many, if not most of them, off the line of the railroad. Most of the post-offices are open for one hour on the Sabbath. Many offices, however, keep open two or three hours, and some all day. Hon. Hiram Price, Indian Commissioner, writes me that " recently the Washington post-office [by way of national example, I suppose] has been kept open all day, to the great dissatisfaction of many employees, who lose their Sunday in consequence. " In many places mails are not only received and delivered (not by carriers, however, as yet), but also collected and despatched on the Sabbath. In the New York Post- Office, as I am informed by Postmaster Pearson, " one half of the entire clerical and carrier force is on duty during a portion of each Sunday." "Including the branches, about seven hundred persons are employed during a portion of each Sunday." The following suggestive appeal from a post-office clerk in New York utters the " bitter cry" of thou- sands who are compelled to work on the Sabbath that the curiosity of the people to see their mail may not, even once a week, wait twenty-four hours ; that the rapids of business, which are hurrying men on the cataract of disease and death, may not have even one day's abate- ment. The letter was sent to The Christian Union, and through it to the " religious press" in general, during the postmastership of Mr. James, soon after promoted to be Postmaster-General, and is as follows : " Do you think it right or proper for the postmaster of New York to order his clerks down on Sunday, out of their regular turn, to get up extra work that could be done either on Saturday or Monday ? Mr. James has done this. Are the mails so important * The above data are for 1884. For more recent facts see p. 350 ff.; also my " CiviJ Sabbath," Chap. III., and my " Sabbath Reform," Chap. IV. SUNDAY MAILS. 277 that a clerk should be taken away from his pew in church with his family to satisfy the increase of busi- ness ? Our regular Sunday (eight hours' hard work or more) used to be one out of every four. At present it is one out of three, and threatens soon to be every other Sunday on duty. I think the government can afford to treat their faithful servants somewhat better, and am sure if the religious press will raise its voice in this matter much good will result." New York carriers, after working fourteen hours a day through the week-days — some of them also watch- ing all night once a fortnight — are most of them required to work alternate Sabbaths — some in the branch offices escaping with one Sunday's work per month. I am sorry to find, by an interview with Postmaster Palmer, that in the Chicago Post-office the case is much worse. Of the entire force of seven hundred and fifty, only thirty-eight are entirely free from Sab- bath work. Of the registry department of forty-six, one third can be absent each Sabbath, giving persons in that department, if all are treated alike, only one whole Sabbath in three for rest. The carriers in the branch offices — about one hundred in all — can, by doubling work on the Sabbaths when they are on duty, rest on alternate Sabbaths ; but nearly two hundred carriers — those connected with the central station — work one half day of every Sabbath ; the entire force of distributors and clerks also have to be there every Sabbath during the hours of morning service, and something more. In short, while in New York fifty per cent of the entire postal force are resting during the whole of each Sabbath, in Chicago it is only thirteen per cent, a discrepancy which we believe the humane 278 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. postmaster of Chicago will not be willing to have con- tinued. The postmaster of Cleveland — taken as a specimen of the smaller cities — writes me that fifty-nine men are on duty Sabbath forenoons, and twenty-three in the afternoons, and that " mails are received and for- warded just the same as on week-days !" A great majority of the post-offices are carried on by not more than two persons, both of whom are needed whenever mails are being handled, and in these cases the whole post-office force lose a part or all of their Sabbath rest, not once or twice a month, but every Sabbath. In 1890 the Postmaster-General re- ported 60,000 post-offices and 15,000 mail cars, with about 150,000 employees, few of whom do no Sunday work. Government authorizes this needless work in States that forbid Sunday labor and business by its authority over "interstate commerce;" but in such States stamps, postals, etc., can legally be sold on the Sabbath only in "original packages," and mail only so delivered ; while collecting Sunday mail from street boxes, if permissible, is at any rate unauthorized. A business man, writing of the two hours' opening of the Montreal Post-office on the Sabbath, condemns it as needless, since letters of friendship could wait until the next day, while letters of business can not be of any legitimate use till then, and are not taken out on the Sabbath by the great majority of mer- chants. Business men may well wait a little for their letters once a week, in order, by allowing post- office employees Sabbath culture of conscience, to be surer of not losing the most valuable of them alto- gether. It is significant in this connection that the Shah of Persia, returning from a tour of Europe, deter- SUNDAY MAILS. 279 mined to have a post-office system similar to those he had seen, but found himself seriously hindered because his Sabbathless country did not afford enough honest men to handle money letters. This national interference with the public rest of body and mind and with moral culture can hardly fail to increase unless it is speedily abolished. England, while in some aspects of Sabbath observ- ance an example t-o the United States, is, in this matter of Sunday mails, a wholesome warning. Scot- land's restrictions on the Sunday mails closely re- semble those of the United States, but in England the wedge has been driven further, as if to remind Scot- land and America of what they are coming to. Eng- lish post-offices on the Sabbath resemble those of the United States in their suspension of post-office bank- ing—which with them includes not only money orders, but also insurance and annuity business — and also in the fact that " hundreds of post-office officials are hard at work every Sabbath in the various traveling post-offices" on the mail trains ; but in most other respects they have attained a more advanced stage of national Sabbath-breaking than the United States, and so represent to the latter the evils to which they are tending in allowing Sunday mails to rob government employees of their right to Sabbath rest. English post-offices differ wholly from those of the United States in that they are also the telegraph offices, and as such use government servants on the Sabbath, not for cases of necessity only, but for all sorts of needless telegraphing, Sunday being the chief day for the devil's messages through his sporting fraternity. In most of the points in which English post-offices resemble those of the United States, they 280 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. are a few stations ahead in robbing their employees of Sabbath rest. While American post-offices, as a rule, open only one hour on the Sabbath, British post- offices are generally open for two hours. While American post-offices deliver mail on the Sabbath only to those who call for it at the office, about half of the English post-offices send out their overworked carriers for one round at least on the Sabbath. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, London, and one hun- dred and fourteen other large towns, besides three thousand rural districts*, are exceptions which prove the rule — unnecessary. Dr. John Gritton, Secretary of the Lord's Day Ob- servance Society, of London, shows that since 1880 the Sunday work in English post-offices has been very greatly increased. " In certain important towns, the single collection, which used to suffice, has grown into two or even three." By a recent rule, " Persons living beyond a free delivery are permitted to deposit and receive parcels on the Lord's- day. " During 1.883 the public were permitted, for the first time, to post letters on the Sabbath in all mail trains carrying sorters at every station where such trains stop. " Even the rules requiring that country carriers " having a daily round of as much as fourteen miles shall be free from duty on alternate Sundays," and that city post- men who have made a Sunday morning delivery " shall be free from all other work for that day," are " some- times, perhaps frequently, violated." A carrier, in resigning, gave as his reason that it had been seven- teen years since he could get up on Sunday morning and clean himself and go to a place of worship like other people. About twenty-three thousand five hundred postal employees of the British Government SUNDAY MAILS. 28 1 are thus weekly robbed of their God-given Sabbath rest in England and Wales alone, with the prospect that the number will be greatly increased with each new year if the British people do not resist the continuance of this injustice by petitions .to Parliament, and by avail- ing themselves of the rule that a Sunday rural post shall be kept off or taken off if the receivers of two thirds of the letters of the district so desire. America will be blind indeed if she does not see in the English postal system the increased oppression of workingmen to which her Sunday mail is swiftly tend- ing, and put on the brakes to bring it to a full halt in time. In New York City, there was one Sunday delivery a few years ago by the overworked carriers, and the plan would doubtless have been continued until now had not some of New York's best citizens promptly urged the Postmaster-General of that time to retract his inhumane order. Who can doubt that if the American people become thoroughly accustomed to the collection, transportation, and post-office delivery of mail on the Sabbath, the carrier delivery will be added, with so much added injury to the health and morals of men who are constantly handling the wealth of the nation ? As England warns America, Germany warns both of the ever-increasing evils that come from opening the Pandora box of the Sunday mail. The German Reichstag recently passed a bill reducing the number of carrier deliveries on the Sabbath to one, and oppos- ing the receipt of merchandise at post-offices on that day. The post-offices of Berlin, Hamburg, and a few other places, where labor was formerly uninterrupted, have recently closed on the Sabbath from nine o'clock till five, though some of them are open for an hour 282 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. in the middle of the day. " Seventy thousand persons, engaged without interruption in public and private postal service in Germany, are still deprived, wholly or in part, of their Sabbath rest. Of these, the num- ber incapacitated by sickness and entitled to pensions increases from year to year to an alarming extent." The moral loss who can tell ! The German people are petitioning, in the name of humanity and good morals, for a still further reduction of Sunday work in the postal service. In Austria, also, both Government and peo- ple are making efforts similar to those of Prussia for the diminution of Sunday mails. Why should Switzerland, England, and the United States learn by hard experience what the Sunday mail, when it is finished, will produce, when they might learn it from the present groans of Germany ? Yet another reason why Sunday mails ought to be everywhere discontinued is that the government of a nation sJwuld set a good example of Sabbath-keeping to its people.™ If a government, as an employer, keeps its employees at work on the Sabbath, it can hardly expect much respect for its laws which require an opposite course of other employees. At the General Synod of the Lutheran Church of Germany, Dr. Bauer, court preach- er, arraigned the German Government for its Sabbath- breaking example. He mentioned the widespread complaint that the boards of state officers violated the Sabbath in manifold ways. Canals and bridges and ministerial residences were built, and the muster of soldiers and marches were made without any real neces- sity. Through such things the very allegiance of the people was shaken, when they must defend them- selves against the authorities. The example of such things did more harm than the strongest preaching SUNDAY MAILS. 283 could do good. To this sentiment, the great assem- bly, representing the German people better than the Reichstag, gave its earnest assent. The argument of Thomas Hughes, in the British Parliament, against opening national museums on the Sabbath, that if they once allowed government servants to be employed as a matter of course on the Sabbath, it might throw the whole of the manufacturing interest of the country open in the same way, is equally forcible as an argu- ment against Sunday mails. Governmental Sabbath- breaking by military parades is complained of, not only in Germany, but also in France, Switzerland, Montreal, and the United States. 109 There would seem to be far more excuse for Sunday battles in time of war than for Sunday parades in time of peace ; but even the former are generally unnecessary, and have proved fatal to the attacking party with suggestive frequency. It was so in the battles of Big Bethel, Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, Mill Spring, Pittsburg, Win- chester, and others of the late war between the States, and also in the remoter battles of Lake Cham- plain, New Orleans, Quebec, Monmouth, Waterloo. 110 No wonder many of the common people forget to hallow the Sabbath, and to keep the laws that protect it, when members of the royal family of Great Britain 111 and many political and military leaders on both sides of the sea do not hesitate to travel by boat and train on the Sabbath ! No wonder the people of the two countries are losing their respect for the Sab- bath and the laws that protect it, when the British Parliament 852 and the United States Congress 112 have repeatedly held their sessions far into the Sabbath, and when the two governments encourage, and in a sense require, the running of Sunday mail trains, which 284 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. weaken it in every house whose windows look out upon them. The most appropriate speech made in a recent Sunday session of Congress was one by an outsider, an old man of venerable aspect in the gallery, who, with sonorous and thrilling tones, cried out to the Sabbath-breaking politicians below : " The wicked shall be turned into Hell, and all the nations that forget God. You are dishonoring God to-day, and may He forgive you for it !" One longs for a repetition of the courage of that Lord Mayor of London who stopped the carriage of King James I. for illegal Sunday traveling, and of those Massachusetts yeomen who arrested the judges of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts for disobeying the law against Sunday traveling — a dilemma from which they could escape only by humbly petitioning the legislature for a nolle prosequi. Rulers and judges should be examples of obedience to the laws, whether they like them or not. We are glad to note the Sabbath-keeping examples of several recent Presidents of the United States — of Hayes and Garfield, in habitually walking to church that their menservants in the stable might rest and wor- ship on the Sabbath as well as themselves ; and of Grant, when ex-President, in refusing to attend Sunday horse-races in Paris. With these we may appropriately mention the Lord Mayor of London for 1884, who refused to follow the usual custom of going to church " in state," on the ground that it would impose un- necessary Sunday labor on his servants — an example full of suggestion. As the closed doors of the American Centennial Exhibition and of the British and American depart- ments of the Paris Exhibition were impressive and in- SUNDAY MAILS. 285 fluential national witnesses to the value of restful, thoughtful Sabbaths, so and much more would the closing of British and American post-offices, and the discontinuance of Sunday mails make the governments of these lands wholesome examples to other employers, who can now plead government precedent for robbing their employees of their God-given right to Sabbath rest. No wonder capital oppresses labor, when the Capitol leads the way. The principal argument for this Sunday mail service, which is injuring the health and morals of thousands, is that some letter about sickness or death might be detained if the mails were not handled on the Sabbath. But this argument melts at the touch. " Letters delivered on Sabbath must -have been posted not later than the previous day, so that telegrams for- warded on Saturday instead of them would have been delivered on the self-same day, and long before such letters ; and letters posted on Sabbath are not delivered sooner than Monday, so that telegrams transmitted on Monday morning instead of them would be received as soon as such letters. Therefore a total cessation throughout the entire Sabbath from all postal work would not necessitate the transmission or delivery of any telegrams on that day. Even the telegraph would be used but very little, if at all, on the Sabbath, if its use were confined strictly to cases of necessity and mercy, and there is no commercial or social or civil need outside this which the mails and the telegraph can not fully meet in six days of each week." 857 Another argument for Sabbath mails, which even Christian men sometimes thoughtlessly echo, is that business interests in the large cities make the handling 286 THE SABBATH FOREMAN. of mails on the Sabbath a "-necessity." The answer to this is not a counter-theory, but a fact from the largest city in the world, a city of five millions of peo- ple. " Within a radius of five miles from the general post-office, London, no inland letters are collected, carried, sorted, delivered, or dispatched on the Lord's- day. " 113 " What ought to be done can be done." The only other argument that is urged in defense of Sunday mails is that it is very convenient for farmers, who seldom come into their market town, to get their, mail when they drive in for church on the Sabbath. To say nothing of the incongruity of preceding or following a service of public worship with the secular mail, 111 which is like opening or closing a prayer-meet- ing with "Yankee Doodle" or "Wearing of the Green," it is enough to say that the mere convenience of a few ought not to be secured at the cost of the general good. The farmer can better send for his mail on Monday than have thousands of other men lose their needed rest to give it to him on the Sab- bath. When David expressed a longing for water from the cool well of Bethlehem, from which he was cut off by a hostile army, and three of his mighty men cut their way through and brought the water, he refused to drink it, saying, " Shall I drink the blood of these men ? For with the jeopardy of their lives they brought it." So the farmer might well refuse to call for his mail on the Sabbath, even though the office was open and at hand, saying, " God forbid that I should Have my Sunday mail at the cost of rest and health and home life and moral culture to thousands in the postal and railway service, for with the jeopardy of their lives they brought it." SUNDAY MAILS. 287 How can the discontinuance of Sunday mails, demanded alike by the laws of God and the laws of physical and moral health, be secured ? (1) The President of the United States might well call the attention of Congress to this subject, which recent riots in Sabbathless Cincinnati, on the back- ground of the riots of Sabbathless workingmen in 1877, have shown to be a question of national impor- tance. The army orders of Washington and Lincoln afford glorious precedents for such a State paper. Gladstone might also add to the lustre of his great name by seeking to abolish the Sunday mails that mar the grand example of the British Sabbath. (2) Postmaster-Generals might use the almost abso- lute power given to them more heroically and helpfully than they do. (3) In the unlikelihood that either Presidents or Pre- miers or Postmaster-Generals will lead off singly this great reform, Parliament and Congress can and should abolish the Sunday mails as a measure of relief for workingmen, as a national health' measure, and as a preventive of socialism, riots, and crime. In the division of labor, members of Parliament and Congress- men are generally freed from other business to think for the people in regard to political matters, to lead them in statemanship, as clergymen do in religion, and doctors in matters of health. Congressmen and members of Parliament should no more wait for the busy people to lead them, by threats and importuni- ties, to improved Sabbath legislation, than ministers should follow rather than lead the public sentiment of their flocks, or doctors depend on their patients' notions of physic. (4) Inasmuch as the political code now in vogue, 288 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. both in Great Britain and the United States, leads to a wheelbarrow government, carried on not by legisla- tors drazving the people upward, but by the people pushing them from behind, the people must accept the situation, and push for legislation against Sunday mails by the pulpit, the platform, the press, and especially by petition. Individually, every one helps on this reform who refuses to use the post-office on the Sabbath, either for the receiving or sending of mail. In England one of the post-office rules is : Any person can have his letters, etc., retained in the post-office on Sunday by addressing to the postmaster a written request, duly signed, to that effect." Every one who makes such a request lightens the carriers' Sunday toil, and helps, by his indirect protest, the abolition of all Sunday mails. A letter from Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, who was then in Europe, was brought one Sabbath morn- ing, with the mail of other guests, to the hotel at Saratoga where his noble mother was stopping. It was known that her regard for the Sabbath led her to leave unopened until Monday all mail brought to her on the Sacred Day, but it was thought that in this case she would be constrained to break her rule. She did not, however, and her loyalty to the Sabbath was told for a memorial of her all over Saratoga, and became a good leaven in many careless consciences. She had done what she could. Every such example hastens the day when those in the postal service shall be allowed their Sabbath for rest and religion. A Pi.ank for Political Platforms. — We favor, as an important part of the move- ment of shortening the hours of labor, the enactment of a national law exempting from Sunday work all Government employees, and forbidding all Sunday work on the rail- Mads so far as Congressional control of interstate commerce will permit, believing that the law of Sabbath rest is both a law of God and a law of nature, and so should be a law of nations, especially in republics, whose liberty can be preserved only by such culture of mind and heart and conscience as is afforded by the leisure hours of a Sabbath pro- tected against both toil and dissipation. SUNDAY TRAINS. 289 SUNDAY TRAINS. Sunday trains and Sunday boats present greater diffi- culties than Sunday mails. Congress could prohibit the latter entirely, but the former only so far as they belong to " interstate commerce," leaving to the States the regulation of all Sunday excursions and other traveling which begins and ends in the same State. In attempting to regulate railroad travel, rich corporations are encountered, whose connections or competitions with other roads increase the complica- tions ; and these are still further multiplied by the demands for the transportation of mail and milk, hun- gry cattle, and perishable fruits. In Great Britain, where there are few if any rail- roads on which trains can not begin and end their journey on the same day, and where one legislative body controls all the railway companies, Sunday railroading might be stopped much easier than in the United States, whose transcontinental trains require as long for one trip as a steamer plying between «the United States and Europe, and whose railroads are controlled in part by State legislatures and in part by Congress. And yet, a comparison of Great Britain with the United States and Canada in the matter of Sunday railroading leaves the former, as Dr. Gritton, of London, 799 has said, "at a great disadvantage." The Hastings and St. Leonard's Lord's Day Association, of England, in its report for 1869, says : " To Chris- tian patriots the thought is humiliating, that whereas it is found that on six of our great lines there are 1403 passenger and 342 goods trains on Sundays, in the United States, out of 124 railroad companies which 290 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. last year made a return to the New York Sabbath Committee, 65 ran no train at all on the LorcTs-day, and the remaining 59 ran 177 passenger and 42 cattle and freight trains, being an average of less than four to each line, including both goods and passenger trains. To the Christian holders of railroad shares, many of whom are represented by this association, the Sabbath-breaking of the various companies must be a matter of deep solicitude, for in their name, and with their apparent sanction — unless they protest against it- thousands of railway officials and servants are robbed of a day of rest, which the social community would not dare to think of taking from drapers or carpen- ters. In their name, too, the quiet of whole commu- nities is disturbed on the Sacred Day by the whistle of goods trains, the rumbling of omnibuses and carriages, the arrival and departure of hundreds of passengers, and the keeping in employment of other thousands to minister to the wants of those who thus travel." Since this report, Sunday- trains have multiplied rapidly on both sides of the sea, and the conserva- tive Secretary of the New York Sabbath Committee declares " the peril to Sabbath observance from this source to be great and increasing." He also says: ' The question is becoming every day more and more serious. With the immense extension of our railway system, Sunday labor is increasing at a rapid pace. Already tens of thousands are wholly deprived by it of the weekly rest, and of the opportunity of worshiping God and enjoying domestic intercourse which the Lord's-day brings to others. This deprivation can not but work the gravest evils to the men themselves, to their families, and to the whole community. Rail- way traffic demands cool heads and faithful hands. SUNDAY TRAINS. 291 Enforced disregard of one of the Divine commands makes men indifferent to other of God's laws. The community at large, to which the Sabbath with its rest and holy influences is so necessary, can not but be in- jured by the inevitable disturbance of its quiet hours, can not but be demoralized by the example of an ha- bitual disregard of the day on the part of railway cor- porations and their employees. . . . It is not a' ques- tion to be decided merely on grounds of apparent pecuniary profit or business convenience. Such con- siderations would open shops and factories, keep the wheel of business going seven days in the week, and practically banish the Sabbath from our land. We respectfully submit that there are some things which, as men bound up with the rest in the social system, with all its responsibilities, you can not afford to do. You can not afford to wrong those who serve you for wages by forcing or inducing them to set at naught what is alike a law of God and a law of their own physical and moral nature. You can not afford to break down an institution which sustains so vital a relation to the well-being of the family and the State." 855 Letters from many places show that the railroad is often one of the most dangerous foes of the Sabbath. I give extracts from two, which represent many. The first is from America's " New West," dated New Mexico, June, 1884, and written by one who has lived in that Territory for eleven years : ' ' We have a very good Sunday law in New Mexico, but it is broken by a hundred thousand people every week. The law prohibits every kind of work, except irrigation and works of necessity, and every kind of play and amuse- ment. It was passed in Santa Fe, by the Legislature 292 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. of 1876, and it was wonderful to see how quiet all the towns were after that, with all their stores closed. We had no saloons to amount to anything in those days. But in 1 88 1 the railroad came, with all the filth it generally brings, and the Sunday law is now void in the larger towns, where stores are in full blast, saloons especially. Drunkenness and shootings are frequent on the Sabbath, while even Americans, sober gentle- men (?), have base-ball games on Sunday, and there are picnics, theatres, circuses, public balls, and excur- sions, private and public, all contrary to the law, but who cares for that ?" A letter from a former resident of Wales tells the same story, as to the influence upon Sabbath observ- ance of the introduction of a British railroad. In speak- ing of Welsh Sabbath observance, he cautions us to distinguish between North and South Wales. South Wales, bordering on England, and being the centre of iron works, the population and their habits differ greatly from those of North Wales. Such cities in South Wales as Merther and Aberdair have imported into them the most lawless and drunken mining element, who affect the integrity of a normal Sabbath in South Wales. In North Wales there is a much better Sabbath, resembling that of Scotland, but inferior to what it was before the introduction of railroads. My correspondent well remembers the havoc of the Sabbath during the construction of the first railroad built in Wales, the Chester and Holy- head. Previous to this, scarcely a man, woman, or child could have been seen in the streets during the hours of Divine service, and every sanctuary was filled, but the foreign element that came with the railroad weakened the Sabbath along the whole line. SUNDAY TRAINS. 293 In England and Wales to-day one third of the passenger trains and one fourth of the freight or goods trains run on the Sabbath. Scotland partly proves the needlessness of this Sunday work by running only one eighteenth as many trains on the Sabbath as on other days — 205 out of 3673, which is just 205 too many. Even in Scotland, only The Great North of Scotland Railroad is credited by the Sabbath Alli- ance 797 as faithful to the Lord's-day. Dr. Gritton, 799 of London, after careful investigation, declares that 1 ' on each Lord's-day there are running in Great Britain no less than 6839 trains ; the work done in connection with these trains falls on an army of about 100,000 men." On the Continent this evil has gone farther than in England even, for Sunday trains are there even more numerous than those of week-days. But we are glad to note slight evidences of Continental reaction against this Pharaonic oppression of railroad men, even among those who recognize only humane reasons for Sabbath rest. In France the Chambers of Commerce of several of the cities and larger towns have memorial- ized the Government in favor of diminishing Sunday freight traffic on the railways. But no reform is likely to be effective that does not aim at the entire suppression of so great a sin and crime as Sunday trains. On this difficult subject I do not propose to utter my own opinions chiefly, but rather, for the most part, allow railroad men to show in their own language the evils resulting from Sunday trains. (1) What do railroad employees say of their Sabbath- less business ? A few years since some four hundred and fifty of his 294 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. locomotive engineers petitioned Mr. William H. Vanderbilt for "the cessation of Sunday labor.' ' After pointing out how Sunday running had become " a great hardship," they continue : " We have borne this grievance patiently, hoping every succeeding year that it would decrease. We are willing to submit to any reasonable privation, mental or physical, to assist the. officers of your company to achieve a finan- cial triumph ; but after a long and weary service, we do not see any signs of relief, and we are forced to come to you with our trouble, and most respectfully ask you to relieve us from Sunday labor so far as it is in your power to do so. Our objections to Sunday labor are : First — This never-ending labor ruins our health and prematurely makes us feel worn out like old men, and we are sensible of our inability to per- form our duty as well when we work to an excess. Second- — That the customs of all civilized countries, as well as all laws, human and Divine, recognize Sun- day as a day of rest and recuperation ; and notwith- standing intervals of rest might be arranged for us* on other days than Sunday, we feel that by so doing we would be forced to exclude ourselves from all church, family, and social privileges that other citizens enjoy. Third — Nearly all of the undersigned have children that they desire to have educated in everything that will te?id to make them good men and women , and we can not help but see that our example in ignoring the Sabbat Ji day has a very demoralizing influence upon them. Fourth — Because we believe the best interests of the com- pany we serve, as well as ours, will be promoted thereby, and because we believe locomotive engineers should occupy as high social and religious positions as men in any other calling. We know the question will SUNDAY TRAINS. 295 be considered : How can this Sunday work be avoided with the immense and constantly increasing traffic ? We have watched this matter for the past twenty years. We have seen it grow from its infancy until it has ar- rived at its now gigantic proportions, from one train on the Sabbath until we now have about thirty each way ; and we do not hesitate in saying that we can do as much work in six days, with the seventh for rest, as is now done. It is a fact observable by all con- nected with the immediate running of freight trains that on Monday freight is comparatively light ; Tuesday it strengthens a little, and keeps increasing until Satur- day ; and Sundays are the heaviest of the week. The objection may be offered that if your lines stop the receiving points from other roads will be blocked up. In reply, we would most respectfully suggest, that when the main lines do not run, tributaries would only be too glad to follow the good example. The ques- tion might also arise, If traffic is suspended twenty- four hours, will not the company lose one seventh of its profits ? In answer, we will pledge our experience, health, and strength, that at the end of the year our employers will not lose one cent, but, on the contrary, will be the gainers financially. Our reasons are these : At present, the duties of your locomotive engineers are incessant, day after day, night succeeding night, Sunday and all, rain or shine, with all the fearful in- clemencies of a vigorous winter to contend with. The great strain of both mental and physical faculties con- stantly employed, has a tendency in time to impair the requisites so necessary to make a good engineer. Troubled in mind, jaded and worn out in body, the engineer can not give his duties the attention they should have in order to best advance his employer's 296 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. interests. We venture to say, not on this broad con- tinent, in any branch of business or traffic, can be found any class in the same position as railroad men. They are severed from associations that all hold most dear, debarred from the opportunity of worship, that tribute man owes to his God ; witnessing all those pleasures accorded to others, which are the only oases in the deserts of this life, and with no prospect of re- lief. We ask you to aid us. Give us the Sabbath for rest after our week of laborious duties, and we pledge you that with # a system invigorated by a season of repose, by a brain eased and cleared by hours of re- laxation, we can go to work with more energy, more mental and physical force, and can and will accomplish more work and do it better, if possible, in six days than we can now do in seven. We can give you ten days in six if you require it, if we can only look forward to a certain period of rest. In conclusion, we hope and. trust that, in conjunction with other gentlemen of the trunk lines leading to the seaboard, you will be able to accomplish something that will ameliorate our con- dition." That is a classic in the literature of capital and labor, and the refusal to grant it will be heard from on some judgment day, in this world or the other, or both. The Raihvay Age, in the Spring of 1883, when it was gathering many opinions in regard to Sunday trains, published a letter from a freight agent which showed that in addition to Sunday trains there was usually a great deal of needless Sunday work re- quired of railroad men in shops and along the road. 1 The result is," he says, " that a large propor- tion of the employees of all grades are ordered SUNDAY TRAINS. 297 on duty." He suggests that railroad superintendents should require weekly reports of the Sunday work done in every department, that it may at least be greatly reduced, and then closes his letter to railroad officers, directors, and stockholders with this appeal : " On behalf of thousands of my fellow railroad men who are too much deprived of their Sunday rest, I would enter a plea with managers to give this matter some serious consideration and receive the gratitude of their employees as well as improve the morals of their forces, for as a rule the best and most reliable men are those who greatly prefer not to work Sundays. These do not usually get drunk nor strike, and gen- erally can be depended upon. Continual Sunday work is a source of great dissatisfaction among men, who often feel a loss of self-respect and of the respect of others on that account, and who also consider that they have rights, as well as the public and patrons of the road, and do wish the advantages of Sunday privileges of attending church, or at least of having one day in the week they can call their own, to be spent with their families. These claims should at any rate receive careful consideration on the part of those in authority on. our railroads. Of course it may be said that those who do not want to work on Sunday can seek employment elsewhere. This is most cer- tainly true ; but the question arises, Can managers afford to dispose of the matter in such a summary manner?" There is abundant evidence that many railroad men feel bitterly the curse of Sunday work to body and mind and morals. One of them said : " Sir, Sunday is the saddest day of the week to me." Another, with tears in his eyes, exclaimed, in response to words of 298 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. sympathy : " Those cursed Sunday trains !" Another railroad man, when spoken to kindly, in consequence of his being found partially intoxicated, said, with much feeling : " I assure you, sir, I never drank till I took up this Sunday work, but now I get so depressed with endless toil that I think I should kill myself if I did not drink." (2) Let us now hear what railroad managers have to say in regard to Sunday railroad work. A classic from the standpoint of the railway officer, worthy to stand in history beside the foregoing peti- tion of the locomotive engineers, is the following letter from the president of the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago Railway : " Louisville, April 19, 1883. " John McLeod, Esq., General Superintendent L., N. A. and C. Railway, Louisville, Ky. " Dear Sir : In the future operations of the Louis- ville, New Albany and Chicago Railway it is directed that so far as possible no work be done, or trains be run, upon the Sabbath day. You will, on the first of May, stop all trains on the Sabbath, except the even- ing passenger one. Some questions concerning mail transportation have arisen, and if this train is not required I shall issue a further order concerning it. In case of perishable goods or live stock, it may be necessary to do some work, but you will avoid this where it can safely and properly be done. You will in the future run no excursion trains of any kind, for any purpose, on the Sabbath. This order applies to camp-meeting trains. If Christian people can not find other places for worship, this company will not violate Divine and civil law. and deny its em- SUNDAY TRAINS. 299 ployees the essential rest of the Sabbath to carry them to camp-meeting grounds. I am also informed that a number of the company's employees have conscientious scruples against any work on the Sab- bath. There are likely others who do not feel so strongly on this subject. Under no ordinary circum- stances must any employee, who objects on the grounds of his religious convictions, be ordered or required to do any service on the Sabbath. If any difficulties arise in the execution of this regulation, you will please re- port them to me for consideration, and you will also notify the employees of their right, on conscientious grounds, to be fully protected in the observance of a day of rest. I remain, yours truly, " Bennett H. Young, President." This letter attracted the attention of The Railway Age, of Chicago, which obtained a fuller expression from President Young for publication. He wrote as follows : " The laws of God and the laws of man are conclusive on this point, forbidding labor on the Sabbath day ; and every railway manager operating a road on that day violates human and Divine com- mand, and by forcing his employees to do the same, sets before them a continual example and practice of the disregard of the highest obligations. There is nothing in the business of railways which in the nature of the case makes them an exception to these laws, or lifts them above these considerations. They are not a distinct or separate class, but incur the same liabilities and duties as other corporations and citi- zens. . . . The most defenseless property is that of railways. Stretched out along lines reaching sometimes thousands of miles, it is simply impossible to defend it 300 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. from sudden or organized aggression. The riots of 1877 taught some valuable lessons on this point. Railway corporations in times of trouble are simply at the mercy of employees, and the damage done can only be determined by the extent and violence of the pas- sions exhibited. If every man in America were made a policeman it would be impossible to defend all the railway property in this country ; and, as a conse- quence, railroad corporations are more dependent upon the protection of the law-abiding, moral, and Chris- tian sentiments than any other class of property- owners. Are railway men, therefore, wise in thus doing what they can to teach and train their employees to violate the Sabbath, and with impunity to break the laws of the State made for their protection ? Would it not be wiser to do everything possible to encourage religion and a respect for these laws, and thus encour- age the sentiments which go furthest in the protection of the rights of property and life ? There are said to be in the railway service of this country five hundred thousand employees. It is probable that more than one half of these, at some time, are required to do Sunday service. The results of thus requiring two hundred and fifty thousand persons 115 to violate the Sabbath, solely to make money for corporations, and this by direct corporate command, are of incalculable injury, not only to these parties, but to society at large. Men within my knowledge are every Sabbath-day compelled to do work in direct contravention of their religious scruples. It is safe to assume that one half of these employees are Christians ; and this evil, there- fore, becomes the more appalling. When you con- sider how these men, from fear of losing their places, are compelled to do this labor (much of which is SUNDAY. TRAINS. 301 totally unnecessary, and is the result of indifference or cupidity on the part of the managers and stock- holders), it becomes a monstrous wrong against the religion and family rights of these employees. And this compulsory violation of their duties as Christians and citizens teaches them to violate all other laws of the State, and prepares them not only for indifference to the interests of a corporation itself, but for the mani- festation of a disregard for all wise precepts and re- strictions. This is probably the worst feature of the whole custom. No man, in the nature of the case, will be true to an employer who, for mere gain, demands of him a violation of his conscientious scruples." Even though this brave railroad president was able to hold his place only for a short time, and had to give way to one who would run Sunday trains, his name will ever be honored as the leader of a great reform, which others will carry forward to victory. These letters from Bennett Young called out a letter from the president of the Michigan Central Railway, dated at Detroit, May 14th, 1883, in which he says : " I. If all railroad companies competing for the same class of traffic from and to common points were in ac- cord, it tvould be practicable to a very large extent to abandon the running of railway trains on the Sabbath day. The chief difficulty is that in these days of sharp competition time has become such an important ele- ment that if one railroad company would voluntarily cease its traffic for one day during the week, while others continued, it would lose largely thereby. Yet, for example, were each of the trunk lines to absolutely re- fuse to exchange traffic of any kind with their connec- tions, from 6 P. M. Saturday until Monday morning, it would be a simple matter for these trunk lines, as well 302 THE SABBAT.H FOR MAN. as for their Western connections, to so arrange the movement of traffic as to practically do away with the running of Sunday trains. 2. There is no question as to the desirability of prohibiting Sunday work on rail- ways. The law of nature, to say nothing of the high- er law, requires that man should have rest one day in seven. 116 Is there any reason why a railway engineer or conductor is not entitled to his rest as much as a mer- chant or manufacturer? 3. This company has endeav- ored to so arrange the runs of its trainmen and engineers as to bring them home on Sunday, but little can be done in that direction without the concerted action on the part of all companies interested in the same traffic. 4. I do not believe at the end of the year the loss in traf- fic would be appreciable were all Sunday work stopped, and in the. better morale of the men the railway com- panies would be abundantly paid for doing away with work on this day. 5. While the public would no doubt at first be dissatisfied at the cessation of Sunday work, and would claim injury thereby in the matter of deten- tion to freight and delay to mails, it is difficult to see how such injury could really exist, were the practice of doing away with Sunday work made uniform on all roads. As an example, at one time it was thought necessary for each of the Omaha roads to run a train from Chicago Sundays ; after a while this was changed so that a train left each Sunday on one only of the three roads. This caused at first some dissatisfaction, but it soon passed away, and the result of the experi- ment, so far as I have been able to learn, was entirely satisfactory. The effect of this constant and never-end- ing work is not only injurious to the men themselves, but most deplorable to their families. ... To bring about a cessation of Sunday work now would be much less dif- SUNDAY TRAINS. 303 ficult than is would have been a few years since. All over the country railway companies are grouping them- selves into associations for the exchange of traffic, the maintenance of rates, and the better carrying out of agreements, such as, for example, the Trunk Line Com- mittee, the Joint Executive Committee, the South- Western Railway Association, and many others. If these companies can come together on short notice to arrange for any and all questions of mutual interest, it would be a simple matter, were this question of Sunday work properly considered, to bring about a reform in the same." t The Railway Age says editorially, in the same issue with this letter (May 24th, 1883) : " Mr. Ledyard's con- viction that he and other railway managers are all com- mitting a fearful mistake in allowing the continuance and rapid growth of this Sunday labor is held, we be- lieve, by the great majority of railway officers, 111 and it is to be hoped that in their personal and public consideration of the great problems of railway management they will give that serious attention to this subject which its im- portance demands." The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, famous, in connection with the controlling influence of Hon. Wm. E. Dodge, for standing alone in Sabbath observance among the great trunk lines, has been heard from anew on this question in the fol- lowing letter from its president, Samuel Sloan, which was published in 1884 by the New York Sabbath Com- mittee : ' It seems to me that all railroad managers must sympathize with efforts to diminish ' Sunday la- bor,' now, I regret to see, on the increase. In my judgment the necessity, so much urged, does not exist, nor do the public demand from railroad management 304 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. more work than ordinary labor. Railroad men have a right to rest one day in seven and to observe the Sab- bath as much as any other of our fellow-citizens. It must be, and is conceded by all interested, that health and good discipline are promoted by this rest. I think that it would be an easy matter for the Trunk Line Commission to take up the subject, and refer it to a committee to report some regulations or agree upon certain trains that may be deemed necessary to meet any reasonable demands of competing interests or the pub- lic wants in regard to perishable property." This letter calls up the remark of Mr. Dodge in his address at the Boston Sabbath Convention : "I tell our directors that if they compel conductors to break the Fourth Commandment, they have no right to ex- pect them to keep the Eighth." The Christian Statesman of June 26th, 1884, com- menting on several of these replies of railroad managers, and others less favorable, published in a leaflet 855 by the New York Sabbath Committee, says : " Two things are forced upon our mind by the attentive perusal of these letters. First, railroad men, with hardly an ex- ception, are uneasy in mind, dissatisfied with them- selves, and vaguely conscious that they are working against the best interests of the community, in the course which they are now pursuing. Yet they are per- sisting in that course, and pleading various forms of 1 necessity ' as an excuse. And the ' necessity ' is often of the very flimsiest character. So long as Christian men in their discussion of this subject meet the railroad men on this half-way ground, nothing of substantial value will ever be gained. The limits of this necessity it will always be impossible to define. The concession will be like a deliberate proposal to re~ SUNDAY TRAINS. 305 pair a dike, leaving one small hole through which the excess of waters may percolate and do no harm. The end will always be to sweep away the dike. No prin- ciple cuts the Gordian knot of perplexities which rail- road men weave perpetually for the conscience of the country but this : The essential wickedness and Heedless- ness of either freight or passenger traffic along railroad lines on the Sabbath. . . . The second reflection com- pelled by these utterances is that reform at this point is not to be expected from within railroad circles. Argument, remonstrance, entreaty, on the part of the Christian public, will be of no avail. These men are held in the meshes of a vast and complicated system from which a more vigorous conscience than is revealed by any of their number would be necessary to enable them to break away. It is here as in other matters — deliverance must come from without. Those who suf- fer themselves to remain in such corporations and receive the fruits of Sabbath-breaking toil are not the men to devise and carry out a reformation. The only power which can reach the case is the power of law. This is plainly indicated by President R. S. Hayes, who says : ' Until the proper action is taken by the public in the form of amended laws and revised rulings, relieving the roads from liabilities resulting from the suspension of transportation, a certain amount of Sun- day labor must of necessity be performed.' It appears from this that, under the laws of the States and the decisions of the courts, the railroads are actually com- pelled to hurry freight and passengers to their destina- tion regardless of the Sabbath, and are liable for dam- ages if they refuse to do so. Is it not plain that the law must be set right ; must be reversed if it decrees such wrong, and relieved of its ambiguity if it is misin- 306 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. terpreted, before we can expect any general reforma- tion?" During the sessions of the famous International Sab- bath Congress at Geneva, a conference of chief engineers and directors of railways in Switzerland and France was held, in which the belief was expressed that Sun- day traffic could be greatly diminished without pecu- niary loss, and ought to be even at the risk of such loss. In any land a few such directors can stop the Sunday trains. In railroad matters the proverb is doubly true : "It does not take many to make a ma- jority." There are suggestive hints for railroad managers and men in the following incidents about Col. Charles E. Hammond, the first superintendent of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, contributed by H. L. Hammond, who writes: '* My brother did not as- sume that all work could be suspended on Sunday, but he sought to reduce the amount to the minimum, and tried to make such arrangements that all the em- ployes might have a rest. He was firm in the convic- tion that the best interests of the road, as well as of the men, required the keeping of the Sabbath. When superintendent of the C, B. and Q., he sent an order to the Aurora workshops that all unnecessary Sunday work should be discontinued, and explained the order to mean all work not needed to start the cars on time Monday morning. When it was repre- sented that the brasses on the engines must be polish- ed on Sunday, he telegraphed : 'If there are any brasses that can not be kept bright without Sunday labor, let them be painted black.' " Mr. Fairweather, formerly an employee of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, tells this characteristic anecdote of SUNDAY TRAINS. S°7 Colonel Hammond : "A director and one of the larg- est stockholders of the road and I were stopping at the Tremont House, Chicago, one Sunday. He said to me, ' Go and tell Col. Hammond I want to see him this morning/ ' Why, it is Sunday, and I don't think he'll come.' ' Yes, he will ; of course he'll come if you tell him for me.' I went reluctantly. The Colonel met me at the door, and when I told my errand he straightened up till he seemed about eight feet high, and replied, ' Give my respects to Mr. — , and tell him that six days in the week I am superintendent of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, at his service, but this is my Sabbath. Good-morning.' ' Why should not railroad men adopt that sentiment and say, when called on for Sunday work, I am a railroad employee for six days in the week, but this is my Sabbath, and I will not work upon it ? Why not strike once against Sunday work, and not always for higher wages ? There are such heroes, and they seldom become martyrs, except in the prophecies of their timid com- rades. Honesty seldom brings one the crown of martyrdom, but oftener the crown of success. Girard, the infidel millionaire of Philadelphia, one Saturday ordered all his clerks to come on the morrow to his wharf and help unload a newly-arrived ship. One young man replied quietly, " Mr. Girard, I can't work on Sunday." " You know our rules. " "Yes, I know. I have a mother to support, but I can't work on Sunday." "Well, step up to the desk, and the cashier will settle with you." For three weeks the young man could find no work, but one day a banker came to Girard to ask if he could recommend a man for cashier in a new bank. This discharged young 308 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. man was at once named as a suitable person. " But," said the banker, " you dismissed him." " Yes, because he would not work on Sunday. A man who would lose his place for conscience sake would make a trust- worthy cashier. " And he was appointed. That story is but one of many. I will add another as told by the Hon. Wm. E. Dodge in an address on the Sabbath : " I had, as a teacher in my Sunday-school, a man who for many years ran the morning express on the New York and New Haven road. One winter morn- ing, as he came into Sunday-school, he said to me, ' Mr. Dodge, I suppose I have lost my position on the road/ I said, 'What has happened?' for I knew he was in all respects a first-class man, receiving the very highest wages, and had never met with any serious ac- cident. Said he, ' The superintendent sent for me early this morning, to get out my engine to open the road, as there had fallen a deep snow during the night. I sent word that on any other day I was ready to do any extra work, but I could not come on the Sabbath. Before I had finished my breakfast, peremptory orders came for me to come at once and get out my engine. I replied that I was just going to my Sabbath-school, and could not come ; and I presume I shall get my discharge to-morrow.' I said, 'Go early in the morn- ing to the superintendent, and say that, although you are only engaged to run the express train, yet at any time, day or night, if anything special should happen, you would be ready to do what you could for the com- pany, but can not work on Sunday. And if you are dismissed I will secure you a first-rate position on a road in which I am interested, that never runs on Sun- day.' The next Sabbath he told me that he began to speak to the superintendent, but he stopped him, and SUNDAY TRAINS. 309 said, ' I respect your position, and you shall never be called on for Sunday work again. ' A few months after there occurred to that express train the awful accident at Norwalk Bridge, which cost so many valuable lives and over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the company. I at once supposed my good teacher had 'gone to his home,' and made my way to the office of the company, to find instead that he had been permitted to leave for a few days on important busi- ness, and the train had been put in charge of a former engineer of the road, who had just returned from Cal- ifornia. * Oh !' said the superintendent, ' no such acci- dent could have happened if Smith had been on the engine.' " Mr. Dodge, who was prominently connected with several great railroad companies, also contributed to the discussion of Sunday trains the following important letter, written to Rev. Dr. Clark, of Albany, in 1882 : " I have been connected for nearly half a century with some of our principal railroads : was twelve years in the Erie, commencing when it was in Orange Coun- ty and remaining till after its completion to Dunkirk, when they soon commenced running on the Sabbath, when I at once left the direction ; in 1843 I was at the opening of the New Jersey Central, putting in the first shovelful of dirt and making an address. I remained a director till 1873, during all of which time it was a Sabbath-keeping road. During the summer of that year, Mr. Johnston, its president, made a contract with another road to run two trains on Sunday. When we returned in the early fall, the subject came up on the question of approving the contract. It was op- posed by the late John C. Green, Judge Maxwell, of Easton, Pa., Mr. Frelinghuysen, and myself, and after 3IO THE SABBATH FOR MAN. three days' discussion Mr. Maxwell changed his vote and the action of the president was approved. I sent in my resignation, which was not accepted, and 1 at once put my stock (some $130,000) on the market, and sold it at 116 to 118. In two years thereafter it was bankrupt, the stock selling for 10 cents. I was one of the early builders of the Houston and Texas road, and for seven years its president, during which time it was a strictly Sabbath-keeping road ; but it was then controlled by the Morgans, who had pur- chased largely of its stock, and I left it, and it has now become a regular Sabbath-breaking road. . , The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western road was formed in my office in 185 1 by my inviting some hundred gen- tlemen to consider the project. My late father-in-law, Anson G. Phelps, made the first subscription, and my- self the second. I have been a director ever since. It has grown into vast proportions, but has been a strictly Sabbath-keeping road and greatly prosperous. I was pleased, some years ago last summer, when in the office, to see a telegram reply just made by the presi- dent, Mr. Sloan, to a letter from a Methodist minister, asking that trains might be run on Sunday to a camp- meeting some fifteen miles from Scranton. The reply was short, but to the point : i Our trains don't run on Sunday.' We have just completed our road to Buffa- lo as a through line to Chicago, and I tremble for fear of the future. But if it ever runs on Sunday, I at once close my connection with it. No one can esti- mate the vast value to our country from the construc- tion of our railroad system. It has done more than all else, and but for it our country would hardly have ex- tended west of Chicago. But it has done more than all other things to destroy our Sabbaths, and it is be- SUNDAY TRAINS. 311 coming worse and worse ev.ery year. 118 Many roads now use the Sabbath for making up their freight trains with the accumulated freight of one week, thus run- ning more trains on Sunday than any other day in the week. Also that day is the special day for repairs to cars and engines, and the shops of many roads are more busy than other days. I contend that by this policy the roads are driving from them their best and most reliable men, and making the bulk of their em- ployees men who have not the fear of God, and hence are not to be fully trusted. No positions are more important than those occupied by the engineers and conductors of our railroads, and if they are not honest and conscientious men, and also sober men, those who travel run great risks as well as the owners. . . . The time has come when Christian men must realize the fact that when they become stockholders they are part- ners, and will be held responsible by God if they con- tinue as partners in roads that are breaking His com- mandments. It is entirely within the power of the Christian stock and bond holders to stop the running of trains on the Sabbath. Let it once be welLunderstood that our Christian men will not hold stock or bonds on roads running on Sunday, and a large portion of the roads would see that in order to maintain the price of the securities they must respect the feelings of the best men in the country, who are now holders of hun- dreds of millions of stock and bonds in these roads." More Christians are needed who, like Mr. Dodge, will not even have so much part in the destruction of the Sabbath as Saul had in the death of Stephen, that of silently consenting to its death by withholding their protests or not withholding their investments from Sabbath-breaking corporations. If every stockholder 312 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. who does not approve of Sunday trains would even put his disapproval on record in an earnest letter to the di- rectors, the pile would not be swept away without im- pression. It is a suggestive fact that the special Sunday trains and Sunday excursions on one of the railroads of England — the London, Chatham and Dover line — were stopped in 1873, through the efforts of several Sabbath committees, by a majority vote of the stock- holders in their annual meeting. The resolution which the directors finally accepted was the following : " That having regard to the many evils which attend the system of Sunday excursions — especially those to the French coast — and recognizing the right of our employees of all grades to the rest of the Lord's-day, this meeting of proprietors makes it an earnest request to the directors that they will run no more Sunday excursions themselves, and that they will decline to supply special Sunday trains to the National Sunday League, or any other persons or bodies applying for them, except for such restricted conveyance of pas- sengers as seems called for on the ground of public necessity." There ought to be at least one law-abiding and humane stockholder in each railroad corporation brave enough to move a similar but stronger resolution, and put his associates to the test, that it may be known whether Christian corporators as well as their corporations are conscienceless. 119 One of the most important things to be done by the pulpit and re- ligious press is to rouse in Christians who are stock- holders in the great corporations that are said to have no souls, a sense of their " individual responsi- bility to God ",for the Sabbath-breaking of these cor SUNDAY TRAINS. 313 porations. The wealth of our land is three fourths of it in the hands of nominally Christian men. They own a majority of the stock in many railroads and other stock companies. Western railroads would not so generally crush the Sabbath beneath their restless wheels if Christian stockholders in the East adopted the rule of Hon. William E. Dodge, that they would not hold stock in Sabbath-breaking corporations. So the mines of Nevada and elsewhere, whose Sabbath- less men are being ruined in body and soul r are owned largely by Christians in old and New England, few of whom have even expressed a wish to their mine super- intendents as to Sabbath observance. One of the curiosities of the recent discussions of Sunday trains is that two intelligent editors, one secular, the other religious, have laid the responsibility for this crime against human and Divine law on the impersonal "public," in the following fashion: "The responsi- bility for the running of Sunday trains must certainly in the end be placed upon the patrons of the roads." " The post-office authorities are blamed for distributing the mails on Sunday, and the railway corporations are censured for running their trains on Sunday, whereas whatever blame rests in the premises rightly lies at the door of the Christian people who directly demand — or at least avail themselves of — these facilities/' Yes, the patrons of Sunday mails, Sunday trains, and Sunday newspapers, are wholly to blame for the evils resulting from them, precisely as the patrons of Sunday saloons are wholly to blame for that violation of law. The hands of those who put on the attractive trains and open the attractive sajoons are quite as clean as Pilate's after he yielded to the demand of the mob and cruci- fied another of God's earthly representatives. ' Thou 314, THE SABBATH FOR MAN. knowest the people that they are bent on mischief." They are to blame when stockholders fatten their golden calf in the hours that belong to God for wor- ship and to man for rest. Even Christian men sincerely repeat the excuse of the railroad magnates, that " trains could not properly be stopped wherever Sunday happened to catch them,'* as if that were not the very thing which used to be done before Sunday trains were common. Travelers easily adjusted themselves to the plan, and could do so again, it being no more expensive to stop at a hotel than to ride in a palace car. Those who are neither railroad men nor shareholders can help on this reform by an example which gives no countenance to Sunday railroading, either in the form of local excursions or " through trains," which last even Christians often take on Saturday night in Chicago in order to reach New York on Mondav morning, saving a day for mammon by robbing the soul and God. If you speak in their presence against these Sunday trains, the defense usually is that they enable sons to get more promptly to the bedsides of their dying fathers. To look at the Monday morning trains in Chicago and New York one would think that some weekly epidemic was wont to strike a thousand fathers in each city. A Christian father would surely prefer to die without seeing his son, if need be, than to have the railroads sustain, for the benefit of dying fathers, a custom that robs millions of men of their Sabbath rest and so hasten their deaths. Beyond a consistent example, good citizens can do much to restrain the evils resulting from Sunday trains and boats after the fashion suggested by the following incidents. SUNDAY TRAINS. 315 The people of Hastings, near New York City, where there are two picnic groves, which are frequented by the noisy and often indecent crowds that land from excursion boats and swarm through private grounds, finally took vigorous action in the matter, and on complaint of the village trustees a temporary injunc- tion was secured against the landing of excursion parties at these groves on any day of the week. On the final hearing the injunction was suspended only on the stipulation that excursions on week-days be allowed to land provided no beer or liquor is sold, and that no excursion party should land on Sunday. From the subsequent Legislature 56 a law was obtained which confers upon the trustees of incorporated vil- lages authority to regulate, and in proper cases to prohibit, the landing within the village of excursion boats. A few years ago a Sunday excursion by steamer to Rockport, Mass., was extensively advertised in Boston. A few earnest men in that little town de- termined to prevent such an attack upon the quiet and morality of their homes. " A petition to the selectmen was signed by the people. A remonstrance was addressed to the proprietors by the officers of the town. A respectful reply was received, and the project abandoned. Again, the next year, a very attractive Sabbath excursion was advertised to start on a steamer at about the hour of morning church service. The boat was a beautiful one, the objective point one everybody wished to see, the fare exceptionally low. Handbills were placed in all the houses and stores. The children were on the quivive, and the Sunday trip was becoming the town's talk. The pastor of the principal church, on reading one of the handbills, wrote 316 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. a protest against such desecration of the Lord's-day, addressed to the proprietor of the steamer, beseeching him, in the name of good order and the religious ob- servance of the day, not to send the boat. This peti- tion was read to the selectmen, and they wrote a letter to accompany it, of similar purport. A prayer-meet- ing of sixty-five persons asked Divine direction, and appointed one of their number to further this request. A telegram was sent to the distant proprietor of the steamer, notifying him that the letter and protest were on their way. To the former were affixed the names of every Protestant pastor and forty citizens. This was all done Friday evening and Saturday morning. On Sunday evening the aroused attention of the people was directed to Sabbath observance by a large union meeting, in the most capacious church. The steamer did not come. The lessee wrote, indicating his regret and apologizing for the attempt, expressing his sorrow for the publicity given the matter, and declaring that he would readily have heeded a more private request to forbear. " Now what was gained ? (i) Public attention was directed to the sacredness of the Sabbath. (2) An incipient attempt at its desecration was nipped in the bud. (3) Moral courage, such as is needed to meet intemperance and other flagrant immoralities, was aroused and confirmed in good people who had too often timidly shrunk from disagreeable duties, and suf- fered God's law and their own rights to be recklessly trampled upon by the thoughtless and lawless." A signal .success was gained in the summer of 1883, in suppressing railroad excursions on the Maine Central. The clergymen of the Baptist and Congre- gational churches of Portland and vicinity sent peti- SUNDAY TRAINS. 3 17 tions to the managers asking them to abolish such trains, and were answered favorably. The most notable of recent New England battles with Sunday excursions, whose invasion is more to be feared than that of which Paul Revere gave the alarm, occurred in Berkshire County, and is thus described in The Con- gregationalist : " To begin with, a milk-train has been run down the valley from Pittsfield to Bridgeport for years on Sunday afternoons ; and, remembering that even the Jew might draw his ox out of the pit on the Sabbath, we have mercifully sent our milk to the city's thirsting thousands and kept a quiet conscience. But when the railroad announced a train to start from Bridgeport early on Sabbath morning, to carry pas- sengers and to distribute New York newspapers all the way to Pittsfield, then hill sounded the note of alarm to hill, and the valley cried aloud. " Our South Berkshire Congregational Association sent in the first protest. The Methodists followed immediately, these two being the only denominations with local organizations. And not only did the min- isters protest, but they preached about it till every church-goer had the danger plainly set before him. Letters were written, prominent men talked with, and lest this should not be enough, a messenger was sent down the road to visit every village and rouse the saints. The work began to tell, and in the track of his feet protests gathered their formidable lists of sig- natures and poured in on the astonished railroad officials in such number and weight as finally to stop the train. For we had looked in the Revised Statutes of Massachusetts, and we bade the president and directors read for themselves, that unless the railroad commissioners gave them permission they had no right 3l8 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. to move a rail's length in our State on Sunday, and could be indicted for Sabbath-breaking. " For two Sundays the unwelcome whistle had dis- turbed our worship, but on the third all was still. This was a truce, not a victory ; for the railroad had ap- pealed to the commissioners, who refused permission until they had allowed both sides to be heard, and named Great Barrington, July 17th, 1883, as the place and time for such a public hearing. "If ever a subject was 'agitated,' this was now. The secular press began to make fun and call names. One or two small weeklies with local circulation took the right stand, but the dailies, great and small, laughed and sneered and made their little allusions with sly contempt. The opposition began to circulate petitions for the train and found names enough — but such names as some of them were ! Meanwhile every town on the line of the road was stirred up in person or by letter. More sermons were preached, and prayer was made without ceasing ; and while here and there a good man kept aloof, yet it was one of the remarkable features of the movement that God's peo- ple of every name stood together. " All eyes and hearts now turned to the Great Bar- rington meeting, and on Tuesday, July 17th, a great many earnest men turned themselves that way too. About three hundred people gathered in the town hall, nine tenths of them opposed to the train. Here were farmers and merchants, orthodox deacons, and Irish Catholics, who said they had learned to value the New England Sabbath ; senators and other public men, manufacturers and mechanics, ministers and doctors, all in earnest to preserve the old-time country Sunday. SUNDAY TRAINS. 319 It may be doubted if a finer gathering of representative men was ever looked upon in this vicinity. ' The opposition was presided over by one of the Governor's Council, and he called upon men represent- ing different interests. Speeches of great earnestness followed. Citizens begged for their day of rest in quiet homes. Dr. H. M. Field and Mr. Robert Carter, of New York, spoke in behalf of summer residents from the cities that their pleasant retreats in Berkshire might not be invaded by the rabble of Sunday excur- sionists. The mill-owners present were as one man in their emphatic protest against the ' new departure,' and the temperance men begged that no train should invite their young people from prohibition villages to free rum at the end of the road. " Four anxious days followed, and Saturday after- noon brought the telegram, ' Petition for Sunday train unanimously rejected.' How the good news flew ! It was telegraphed and telephoned till every minister on the line had it to thank God for in his long prayer on Sunday morning. 11 Christians outside of Berkshire rejoiced, also, for the victory was one of general interest. " Let no one say again that the Puritan spirit is dead. Jonathan Edwards, Drs. Hopkins, West, Hyde, Shepherd, Field, and Gale have passed from the Housatonic Valley, but as Whittier said at Woodstock a few weeks ago : ' The fathers sleep ; but men remain As wise, as true, and brave as they. Why count the loss and not the gain ? The best is that we have to-day.' " The time to strangle a serpent is before it begins to bite. If the Sunday train had run unmolested one 320 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. summer, we might have found it harder to stop. Sometimes the only chance of victory is in the sudden assault and bayonet charge. And do the Christians of this State know that there are two hundred and fifty trains running every Sunday in Massachusetts without legal permission, and that this is the first voice that has been raised in protest ?" m What hope is there that railroad men will have their Day of Rest restored ? Edwin D. Ingersoll, Railroad Secretary of the Inter- national Committee of Young Men's Christian Asso- ciations, replies : " The hopes of improvement in Sun- day observance by railroad men is hope founded on faith rather than sight. My own hope is strengthened by the fact that the number of CJiristian men in rail- road service is increasing, and they and their efforts for their comrades are being more and more appreci- ated. There is no uniformity of view or practice among Christian railroad men in regard to Sunday work. Some refuse to do it at the risk of losing posi- tions. To others, equally conscientious and active and successful in Christian work, it is a work of necessity, and, though crying ' O Lord, how long ! ' they see no way out yet. When Christian ministers, evangelists, and laymen will stop taking Saturday night trains to reach home or some other place Sunday morning, and Sunday night trains to get somewhere bright and early Monday morning, there will be less demand for, and so less Sunday trains. Railroad managers would like to get rid of them, though there are some excep- tions." In England an effort is being made to rouse Chris- tians to their duty in regard to Sunday trains by the Anti-Sunday Travelling Union, which circulates the SUNDAY TRAINS. 321 following card, whose Scripture mottoes are especially suggestive of our duty to the overworked railroad men : " Let all your things be done with Chaiity." — I Cor. xvi. 14. THE ANTI-SUNDAY-TRAVELLIEG UNION. THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT has agreed, with the help of God, to abstain from travelling on Sunday, except under most urgent necessity, and to discourage all such travelling. Signed. Member' s N D ate "Until the Lord hath given your Brethren rest, as He hath given you. u — Job i. 15. I challenge any one who uses Sunday trains to show how he can consistently oppose any other form of Sunday labor for gain, or any other violation of the civil laws. When Dr. Guthrie, as a wine-drinker, tried to per- suade Scotch workingmen to give up their whiskey, he found he was wasting his breath. They replied, silently or aloud, that they had as good a right to take alcohol in whiskey as he had to take it in wine. Not until he gave up his alcohol could he persuade others to abstain from theirs. So the rich man who patronizes 322 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. a " through train" can have no influence in persuading a poor mar>. to forego his cheap Sunday excursion. If I make railroad men work on the Sabbath, why may not another man work his factory operatives ? If I buy a ticket on the Sabbath, what can I say to another man who buys a hat ? As Sunday newspapers, having violated the Sabbath laws themselves, seldom condemn other violations of the Sabbath laws, so every man who uses a Sunday train seals his own lips, and sears his own conscience against being of any service in rescuing the imperiled Sabbath. SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. A glance at the history of Sunday newspapers will prepare us to discuss them. 122 The New York Herald was the first of American daily newspapers to issue seven days in the week. It began this practice in 1841. 125 The Alta California, of San Francisco, adopted this plan soon after. The Boston Herald, The New York Times, New York Tribune, and several other papers began to issue Sun- day editions in 1861. The occasion at the beginning was the popular demand for the latest war news. At first the circulation was small, but more recently it has grown with almost incredible rapidity. In the seven States which publish the most papers the average circulation of the Sunday editions was, in 1882, sixty per cent of the circulation of the daily editions. It has doubtless increased since then. By the aid of Sunday mails and Sunday trains the circulation has been extended from the cities to large portions of the country districts. It was found, by investigation, that SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 323 in the four Massachusetts towns of Salem, Beverly, Danvers, and Peabody, a Sunday paper goes into every other house. These are read by all classes of non- church-going people, by the members of the liberal religious bodies, and to a very considerable and in- creasing extent by members of evangelical churches. In 1858, Sunday papers, with the exception of unin- fluential weekly sheets, were unknown in most of the country. Now, daily morning papers which are not " published every day in the year" are the exception in nearly all our large cities and in many second-class ones. In Boston there is nearly an even balance between six and seven day journals — three of the former to two of the latter. In New York all the great morning prints are published on Sunday, and not long ago an enterprising individual started a Sunday after- noon weekly, " to fill the gap" between the Sunday and Monday morning issues. A majority of the papers in Philadelphia are published on all days alike. Through- out the entire West, with the exception of Pittsburg and perhaps Indianapolis, there is but one morning pa- per in any large city which omits a Sunday edition, and the smaller cities in New York, Ohio, and Indiana have followed in their track. In the larger cities of the South seven-day papers are generally established. Rowell's. Newspaper Directory, for October, 1883, reported four hundred and fifty-six Sunday news- papers, only fifteen of which are in New England. New York leads the States with fifty-eight. Pennsyl- vania follows with forty. Illinois has thirty-one, Ohio twenty-nine, California twenty-three, Indiana and Georgia, each nineteen. 123 As I have discussed Sunday trains mostly by the utterances of railroad men, so I propose to discuss 324 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Sunday newspapers mostly by quotations from news- papers and newspaper men. The New York Tribune, when it was not a Sunday paper, said (Nov. 15th, 1871) : " We are opposed to anything which tends to increase the already too great tendency to break down the observance of the Sab- bath. Irrespective of any religious question, which we do not now and here discuss, the difficulty is that its secularization will tend to diminish its prestige as a season of rest from physical labor ; and this would be a consummation to be deprecated, for the reason that in this over-active, and as we sometimes think, fatally busy country, a very little opportunity will set a con- siderable portion of producers to work on Sunday, thus complicating the labor question, which is com- plicated enough already." That is my argument against the Sunday Tribune of to-day, which is making most persistent efforts to get those who do not believe in Sunday papers to sur- render their convictions and buy its Sunday issue. 1 " The Pittsburg Commercial Gazette of March 31st, 1882, said : " Those of our contemporaries who pub- lish Sunday papers do not take kindly to the opinions expressed by the Sabbath-day observers. This was to be expected, as they prefer to be let alone, and quietly but surely break down the observance of the Sabbath day. The truth is that Sunday papers have no more right to publish than have merchants to open their stores and do business on the Sabbath. Sunday papers are published solely to make money. Were they not profitable there would not be a single paper issued. The assertion so often made by the advocates of Sunday papers, that more Sunday work is done on a Monday morning paper than is done on a SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 325 Sunday paper, is not true, and they know it. This is only put forward as a pretext to throw dust in the eyes of the religious people. There is no one thing which the anti-Sabbath people rejoice so much in as in Sunday papers. They know that once the daily press is conceded the right to publish on Sunday by the Sabbath-day observers, it will be but a short time till the day will become one solely for recreation and pleasure. Grant to the newspapers the right to pub- lish seven days in the week, and it will be but a few years till merchants will claim the same privilege. And why not ?" The Chicago Daily News of Aug. 12th, 1884, said : ' The Sunday paper itself has created the only demand there is for it. It is made the vehicle for gossip, choice pieces of scandal, stories, and the like, which fill its columns, and it is purchased and read because of these features. A Sunday paper in Chicago con- taining matter that was proper and suitable for Sunday reading would not find a hundred purchasers in the city. By ' proper and suitable ' is not meant articles of a religious nature alone, but anything that is moral or instructive even to the limit of entertainment. It is true that most of the work on a Monday morning paper is done on Sunday, but much of this might be dispensed with if only correspondents and press associations would limit their work to the necessities of the business of news-gathering. But even in the case of Monday papers the employees have Saturday for rest, recreation, improvement, or religious exer- cises, as they desire. They have an opportunity for rest which is denied the employees on a seven-days paper." Note here that the stale reply to sermons against Sunday newspapers, that " the ministers do 326 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. not know what they are talking about," can hardly be used against the editors I am quoting. They at least know the inside of newspaper life. I will now quote more at length from an address and article on Sunday newspapers by J. T. Perry, of The Cincinnati Gazette, written when that was a Sab- bath-keeping paper : " The men who prepare and dis- tribute the Sunday papers are not merely engaged in secular work through Saturday night, or even until Sunday noon, but the publication of a Monday's issue calls for the sacrifice of the remainder of the day. Type must be distributed on Sunday afternoon ; copy must be prepared for the evening type-setting ; clerks must be on hand to receive advertisements ; and reporters must scour the town on Sunday as well as on Monday. All are thus deprived of their weekly rest, and even the semblance of the rest is destroyed by making all days alike. ... In the great mills at the East, when running day and night, five nights' work is reckoned as equivalent to six days', and the operatives are paid accordingly. The labor on a morning paper must be performed largely at night, consequently the preparation of six daily issues is, at the least, as much of a strain as any man's body or brain can endure. The publication of a seventh paper is therefore a violation of physiological law, when supernumeraries are not employed in its preparation. This is seldom done, even imperfectly, and I know no office where a full corps of extra pressmen, com- positors, and editors are kept for any such purpose. Unless, therefore, it is profitable to proprietors to work one set of men up, and supply their places by others, there is a great waste of productive force in dispensing with a rest day. ... It would be a SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 327 mystery if the time for rest, so confessedly a blessing to men and women in general, were a bane to editors, compositors, pressmen, and carriers ; but so some publishers and not a few of their readers seem to think. . . . It is the duty of employers to themselves, and their assistants, not to throw aside the moral and physical benefits of the fifty-two days of rest annu- ally which belong to both. They will live longer and be happier while they live, by avoiding this folly. . . . If the press is the palladium of our liberties, those who conduct it should be men of high moral as v/ell as intellectual enlightenment. If men are compelled to work day in and day out and no ' Sundays excepted,' they can not rise to spiritual resolution. Rather, their condition must be something akin to that of Dana's sailor, whose catechism prescribed : 1 Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, And on the seventh, holystone the deck and scrape the cable. . . . ' " Saying nothing of Scripture,. the secularization of the Lord's-day, or its encouragement in others, is for- bidden by the confession of all the churches, is in con- flict with the laws of the land, and is hostile to that mental and bodily health which can alone be insured by resting one day in seven." Mr. Perry shows that the reading as well as the printing of Sunday papers is a great interference with the general rest. Not only a hundred thousand printers, but also millions of readers have their atten- tion kept unchangeably upon business, gossip, and politics for seven days in the week by the present system. He says: "The merchant loses the benefit of his Sunday by getting his mind all torn up with stock reports, when he might much better have read 328 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. on Monday the information which he could not lose until that day, and read it also with a rested mind. . . . The pulpit's teachings too often fall on preoccu- pied ears when the hours between breakfast and church have been devoted to politics, gossip, and sensations. The public are not benefited by even a morally unobjectionable but secular Sunday paper. If a day of sacred rest is worth preserving, there should be no secularizing influences upon it. . . . One need not be a Judaizer or Puritan to feel that Sunday should be restricted to elevating, humanizing, and rest- ful reading. To this class current news does not belong. Consequently the Southern custom of publishing papers on Sunday and not on Monday is objectionable, if convenient to the editors and printers. " The public has often been told that the Monday paper is the chief sinner ; that the Sunday paper is mainly prepared on Saturday. This defense is true only in part. Editors and compositors are kept up until the small hours on Sunday morning ; pressmen and mailers for an hour or two later, and counting- room clerks, carriers, and newsboys do not end their toils until near noon. These either have only a frac- tion of Sunday, or else pass its best hours in sleep. When a Monday paper follows the Sunday's edition, there can of course be no more rest than on other days. The Sunday issue cuts off the first half of the day, and the Monday's the last. Where no Sunday paper is published there ought to be full twenty-four hours of rest, including Saturday night and as much of Sunday as possible. Before the days of telegraph, Monday's paper was printed on Saturday evening, or held open until late on Sunday night for the insertion of some stray items of important news. This is no SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 329 longer done, save in Richmond, Va., where the printers, to their credit, refused to work on Sunday, and hence the Mondays' papers are printed late on Saturday evening, and not distributed till the day they are dated. It would be a relief to many were such a practice established elsewhere. If it is a sin to labor seven days in a week, so is it a grave offense to devote seven nights to toil. It therefore seems to me a slavery to the. letter, and a violation of the spirit of the com- mandment, to keep men employed till after eleven Saturday night, and call them together again at a few minutes past twelve on Monday morning. Both nights are broken. " Looking at the facts as they stand, and confessing that no one connected with a six-day morning paper can go home on Saturday night feeling that he is absolutely free until the rise of Monday's sun, what is the best that can be done ? It seems to me that the Sabbath from sunset to sunset can be eventually main- tained, and more. If sermons are to be reported, copies of them can very frequently be obtained on Saturday, for it is a custom to advertise their subjects on Saturday evening. Clergymen should be willing to furnish advance abstracts where full representation is not desired. All other departments, where antici- pation is possible, should be worked up on Saturday, care being taken to insure the editor or reporter his rest on the latter part of the day. Where Sunday appointments are made for reporters, discretion should be exercised in the apportionment of time, so as to interfere as little as possible with his extended rest. At all events, necessary labor can not be made to in- clude long reports of Sunday base-ball matches, • sacred concerts,' and the like. It is less an evil 330 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. that half a dozen or even fifty men should work on Sundays than that the proper influences of the day should be nullified in thousands of families. . . . Where there is a will there is a way, and with proper encouragement those who desire to minimize Sunday work in a six-day office find it easy to do so. I have pointed out some directions in which this may be done. Mutual help and co-operation on the part of editors would also naturally shorten the Sunday hours of each. As things now are, they can generally so adjust their work as to attend church morning and evening if they desire. Compositors should have the same privilege. It would be possible, unless under peculiar and exceptional circumstances, to postpone Sunday night 's composition until nine or ten P. M. This might be done either by a greater anticipation of work on Saturday, in the form of miscellany, heavy editorial and commercial matter, all of which could be put in type before supper on Saturday, or by adding the whole force of ' subs ' to the regular corps of compositors for Sunday night only. Were this done, and the mail reader assisted late in the evening for an hour or so by several of his associates, no one but reporters assigned to necessary work during the day would fail of a complete rest for full twenty -four hours. I find through numerous letters from the South and West that not a few good men and some ministers seem to think that the omission of the Monday paper in their towns almost absolves the Sunday paper of fault. It is vastly better to omit Monday's paper than to publish a paper every day, for it gives the editors and printers twenty-four hours of rest and a Sunday afternoon and evening for home and church. The SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 331 workingmen of Vienna recently protested against the issue of Monday papers on the ground that they deprived printers of their right to spend Sunday rest- ing with their families. Some who ask for a paper on Sunday because it is a day of leisure would have it omitted on Monday that printers may have a day of rest. The Statesman, of India, has recently appeared on Sunday mornings, not exactly as a Sunday paper, but as a Monday paper published on Sunday morning. The Indian Mirror has followed the same plan for a long time. The Statesman repudiates all " Sab- batarian" views, but at the same time claims that the change is made solely that the employees of the office may get their Sunday rest like other people. The Swiss minister at Washington writes me that daily papers in Switzerland are " not generally published on Monday," doubtless for the same reason. A Christian editor of the West, with whom his pastor, who quotes him, seems to agree, thinks that the issue of a Sunday paper and the omission of Monday's edition " secures a better observance of the Sabbath than if he were to publish a Monday but no Sunday paper." This is certainly not the case, even for the newspaper employees, as Mr. Perry has shown that nothing need be done on a Monday paper except a little editorial and reportorial work, from supper time on Saturday afternoon until after church service on Sabbath night ; whereas a Sunday paper sends its compositors to bed and its salesmen to work for half the Sabbath at least. But the chief objection to the Sunday paper is not^ touched at all by the omission of Monday s issue — its interference with the mental rest of millions of readers, already weary with six days' thinking of politics, busi- 332 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. ness, and crime, and needing more than physical rest the deeper repose and refreshment that comes by change of thought. This chief objection holds against weekly Sunday papers™ as well as against the Sunday editions of daily papers. The Sunday papers of Great Britain are weekly papers, and so can easily give their employees one day in seven for rest and home. All but two of the Sunday weeklies of London are printed on Satur- day, and do not necessarily keep any of their force except the salesmen from Sabbath observance ; but they thus escape only the minor charges against Sun- day newspapers, and the chief indictment remains that they interfere with the rest/ulness of the Sabbath by causing needless Sunday trade, and especially by keeping their readers from that needful repose of mind which comes by one day's escape from the read- ing of secular news and discussions. Dr. Farre, of London, says : " The working of the mind in one continued train of thought is destructive of life in the most distinguished class of society, and senators themselves need reform in this particular. I have observed many of them destroyed by neglecting this economy of life." 514 One of the special benefits of a sea voyage to an overtasked merchant is the escape from the daily paper, which one ought to give himself every Sab- bath. Daily papers, as a matter of fact, mirror chiefly the dark side of the world — the doings of police and poli- ticians, the records of pugilists and putridities. 120 It is not to nature so much as to the unnatural and abnormal that the foul daily papers hold up the mirror. The scent of the reporters is trained for carrion. The SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 333 one church in a metropolis that is quarreling gets more attention than hundreds that are quietly going about doing good. The one preacher who is false to virtue or to his vows commands more newspaper space than all who are true. Men need to have a change to the bright-side papers, the religious weeklies, at least once a week, not only to preserve the health but also to keep themselves from dark and one-sided views of life, from . suspecting that all men and women, even their own wives, are false. Such a change 'of reading is needful also to keep business men from the " age-temptation" to a degrad- ing materialism. The peril of this period of history has been strongly described by the Hon. J. Randolph Tucker, M.C., of Virginia, in the following extract from an address on behalf of the Sabbath : " The materialistic tendencies of this age are appalling. The great and pressing question is, Will this or that pay ? How can we stop the railroads for one day ? Where will be the dividends ? How can we suspend any of these things that are the manifestations of the great progress of the age, for one day in the week ? Now I answer, If you do not stop and think of something else besides stocks, railways, and ' Ways and Means,' and finances, the Navy Department, the Supreme Court, and the duties that press upon the Chief Magistrate of the country, you can never rise above the base level of materialism ; you can never reach the nobler con- templation of those invisible realities which, through faith, lift us to a higher life ; nor attain to those ideas of the Infinite without which the boundaries of all thought are narrow, limited, and low ; nor, above all, worship in the inner recesses of the soul that infinite Creator, in whom we live and move and have our 334 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. being ! Sunday is the great educator, which God in His wisdom has ordained not only to save Christianity to man, but to insure to man a noble and complete manhood, working upon the earth, but with his face sublimely lifted to Heaven." 818 In a New York decision against the legality of advertising in Sunday papers, before an unjust law made an inequitable exception in favor of this one kind of contract for Sunday labor, the judge said : " In any view of religious obligation, it would be difficult to contend that the reading of advertisements in a Sun- day newspaper, or aiding a person to do so, is a work of either necessity or charity. The mind, certainly, on that day needs no such sustenance, and even as a mere matter of taste it must be admitted that com- mon business advertisements of mere buying and selling are a very unsuitable outfit for a feast of reason. Six days, at all events, of such diet are enough. Thought perpetually running in one channel, like matrimony in one family, dwarfs the intellect. It is rather a work of charity in such cases to withhold than to give. Abstinence, not sustenance, is what is needed." 127 An ingenious American has made a time-lock for safes, which, when wound up and set at the afternoon or evening hour for closing business, can not be opened, even by one who knows the combination, not even by the owner himself, until the hour for resum- ing business the next day, or, in case that is the Sab- bath or a holiday, the second day. " Blessed is he who knows how to lock up his business and household cares with a time-lock on Saturday night, so that he can not, if he would, get at them till Monday morn- ing." 128 SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 335 Mr. Perry replies to the excuse that the public demands Sunday papers : " This may be true now, but it was not at the start. The War of the Rebellion doubtless weakened the regard of both publishers and readers for the Sabbath, but as matter of fact, with the exception of the New York Times and Tribune, few if any papers established Sunday editions until after the close of hostilities, and the Tribune, finding its Sunday edition unprofitable, abandoned the enter- prise which it has only lately resumed. The great majority of the Sunday issues date no farther back than 1867, and in several cases were started against the remonstrances of readers. The publisher of one large Western daily told me that his Sunday edition did not pay expenses for a year and a half." Even if the people do " demand " Sunday papers (as they are said to "demand" Sunday mails and Sunday trains also), it is no more a valid argument for issuing them than it was a sufficient reason for Aaron's making the golden calf, or Pilate's crucifying Christ, that the people in each case " demanded " it. This resem- blance between those ancient managers and some modern ones in railway and newspaper offices to-day shows that, however much literature and transporta- tion have improved since Bible times, excuses have not improved at all. The difference between the days of Aaron and to-day is that now only a loud minority " demand " these Sunday mails and trains and papers, while a greater number oppose or at least do not demand them. One hundred" persons petitioned a Massachusetts railroad for a Sunday train. It was therefore said that " the people demanded it," and although thousands of people in the towns through which the train would have passed demanded that it 336 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. should not be put on, the railway officers would have yielded to the " demand " that seemed to favor their pockets, if the railroad commissioners had not pro- tected the people. 129 When the public demand of newspapers or railroad kings anything that does not seem to feed their pocket-books, " the public" is likely to get a famous veto. What has been said thus far has gone to show that a Sunday paper which contains nothing that would be morally objectionable for week-day perusal is objectionable on the Sabbath, (1) because it interferes with the right of its employees to spend that day in rest and thought and home life and culture of conscience ; (2) because it interferes with the mental rest of its readers by keeping the mind perpetually in the same political and commercial ruts of thought and anxiety. These objections to Sunday papers will be empha- sized, and other objections will appear as I now pro- ceed to analyze some of the Sunday papers which I have collected from all parts of the United States. I have selected for analysis three which represent, not the worst, but the middle and better class of Sunday papers. It may be stated in general that Sunday papers are usually larger than the week-day issues of the same papers, and that more than half the space is devoted to advertising. The Boston Herald, which on week-days has four or six large pages, has sixteen on Sabbaths, of which seven twelfths are filled with advertising. Recent Sunday issues of Chicago dailies contain twenty pages — not a " blanket sheet," but two blankets and a half. The New York Herald has sometimes issued twenty-eight pages, of which twenty were filled with SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 337 advertisements — four million pages from one establish- ment on a single Sabbath morning. As to the other portions of the Sunday paper, the "coming events cast their shadows before," in the Saturday paper, in such advertising lines as follow, or similar ones of a retrospective character are put as bait into Monday's issue : ' The is an inexhaustible source of amusement, and to-morrow's number will be a specially good one. " To-morrow's will make another big hit. " Every young man and young woman in the me- tropolis should go to church, and then read to-mor- row's . " All the will be sold out so quickly to-morrow that you had better secure your copy as soon as pos- sible. ■ The to-morrow will contain some capital riew stories not found in any other paper. ' To-morrow's ■ will sparkle with wit and humor. 1 Youthful elopers will find some highly entertain- ing reading in to-morrow's . " Don't miss the to-morrow if you really want a great treat in the way of Sunday reading ! "To-morrow's will interest everybody who wants to read about the divorce craze in Chicago. " All the popular chatter about the artistic and lit- erary doings of the hour will be in to-morrow's .," 1 This," says the New York Christian Advocate, 4< is a fair sample of the contents of the Sunday edition of the average city newspaper, although all such papers do not take the pains to catalogue or classify the reading matter in advance, as this one unblushingly does." As a specimen of the highest grade of American 338 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Sunday papers, I will analyze one that is generally conceded the foremost place. I find that this paper gives the lion's share of its Sunday edition to adver- tisements, while other large portions are filled with political accusations and discussions, and commercial news. Still other portions are occupied with records of disasters and calamities, as indicated by the follow ing head-lines and extracts: "Cholera" — "Pauper Emigration" — " Duel " — " Explosion" — " War" — " Shooting his Mother's Traducer" — " Alleged Malicious Prosecution" — "Killed by a Divorced Wife" — " Breaking his Son's Skull " — " Family of Five Drowned " — " Fugitive Arrested " — " Embez- zlement" — " Forgery" — "Theft" — "Three Men Suffocated " ■ — " Criminal Malpractice" — " Criminal Assault upon Miss F " — " Stealing his Mistress's Diamonds" — " Policeman Intoxicated " — " Victims of the Toy Pistol" — "Suicide" — "Runaway" — "Body Found Decomposed "—" Receiver of Stolen Goods" — " Child Fatally Injured "— " Insurrection" — " The Caterpillar Plague" — " San Francisco Scan- dal " — all of which readers must greatly relish to want such fare seven days in the week. This paper devotes several columns to horse-racing, and even announces, in an attractive three-inch article, a Sunday horse-race for the day of its issue, giving no hint that such a race is a violation of the law, either in the item or in the editorial comment, which is apparently favorable to races every day in the week. This paper has less of salacious scandal than the average Sunday paper, but no Sunday paper is 'free from it, and in this one there is a long description of " The Domestic Difficulty of the Royal Pair" of Spain, another bit of " Scandal " about a European princess, and several other articles SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 339 that would not cultivate pure thoughts in young readers. But what of the " Religious Reading," for which some evangelical Christians claim to take this Sunday paper into their homes ? It consists, in this case, of j±ist one column, unless we count also a news item about a " Church Dispute," and another about " A Candidate for the Ministry suspected of Theft," which is all that can by any construction of terms be counted " religious" in the news department of the paper. A quarreling church and a suspected theo- logue seems to have been all the " religious" news thought to be worth recording in this " high-toned Sunday paper." The religious column opens with an extract from Professor Swing, criticising Protestant orthodoxy as an owl that sits in sublime composure, while skepticism soars with courage and ambition as an eagle. The second item is quoted from the Christian Register — a paragraph which declares that "the Church is still cherishing superstitions." The other items are short and unimportant, and the column as a whole is such as to cultivate doubt and encourage the non-church-goers to continue their criticisms and neglect of the Church. When one pretends to take a Sunday paper for its religious items, I am reminded of those who pretend that they drink the schooner of fuddling beer for the thimbleful of nourishment that it contains ; and of the " reformed " man who was found to have a strong odor in his milk, and excused himself by saying, " There may be whisky in it, but milk's my object ;" and of the boy who, when he was called to account for fishing on Sunday, replied, " I know I do, but then, before the fish begin to bite I always whistle one of the Moody and Sankey tunes." Let me analyze in like manner another Sunday paper 340 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. of the highest grade, taking two Sunday issues at ran- dom, and asking whether it is appropriate to the Sab- bath, either as restful reading or for moral improve ment. Besides the usual large proportion of unusually loud advertisements and the usual amount of unusually exciting political paragraphs, we find the following un- restful head-lines and extracts, about matters from which it would seem that one would wish to fast for one day in the week : "A List of Nineteen Gambling Houses Running in Full Blast" — " In Custody for the Abduction of , aged Seventeen" — " Newspaper Correspondent Arrested " — " Unusual Activity of the Police in Dublin" — "Mill Destroyed by Fire" — " Found Dead " — " Suspended by the Chamber of Commerce for Unmercantile Conduct" — " Failed with Heavy Liabilities" — " Depot Burned" — " Quarrel with his Father and Self-murder" — " While Intoxicated fell into the River" — " Beheaded by a Train" — " Contest as to the Legality of Bonds" — " Arrested for Counter- feiting" — " Editor Warned to Leave the District" — " Assignment" (mixed up with second failure and a forgery) — " Spiritualist Violently Insane" — " Cut the Throats of her Two Children ' '• — ■' ' Paralytic Stroke" — " Million Dollar Fire" — " Sixteen Pounds of Dyna- mite under the Statue of Germany" — " Charged with Killing" — " Found Guilty of Gross Cruelty to Chil- dren" — " Glove Fight" — " Cocking Main" — " De- structive Fires" — "Suicide by Drowning — Cause, Family Trouble" — "Suicide by Hanging" — "Base Ball"—" The Wheel "— " The Turf "— " Dramatic" — " Stolen Bonds" — " Bank-wrecker" — " Blackmail- er" — " Murder" — " Embezzlement" — " Burglary and Arson" — "Mulcted by a Bogus Check" " Another Chapter in the Odorous Case" (of alleged SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. ■ 34 1 alienation of a wife's affection) — " Mashing a Masher" — " Dr. W. Administers a Deserved Castigation to his Wife's Latest Mash" — " The Wife thereupon Elopes with her Red-headed Admirer in Light March- ing Order" — " An Ex-drummer of New York the # Lothario — Some of Mrs. W. 's Former Amours" — " Tales of Cruelty, Desertion, and Infidelity Re- tailed to Court-room Frequenters" — "Judge Fixes the Average Length of Married Life in ." These last head-lines are followed by a column too foul to quote — such a column as suggested Matthew Arnold's remark that the daily papers in the Unit- ed States publish much that in England would be left to the police gazettes. I pause with less than eight of the twenty pages of one issue analyzed — the eight first in order — only adding that the " Religious Reading," far on in the fifteenth page, further than any one who cared for such reading would wade through the mud, consists of three columns, of which one half are Sunday notices repeated from the Sat- urday edition, the Sunday evening sessions of the theatres being also announced with a rigid impartiality that shows no favor to legal over illegal Sunday gath- erings. On the editorial page we find the announce- ment that this Sunday issue marks the first anniversary of the paper's departure from Sabbath-keeping, and the editor congratulates himself that the Sunday edition is not only profitable but also "high-toned" and "literary," and he promises that "the high standard will be maintained." In a more recent editorial, of the same year, replying to a sermon which had voiced the " prejudices against a Sunday paper," he describes Sunday papers as a class. Whether he correctly describes his own and others of the highest 34 2 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. grade, such as we have analyzed, let the reader judge. He says : " The Sunday papers are eminently char- acterized by change of material from the edition of the week. They are made up of widely different matter, passing from newspapers to the condition of weekly magazines ; for, while they do not neglect the current news of the precedent twenty-four hours, their columns are more largely given over to the best cull- ings of literature, light and grave, well-composed stories and essays, poems, letters of travel and obser- vation, in short, everything calculated to give the mind repose and refreshment by a radical change of matter fitted to quite another range of thought than that given to the daily paper." But the papers I have analyzed, bad as they are, are far above the average Sunday papers in moral tone, and so I will analyze a prominent paper which is neither the best nor worst of Sunday papers, but a fair representative of the average American Sunday paper. Every one who opens this or any other Sunday paper turns first, of course, to find the " Religious Reading. " In this case it includes two columns in praise of the Romish Church ; also records of a " church war," of an alleged " uproar" in a religious conference, of " a suit against an archbishop;" an item about "the Salvation Army in Court ;" a fling at Rev. Dr. New- man ; insinuations from various parties that Heber Newton's sickness was only a " subterfuge to avoid a church trial," and that " Dr. Crosby is really at heart a Prohibitionist ;" an indorsement by the Liquor Dealers' Association of what Henry Ward Beecher had said against prohibition in Maine, Kansas, and other States, followed by their expression of opinion that a high license law would doubtless increase the liquor SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 343 business, but should be opposed, as it '* would conduce to a lower order of public morals ;" an editorial against prohibition in Iowa, which declares that " wine and beer are generally used in place of alcoholic liquors, and are thus aids to temperance ;" a short story showing that Christians are usually fools or hypocrites, in which the sentence occurs, " I think Meek was about the only man in our country who was as good at home as he was at church." This, which represents what Sunday papers call " Religious Reading," occu- pies two thirds of a page — one twenty-fourth of the sixteen-page paper. I will quote some of the headings in the remainder of the pager, and leave the reader to judge whether the reading of such a paper is con- ducive to mental rest or moral improvement : " Gossip of Court" — "Gordon's Sanity Questioned" — "An Alleged Dramatic Shark" — " Embezzlement" — ■ " Sudden Death"—" The Buzzard Gang"—" A Ten- nessee Man in the Toils" — " A Woman Burned to Death" — "Vagrants" — "Smuggled Goods" — " Bogus Divorce Cases" — : " Eloping Husband " — " Flatbush Mock Marriage Scandal " — " Chained and Beaten Wife" — " Bride Arrested" — " Famous Nautch Girls" — " Defalcation" — " Forgery" — " A Stake- holder Disappears". — ' ' Small-pox inBrooklyn" — " Con- victed of Assaulting Miss " — " Mine- Explosion" — " Murder"— " Cattle Plague"— " Strangled Wife"— " Shot his Brother" — " Robbed " — " Killed "— " Cuban Bandits" — " Deadly Canned Tomatoes" — ' Trapeze Performer's Fall" — " Abhorrent Scenes in a Tropical Cemetery" — "Failures" — "Deadly Oleo- margarine, how it causes Hair to fall out and Teeth to rattle" — " Gone Down at Sea" — •" Pacific Express Robber" — "Three Wives Living" — "Suicide" — 344 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. 1 ' Violently Insane' ' — " Murder Trial ' ' — ' ' Dyna- miters" — "Rowdies" — "He pulled out a revolver and threatened to shoot her if she did not marry him" — " Desperate Murderer Arrested " — " Witness saw Clara and Traphagen in a Compromising Position" — '" Gossip for Ladies at the Sunday Breakfast Table" — " Snubbed " — " Disgrace" — " An Illegitimate Child " — " A Glove Fight" — " Elegant Baltimore Girl for a Mistress" — " Defaulting Teller" — " Good Gracious" — " Too Thin"—" Blew out his Brains with a Pistol " — " The Waistless Dress" — " The Bite of an Epilep- tic" — " Brooklyn Tax Dodgers." Besides these, the paper has columns of political accusation, rumors of wars, accounts of horse-races, the story of a danseuse's " terrible revenge," and six pages of advertising. These papers call for little comment : they speak for themselves. I wish, however, to ask if such a mirror of the world — leaving out the stars, the sunlight, the flowers, the noble deeds, everything except mud and blood and business — is conducive to Sabbath rest of mind, to the preservation of home purity, to the cult- ure of good morals, to making better husbands, better wives, better sons, better daughters, better neighbors, better citizens, better Christians ? This is the stuff which is compared to sermons, and offered in place of them, with the claim that the work of producing such papers is as defensible as pulpit work. On the last point the New York Christian Advocate says : " Does not that professedly Christian man lack common-sense — or, if not, then what is, perhaps, worse, common sincerity — who, on Sunday, before or after church, saturates his mind with such things as the Sunday papers contain, if at the same time he says that he wants to be a good man and grow in grace ? Can such SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 345 a man with any decency go to church and pray, Lead us not into temptation,' or pray that the word of God preached may have ' free course and be glori- fied,' when on common-sense principles it is certain that before the Word can do him or any in his state of mind real good, all the effects of the mistake made in reading the paper must be preached out, and the very strongest sort of moral disinfectant used to get rid of the poison ?" Two of the Sunday papers which I have analyzed are among those which, at the time of the enforcement of the Sabbath laws of New York against newsdealers, Justice Bixby, of a New York City police court, decided were a "moral necessity." Higher courts have decided that Sunday papers are not a " neces- sity" of any kind, but rather a plain violation of the law which calls for the cessation of labor and trade upon the Sabbath. Which decision is vindicated by the analyses I have made ? Are these Sunday papers, as the Brooklyn Times declares, " as much a necessity as food and drink" ? Was the boy sound in his logic who said, when his Christian mother was being praised, "Father is good too ; he reads the Sunday papers" ? Is a true story of crime, vividly told in a Sunday paper, any less likely to make a boy run away for a career of blood and glory than a similar story in a dime novel ? It will not do to say, by way of excus- ing columns of scandal, that " if the preachers would reform the city, the papers would have fewer of such reports to publish," for such publishing, it is well known, fans the flame of vice. Was that preacher of New York true to his Bible or to facts who said that the four hundred thousand copies of New York dailies that are issued every Sunday are respectable, harmless, 346 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. and useful ? If so, the old lady was a good judge of moral health who said, after a siege of sickness, as she laid down the daily paper, " Now I knows I'm getting better, 'coz I enjoys my murders. " I notice frequently in the headings of daily papers, especially the Sunday editions I have collected, the words " gossip" and " scandal." Why may I " gossip" with a paper but not with a person ? Why may a man print or read " scandal " that would be disgraceful to speak or hear? A woman who was somewhat given to these faults thought herself sick and sent for a doctor. He ex- amined her pulse and said, " There is nothing the mat- ter with you, only you need rest." " Oh, doctor!" she replied, "don't say that ; look at my tongue." That needs rest too." We all need at least one day's rest per week, not only from work but from news- paper gossip too — a change to brighter and better reading. Some Christians think " Sunday newspapers have come to stay, and so they should be made as high-toned and helpful as possible." As for the argument that they have " come to stay" it is a striking coincidence that exactly the same thing is true of sin. Both may have " come to stay," but it is to be hoped not in Christian homes or hands. A century ago it looked as if slavery had come into all Christian lands to stay, but it has ceased in them all, and certainly Sabbath-break- ing is not more unconquerable. What can be done to stop or check the violation of Divine and human laws by the Sunday newspapers ? 1. Let Christian men of wealth found and endow daily papers, just as colleges and professorships are founded and endowed, so that morals rather than money-making may determine their attitude toward & HI SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 347 the Sabbath and other great moral questions. Do we not need some Peabody or Slater to give a million dollars for the mightiest of educational agencies — to found daily papers as able as The New York Tribune^ but unspotted by Sunday editions and demoralizing records of -betting and descriptions of bloody prize- fights? Or let some Christian Alliance' arrange to re- ceive subscriptions for such a paper in each of the large cities, not to be binding until fifty thousand are se- cured in each case. As the daily dew is really more influential than the occasional rains, so the daily press, which is often hostile to evangelical Christianity, is more influential than the weekly religious press. Not even the work of foreign or home missions is more important than the establishment in each of the great cities of the land of a daily paper that keeps the Sabbath and co-operates with Christianity, and records not only evils, but also and especially, ' whatsoever things are pure, just, lovely, and of good report,' that the readers maybe led to "think on these things." Such papers would undoubtedly at length become self-supporting, for members of evangelical churches in the United States are one- fifth, and their adherents at least two-fifths more of the population, and a paper estab- lished on a proper basis to furnish reading intel- lectually as able as that of the best dailies, but with no money-making motive to make it a Sabbath-breaker or lower its moral standard, would have a large con- stituency in every considerable city. When money- making rules a city paper, it is not strange that its moral tone is lowered, for a low moral key is what city majorities like. Every city needs at least one daily so endowed by philanthropy that it is no more subject to. 348 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. this temptation than an endowed college is to run a lottery. A good Saturday afternoon paper on the same basis is also much needed. 2. Let printers and reporters, for the sake of body and soul and law, strike against Sunday work, as was done some years ago in Richmond. A reporter on a great Chicago 'daily, which publishes a Sunday edition heavy with rubbish, was asked whether he had one day of rest in seven. His answer was, " Not one in seventy-seven." Why not, for once, instead of strik- ing for higher wages, strike for home and conscience against Sunday work ? 3. Let subscribers make themselves felt in effective protest against Sunday editions. Some years ago the late Colonel Forney concluded to publish the Philadel- phia Press on the Sabbath. Many of his patrons at once refused to take his paper on any day of the week or to advertise in it. The offending issue was speedily withdrawn. It has reappeared, however, under the Colonel's successors, and we have heard of no pro- tests. Does the decrease of Christian protests against Sunday mails, Sunday trains, and Sunday newspapers, as they have grown more familiar, indicate a letting down of conscience, or what? Has it any connection with a certain familiar poem about first enduring a vice, then pitying, then embracing it ? 4. Let the public officers enforce the laws. In New York State, by an unjust discrimination in favor of those whom the legislators feared, the Sunday sale of all kinds of newspapers, cigars, and confections, all of which had been decided by the courts to be unneces- sary, was, in 1883, allowed, but the servile labor which papers require of printers on the Sabbath is still illegal in New York State, and even the sale in nearly all other SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. 349 States. 355 Why should not the officers of the law protect printers as well as weavers or masons in their right to Sabbath rest ? 5. Let those who respect the law of God and the laws of the land refuse to encourage the Sunday papers that violate both, either by advertising in them or purchasing them. Neither the question, Shall I take a Sunday paper ? nor the kindred one, Shall I use the Sunday trains and Sunday mails ? will be settled by any but an utterly selfish soul by the test, Will it do me any harm ? A man who tests these questions by any such standard advertises his own meanness. The question is rather, Shall I encourage a system that vio- lates the laws of God and of the State ; that robs thousands of their right to spend the Sabbath in rest and home life and culture of conscience ; that robs millions of mental rest ; and that, by secularizing, im- perils the Sabbath, whose peril is the peril of the na- tion. One who follows the New York Tribune 's in- genious advice to those whose consciences are against Sunday papers, to " take the Sunday paper regularly and read it on Monday morning," encourages this evil system just as surely as if he followed the usual plan of those who buy the Sunday papers. That the sin of buying a newspaper on the Sabbath seems to be " only a little one" beside the Sodom of a Sunday saloon or a Sunday excursion, makes it all the more dangerous, as every form of sinning begins in small offenses. As beer leads to brandy, so buying and reading a Sunday paper prepares the way for other forms of Sunday business and amusement. Reading real -estate notices naturally leads to house- hunting, which is just as surely Sabbath-breaking as moose-hunting. Reading advertisements of Sunday 350 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. excursions and Sunday- base-ball games and Sunday- races in the Sunday papers must lead some to attend them, or their shrewd promoters would not thus adver- tise them. Reading advertisements on the Sabbath leads to answering them on that day, as far as they are to be answered by mail, and to planning for Mon- day in other cases, which interferes with both rest and religion. The Sunday mail, the Sunday train, and the Sunday newspaper are but three heads of one hydra, which is assailing the Sabbath more disastrously than any other foe except the Sunday saloon. Let every friend of God and man unite to behead the monster, and rescue the Lord's-day and man's. " The Sabbath was made for man" — for the post- man, the railroad man, the newspaper man. God ex- pects every one to do his duty in securing it to them. ARGUMENT AGAINST SUNDAY MAILS. [Presented by the author at the hearing on the petition for a " Sunday Rest Law" be- fore the U. S. Senate's Committee on Education and Labor, 1888.] The present postal laws leave too much to the discretion, or indis- cretion, of the local postmaster ; for instance, in the matter of the Sunday opening of the post-office. Section 481 of the " Postal Laws and Regulations" reads : " When the mail arrives on Sunday he [the postmaster] will keep his office open for one hour or more" — twenty- four hours is " more," and some postmasters so interpret it — our own New York postmaster, for instance, and certain others — "after the arrival and assortment thereof, if the public convenience require it, for the delivery of the same only. If it be received during the time of public worship, the opening of the post-office will be delayed until services have closed. He need not open his office during the day of Sunday if no mails arrive after the closing of the office on Saturday and before 6 o'clock Sunday afternoon. While open, stamps may be sold t'o any one applying for them ; but money-orders must not be issued or paid, nor letters registered on that day. Delivery on Sun- day must not be restricted to box-holders, but made to all who call while the office is open." Assistant Postmaster Henry Drake, of Philadelphia, in a letter to me, dated April 3, 1888, says ; " There are employed in this office 995 persons. Of this number but 52 da not work on Sundays. Four hundred and thirty-eight work on cer- tain Sundays, averaging, perhaps, one Sunday in three, the average time of work being six hours. Every class of mail matter, except money-order, registered or special delivery letters, is handled on Sun- day. One of the general delivery windows is open the entire day, there being three windows usually from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m." Post- master Judd, of Chicago, in a letter to me, dated March 31, 1888, says: "Only about 15 percent of the clerks connected with this office are off duty on Sundays ; that about 50 per cent of the letter- carriers are off duty on that day, and the general-delivery clerks are on duty on said day from 10.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. All classes of mail matter, with the exception of registered mail, are delivered to those who may call between the hours of 11.30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. Per- sons who have lock-boxes and drawers in this office can get their mail at any time on Sundays between the hours of 8 A.M. and 10 p.m., and the clerks in connection therewith are on duty Sundays from about 10 A.M. to 1 p.m." From another source we learn that Postmaster Judd has stopped the Sunday sale of stamps. Postmaster Riley, of Cincinnati, in a letter to me, dated April 4, 1888, states, in answer to questions, that of 301 employes only 14 never work on the Sabbath ; that the box delivery and general delivery are open from 9.30 to 11 a.m.; that stamps are sold from 9.30 to 11 A.M., and from 6.30 to 7 p.m.; that "special-delivery letters are delivered ;" that 25 mails are received on Sunday as against 64 on week days ; that mail is not delivered at the branch offices, but only at the general office. Postmaster Hyde, of St. Louis, through Assistant Postmaster McHenry, in letter of March 30, 1888, informs me that of the 425 employes in that office, only the 12 in the money-order division never work on the Sabbath ; that 190 carriers and 60 distributors average five hours of Sunday work ; that general delivery and box delivery are open from 11.30 A.M. to 1 p.m. The same contrasts that appear in these offices of the highest grade my reports show in every other grade. One office opens once, for an hour only ; another of the same grade opens twice, for two hours each time. One opens only before the hour of church ; another only during the hour of church. One sells stamps ; another of the same grade does not. One delivers special-carrier letters ; another of the same grade does not. One works the employes an average of two hours ; another of six. The Postmaster-General agrees with me, that it should not be pos- sible for any postmaster in this country to run the United States post- office as a rival and competitor and antagonist of the churches. The law allows the post-office to be kept open through the church hours, unless the first mail of the day comes during those hours. If it comes five minutes or more before the church service begins, the post-office can be run, and is run, in many cases, all through church hours, as the rival and antagonist and the competitor of the churches. We do not believe in " Church and State;" nor do we believe in State against Church. A law forbidding the opening of the United States post- office during the usual hours of public worship would remedy this dif- ficulty, and would be better than nothing ; but we desire more than this. The law should also take from the local postmaster the power to keep his employes at work at such hours as would prevent them from going to church. The discretion of the local postmaster is also too great in regard to the amount of Sunday work he can require of his employes. In some offices the amount is double and treble what it is in other offices of the same grade. If the selling of stamps on Sunday can be dispensed with in Chicago it can be dispensed with everywhere. If special-delivery messengers can be allowed their Sun- day rest in Philadelphia, why not in Cincinnati ? The sale of stamps on Sunday, and the sending out of carriers with special-delivery letters and parcels (Sec. 688) ought not to be left to the discretion or caprice of the local postmaster, but uniformly forbidden as needless Sunday work. The individual postmaster now decides whether th special- delivery messenger, who works from 7 A.M. to 11 p.m. on week days, shall spend the same long hours on Sunday carrying parcels at 12 or 15 cents apiece, as an express for law-breaking merchants who keep at business on Sunday. When this practice has become common in one place it will soon become common-in all, and when special delivery by carriers becomes common, general delivery by carriers on Sunday will follow, almost as a matter of course. Workingmen and humanitarians in Europe are trying to stop carrier deliveries just when we are begin- ning to have them. Let us not do what we shall want to undo. It is easier to prevent than to repent. There is another point in which the local postmasters need restraint. The postmaster of a large city can send out Sunday mails on newspaper trains to scores of surround- ing towns where the post-office employes have .had Sabbath rest, thus making more Sunday work, not only in his own office, but in many others. No one defends the handling of business circulars and packages on the Sabbath, and it should be prohibited. These amendments are slices of reform ; better than no bread, but we ask the whole loaf of our rights in this matter. We ask that a law shall be passed instructing the Postniaster- General to make no further contracts which shall include the carriage of the mails on the Sabbath, and to provide that hereafter no mail matter shall be collected and dis- tributed on that day. You ask, " What if a letter calling a son to the bedside of his dying mother should be delayed twenty-four hours by stopping the mails?" Did you never hear of the telegraph — soon to be the Nation's "fast mail?" Emergency letters that are now de- livered on the Sabbath may go by telegraph on Saturday or Monday. As to business letters, some of the most prosperous cities in the world have no Sunday work in their post-offices. I have a letter in my hand recently received from the postmaster at Toronto, a city as widely extended as most of our large cities, though not as thickly pop- ulated ; a city of 140,000, which has grown as fast as almost any city of our country, and which is second to none in its moral record. There, with all the conditions of a large city, this is the statement, dated Toronto, March 29, 1888, and signed John Carruthers, Assist- ant Postmaster : " No clerk is required to do any work in this office on Sunday. Our office closes to the public at 7 p.m. on Saturday, and is not open again until 7 a.m. on Monday. Consequently no mail matter is delivered on Sunday, neither by carrier nor through the boxes. Our sorters all stop work before 12 on Saturday night, and do not resume duty until 12 p.m. on Sunday." Nothing goes to pieces. The rule gives all an equal chance. No business man can get ahead of his competitor by getting his Sunday mail and practising for the insane asylum by Sunday work. All rest, with no loss to any one. There is no ground for running a Sunday mail, not even for business letters. Certainly the Government should not keep its postal employes at work on Sunday for the benefit of the seven-day news- papers. Weekly newspapers do not ask it. WHAT DEGREE OF SABBATH OBSERV- ANCE CAN BE SECURED IN NINE- TEENTH CENTURY CITIES? FOR the ideal Sabbath we must go to the precepts and practice of Christ. In order to understand these we must examine also the Sabbath of the prophets and apostles. Let us first turn to the Fourth Command- ment : " Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work : but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maid- servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates : for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." (Ex. 20 : 8-1 1.) 130 That this law was received by the Jews in the days of Moses is admitted even by the destructive critics. That it came from God is believed by all who accept any theory of inspiration. The only question is, whether it is a positive," 131 local, and temporary Jewish by-law, ora " moral " and perpetual article in the world's code of common law. That the obligation to keep the Fourth Command- ment is perpetual and universal is shown, first, by the fact that it is founded on conditions that are as perpetual and universal as human nature. It aims for one thing, 354 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. to prevent vagrancy, 195 by requiring men to work six days of each week. Is not such a requirement as ap- propriate in the Sandwich Islands or in New York or Chicago or London as in Jerusalem ? It aims to secure every seventh day for rest of body and mind. Are Jews alone in need of such rest ? It aims also to culture the soul into holiness. Do none but Jews need that ? Hath not a Gentile muscles, mind, soul, home ? It is replied: "The necessity of rest was never greater than to-day, but the methods of resting are not the same as in the days of Moses." That is too true. The methods of resting on the Sabbath in the days of Moses differ from those of the nineteenth century — Sunday excursions and such like — chiefly in the fact that the former method rested the people for Monday's work, while the latter tires them for a ''blue Monday's" rest. Nineteenth century muscles and minds, not less than those of early times, require, with the rest that comes by a change of work and a break in life's monotony, that subtler rest that comes by an uplift of the soul in the exercises of faith, hope, and charity. The Sabbath is not Hebrew, but human and hu- mane. As marriage, though made a symbol of God's fellowship with the Church, is primarily a law for the preservation of physical and moral health, so the Sab- bath, though incidentally used as a monument of Crea- tion and other Divine acts, is primarily a law of health and holiness. It is not a mere Jewish law, but a law of nature. " One day in ten, prescribed by revolutionary France, was actually pronounced by physiologists in- sufficient." Such world-famed scientists as Humboldt and Dr. Farre say that to rest one day in seven is as SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 355 much required by the laws of nature as the rest of the night. Sabbath observance would be binding on us as a law of physical and moral health even if it were not in the Bible. Reason unaided might never have dis- covered such a law, but when revealed, reason ap- proves it as adapted to our nature. " Eternal as the constitution of man," says F. W. Robertson, " is the necessity for the existence of a day of rest." Every law of the decalogue is thus constitutional— not an arbitrary decree, but a revelation of what our nature requires for its best good. If the ancient Jew needed a seventh day for rest and religion, so do men of like passions to-day. A distinguished Christian woman — who believes that it is the duty of modern Gentiles no less than of ancient Jews to give at least a tenth of their income to God, since He declared that this minimum proportion be- longs to Him, as early as the days of Abraham (before there were any Jews), and as late as the days of Christ, who said of tithing, " This ought ye to have done" — thought it wise to read to her little boy what the Bible says about giving a tenth, in order to set his conscience at work on the subject. After she had read several passages he asked, " Who did God say those things to ?" "To the Jews," said his mother. He had a settled dislike for the Jews, but after think- ing awhile he summed up the whole case in words from which there is no escape: " Well, I think we ought to give as much as the old Jews, anyhow. ' ' So of the seventh portion of time which God reserved for Himself, not only before the Jews existed but even " before Abraham was," and which His Son has taught us to give to the service of God — since the re- lations of our souls to our bodies and to God are the 356 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. same as those of the Jews, we ought surely to give as much time as they to rest and religion. In the words of W. H, Ryder, D.D., the distin- guished Universalist, formerly of Chicago : " The principle which underlies the observance of one day in seven as a period of religious culture and rest is based upon a Divine command, and is authorized both by Judaic custom and the example of Christ. It is not necessary that the day of the Jewish Sabbath be observed in order to perpetuate the principle for which the day stands. The obligation to observe one day in seven for purposes of worship and physical rest, there- fore, is of Divine origin." But a law like that of the Sabbath, whose utility is not self-evident, needs Divine proclamation to make it effective. Not until Herbert Spencer's gospel of utility becomes powerful enough to make men do right because in the long run such a course brings the most happiness to the community, will men keep the Sab- bath because in. the end it is the best plan for the in- dividual and for society. It is a suggestive fact that in Europe the Sabbath observance of Lutheran coun- tries, founded on utility, is scarcely better than that of Roman Catholic countries, where it is founded on mere ecclesiastical authority. The numerous suc- cessors of Esau stand ready to sell the future birth- right of health and happiness for the present enjoy- ment of Sabbath profits or potions. European his- tory shows that the Sabbath can not hold its own against greed and appetite, even with the help of civil laws, unless the Divine "thou shalt" of Sinai is so proclaimed as to awake the Divine " I ought" of con- science in men. If the Sabbath comes to us with no authority but that of the Church Fathers, or the Re- SABBATHS IX NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 357 formers or the Puritans, or even the doctors, it will be as little regarded as other rules from the same sources, as little kept as a Massachusetts " Fast Day." What Earl Cairns said of Great Britain is equally true of the United States : " The institution of Sunday is only maintained because the vast majority of the people of this country, altogether irrespective of churches or denominations, are convinced that it depends, not on human law, but upon a higher and greater law, which we are all bound in conscience to obey." 133 Sabbath laws are effective only where they are felt to have Divine authority as well as humane utility. It is therefore important to show that the law of the Sab- bath, besides being a general law of nature, is one of the perpetual and universal moral laws revealed to us in the Bible ; and this we proceed to prove : That its obligation is not local and temporary is proven, secondly, by the fact that it is found in the Decalogue, a moral code 13 ' of unlimited application. It is too much forgotten that the Jewish nation had three codes : one, ceremonial, and obligatory upon its own church alone, and on that only to the coming of the Messiah ; another, civil, and obligatory only upon those who were under the Jewish government, and on them only so long as that government existed ; a third, compared with which the two already mentioned were but local and temporary by-laws, was the very constitution of the Jews in common with all men — the Decalogue, which by its very nature proves itself of universal and perpetual obligation as the common law of the world. 136 Whatever there was about the Sabbath in the Jew- ish ceremonial law, such as its special sacrifices, 217 was 35§ THE SABBATH FOR MAN. for the Jews only, and is not obligatory upon us, although it is recorded in the world's Bible because "profitable for instruction in righteousness." What- ever there was about the Sabbath in the Jewish civil code — such as the prohibition of. fire on the Sabbath in a warm country where a Sabbath fire would only be used for needless cooking ; 210 and the death^penalty for Sabbath-breaking 208 — is not binding upon us, but is recorded in our Bible to teach us that God would have us exceedingly careful to avoid unnecessary Sabbath work, and that He regards disobedience to His Sab- bath law as a very grave offense. But what is said of the Sabbath in the Fourth Com- mandment of the Decalogue is neither a part of the Jewish ceremonial law nor of the Jewish civil law. It is a paragraph in a code of universal and perpetual obligation. It is inexcusable for any intelligent per- son, much more a clergyman, to declare the Fourth Commandment " no more binding on us than the law of circumcision." One might as well say that the law against theft is no more binding upon Americans than some outgrown by-law of the Church of England, since that church condemned theft at the period when this abolished rule was in force. When a church repeals or outgrows an ecclesiastical by-law, it does not repeal the universal code of moral law which that church holds in common with all the world. The Commandments against idolatry, adultery, and Sabbath-breaking, as found in the world's Decalogue of moral laws, are not abrogated because the death penalty prescribed for each of them in the Jewish civil code is no longer in force. Whatever the ceremonial or civil laws of the Jews have to say about the Sabbath has no binding force upon us, but the Fourth Com- SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 359 mandment of the world's Ten Commandments has not one word that is ceremonial, local, or temporary, but, like the other nine Commandments, is written, not only in the rocks, but also in the constitution of man forever. Judge Craft, of Memphis, says 1 " Whatever may be the origin of the Decalogue, whether human or Divine, the high compliment has been paid to it that every one of its commands (except those which provide for the duty of man to worship God) has been re-enacted as civil law ; and when you say, ■ Thou shalt not kill,' or ' Thou shalt not steal,' it is only a re-enacting of the law of Moses — as much so as the Sunday law. " All civilized nations have seen, with Paul, that the Decalogue is "just and good," and so have made it the basis of their laws. The great lawgivers, 275 Justinian, Charlemagne, and Alfred, each acted on this principle, that while the Bible laws about circumcision and sacrifices were for Jews only, those of the Decalogue were the world's common law, its universal constitution. By their very nature, the Ten Commandments are as universal and perpetual in their application as the Golden Rule, which Christ drew, like a precious gem, out of the same Old Testament mine, as the central truth of " the law and the prophets," The Fourth Commandment is hardly second to any in the Decalogue in the honor put upon it, being the only one given in both positive and negative forms, the only one underscored with God's impressive caution to "Remember" it. None but He has a right to bid us " forget the Sabbath day." It is almost universally admitted that nine of the Ten Commandments — those - against idolatry, blas- phemy, disobedience to parents, falsehood, theft 360 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. adultery, murder, covetousness — must be obligatory wherever man lives, because founded on the very con- stitution of man. The Rev. E. H. Plumptre, A.M., in an article on " Sunday" 712 in the Contemporary Review for January, 1866, says of Rev. Norman Macleod's harmful and illogical Sunday theories : 747 ' What he maintains is simply this, that every Commandment but the Fourth was binding before the Law was given on Sinai, would have been binding now even if that Law had never been given, and is actually binding on the consciences of Christian men." Any one who claims that one ceremonial, local, temporary by-law has been smuggled into the universal and perpetual Decalogue — whose laws were distinguished from the ceremonial laws by being written with the ringer of God in the rock, and kept in the ark, while the ceremonial laws were written by Moses on parchment only, and laid beside the ark — is bound to prove so strange and unnatural a theory, to show why and when and where this one law was cut out of the tables of stone. 199 That the Fourth Commandment is not merely a Jewish law may be shown, thirdly, from the fact that the same Book which tells us that it was proclaimed to the Jews at Sinai, tells us that the Sabbath was instituted long before the Jewish nation existed, at the Adamic foun- tain head of all nations. If New York enacts a previously existing law of the General Government of the United States, it is not on that account to be spoken of in Europe as a law bind- ing on New Yorkers only. Even if New Yorkers should repeal it, it would still be a force upon them and all others of the country from the higher power. SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 361 It is thrice declared that as soon as man was created, God instituted the Sabbath for him. The record is perfectly plain. Only a preconceived theory that the Sabbath is only a Jewish institution could lead any one to interpret Gen. 2 : 3 as Paley 137 and F. W. Robertson 622 do. Dr. Paley says : " The words do not assert that God then ' blessed ' and ' sanctified ' the seventh day, but that He blessed and sanctified it for that reason, and if any ask why the Sabbath or sanctification of the seventh day was then mentioned if it was not then appointed, the answer is at hand : The order of connection, and not of time, introduces the mention of the Sabbath in the history of the subject which it was ordained to commemorate/' Robertson says : "It is not said that God at the Creation gave the Sabbath to man, but that God rested at the close of the six days of Creation, whereupon he //^blessed and sanctified the day to the Israelites.'' That inter- pretation is strangely offered in the name of reason. But, taking it on that ground, what reason is there why Adam should not have had a day of rest after each six days of labor in his garden, as well as Jewish farmers of twenty-five centuries later ? Paul says the Law is written on the hearts of even the heathen ; much more was it written on the heart of Adam. The Command- ment against murder must have been written on Cain's heart or he would not have been sentenced by the Judge of all the earth for its violation. The laws against falsehood, theft, adultery, idolatry, must have been written on the hearts of the antediluvians or they would not have suffered capital punishment by the flood for disobeying them. When it is evident from the Bible record that nine of the Ten Commandments must have been obligatory upon all men from the first, 362 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. what " reason" is there for supposing they were not also familiar with the most beneficent ,one of all, especially as it is the only one of the ten which the Bible distinctly tells us was given to man at his very Creation ? But the objector says, " If the Sabbath was given, as the Bible seems to say, at the beginning, how does it happen that it is but once specifically mentioned after that before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai ? The question is not so hard to answer as it might seem. It is too much forgotten that Genesis is only a preface to the Bible — a mere outline of the early ages of the world to introduce the history of the chosen people. It covers nearly twice as much time as all the remainder of the Old Testament, whose cen- tre in time is the birth of Jacob, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Genesis. In a book which sketches sixteen hundred years in "six chapters, only one or two things in a thousand can be recorded, and those will naturally be exceptional and abnormal events, and not such as are regular and ordinary. The argument from silence would prove that the Sabbath was not proclaimed at Sinai, just as conclusively as that it was not instituted in Eden. After the Genesis record that God made the Sabbath as His crowning work, it is not specifically mentioned for forty-eight pages of the Bible, but after the various records in the books of the Pentateuch of its proclamation at Sinai it is not again mentioned for one hundred and twenty-eight pages — Deut. 5 : 15 to 2 Ki. 4 : 23 — a silence nearly three times as long in Bible space as that which is used to disprove the primeval establishment of the Sabbath. 138 The refer- ences to the Sabbath before Sinai are not less but more than could fairly be expected. Besides the three passages which speak distinctly of the Sabbath as ex- SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 363 isting before the Ten Commandments were given, 201 we find that in Jacob's history the " week" is spoken of ; which implies the Sabbath ; and in the story of Noah 11 seven days" are repeatedly mentioned in such a way as perfectly to harmonize with the statement that the Sabbath had been previously established. 203 Several weeks before the Law was given on Mount Sinai, a violation of the Sabbath was rebuked by Moses in the name of God, with words that indicate that it was an old offense against a well-known institu- tion : " How long refuse ye to keep my command- ments ?" 204 With -this harmonizes the opening word of the Fourth Commandment, which is proclaimed as a familiar law which the people are to " Remember." It is indeed said by Moses elsewhere that the Sab- bath was " a sign" 208 between Jehovah and the Israel- ites, but that no more proves the institution new and for Jews only, than the use of the rainbow as a sign of God's covenant with Noah proves that the rainbow was newly created at that time and for* Noah's ex- clusive benefit. Not until the rainbow, with its sun- light after storm, is abrogated, will the days of toil cease to be followed by the Sabbath of rest. That the Sabbath was indeed " made for man' and not for Jews only is proved, fourthly, by the fact that it was made binding upon all the foreigners or i i strangers' ' who were ' ' within the gates' ' of those to whom it was proclaimed. In the words of the Rev. William G. Macfie : " These were idolaters, whom the pursuit of gain had for a time allured within the limits of the Jewish state, or men who, having renounced the grosser forms of heathenism, had not wholly connected themselves with the Jewish church. In either case 364 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. they had not openly professed Judaism, for they had not submitted to the rite of circumcision, nor were they permitted to partake of the passover, or to claim the privileges of Jewish Christians ; yet they were forced, at least outwardly, to obey the Fourth Com- mandment. The ceremonial law did not bind them ; they were allowed the most ample liberty as to every- thing peculiarly Jewish, but they were not to work on the seventh day. The reason is plain. The Fourth Commandment is of universal obligation. It did not bind the Hebrew more than any other race. The Jews kept it, not as Israelites but as men, and all within their gates, therefore, had to acknowledge its author- ity. The stranger was expected, on the seventh day, to abstain from work for precisely the same reasons as, on other days, he was expected to refrain from fraud and calumny." 139 That the Sabbath was given 'not to the Jews only, but to all nations through Adam, is proved, fifthly, by the fact that nearly all the nations of antiquity had the di- vision of time by ' ' iveeks, ' ' with a sacred day as one of the 4 ' seven, ' ' which was on this account used as a sacred number.™ George Smith (Chaldean Account of Genesis, 1881) says that there can be no doubt that the Sabbath ex- isted among the early Assyrians, and that " the word Sabbath itself, under the form Sabbatu, was known to them and explained by them as a day of rest for the heart." Professor Francis Brown sums up the evi- dence of a primitive Assyrian Sabbath thus: "We have strong evidence both of a division of the month into weeks of seven days, and also of a special observ- ance of the last day in each week." SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 365 Rev. W. W. Atterbury/ 03 whose studies in Sabbath literature have been very extensive, says : " From time whereof the memory of man, and history and mythology, run not to the contrary, the division of time into the week of seven days has been the almost universal law. It prevailed among peoples far re- moved from each other, and remote from as well as near to the Asiatic centre whence the nations of men radiated — among Persians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Hindoos, the ancient Chinese on the farthermost East, and. the Scandinavians on the Northwest. In most of these instances it is certain that the week revolved upon a day of rest ; and as religious rest days, dies feriati, are found all through history marking the divisions of the year, it is altogether probable that, wherever the division by weeks existed, it was marked originally by the observance of rest days." 714 This ancient " week" can not be explained as bor- rowed from the Jews, for it is found in the.stone records of yet older nations ; nor as suggested by the sun, moon, and five chief planets, for such a seven is un- natural and was evidently borrowed from some earlier " seven ;" nor as the result of quartering the month, for seven is not an exact quarter. No reasonable ex- planation of the general prevalence of the seven-day week among the most ancient nations has been offered save that which traces it to their common ancestor. 734 That the Fourth Commandment is one of universal and perpetual obligation is proven, sixthly, by the fact that the inspired prophets represent its blessings as des- tined to extend to all nations. For instance, Isaiah says : " Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment, and do justice ; for my salvation 366 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it ; that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people : neither let the eunuchs say, Behold, I am a dry tree : for thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant : even unto them I will give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters : I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant ; even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer : their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted, upon mine altar ; for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for -all people." 230 Ezekiel speaks in a similar strain. The frequent mention of the Sabbath in the prophets shows its importance in the eyes of God, an impor- tance in striking contrast to the value which He sets upon sacrifices and other transient ceremonies ; but what we wish especially to emphasize is the fact that in these prophecies and others, the Sabbath is described as a blessing to be enjoyed by the whole world. That the Sabbath ivas not made for the Jews only is proven, seventhly ', by Christ's own declaration, " The Sabbath was made for man. ' ' 248 SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 367 As it is necessary in the Pentateuch to keep the transient ceremonial laws distinct from the perpetual moral Law, 199 so in reading the Gospels it is important to distinguish very carefully between the Pharisaic Sabbath, which Christ condemned, and the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment, which He always observed, and which, instead of abrogating, He repeatedly con- firmed. On five different occasions He indorsed the Decalogue (and so the Sabbath) as of perpetual and universal obligation, 199 and also gave a special and direct indorsement of the Sabbath Commandment by itself when He said, " The Sabbath was made for man. Those who have not clearly distinguished the Phari- saic Sabbath from the Sabbath of the Fourth Com- mandment, perceiving dimly that Christ antagonized some Sabbath, have jumped to the false conclusion that it was the Divine original, when it was only the human counterfeit. The Pharisaic Sabbath is no more the Bible Sabbath than Romanism is New Testa- ment Christianity. • The pool of Bethesda is now buried under heaps of rubbish. It is said that this is to be removed, and the ancient fountain uncovered for the refreshment of the people. Something like this proposed work Jesus did for the Sabbath. The restful and refreshing Sab- bath of Eden and Sinai had been buried by the Phari- sees under the rubbish of petty rules. Strangely enough, some readers have mistaken Christ's work in removing this rubbish, that the people might once more enjoy their Sabbaths, for an effort to destroy the Divine fountain itself. Let us look at some of the Pharisaic rubbish of petty man-made rules with which.the Sabbath fountain 368 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. had been filled up — some of them, says Dr. Wm. M. Thompson, still cherished by conservative Jews. 140 One might not walk upon the grass, because it would be bruised, which would be a kind of threshing ; 20Sr nor catch a flea, which would be a kind of hunting ; nor wear nailed shoes, which would be bearing a sort of burden ; 233 nor, if he fed his chickens, surfer any corn to lie upon the ground, lest a kernel should ger- minate, which would be a kind of sowing. And from Moses' direction to the encamped Israelites, " Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day," 204 be- cause, despite the Divine command, they had gone forth from the camp to gather the manna, one Rabbi, Dositheus, drew the sage conclusion that a Jew must not move between sunrise and sunset, and established a sect whose observance of the Sabbath consisted in their retaining for the day whatever posture they hap- pened to be in at the rising of the sun. In this same spirit thousands of Jews suffered themselves to be massacred rather than resist the attacks of hostile armies on the Sabbath day, as that would be a form of labor. A Jew must not carry on the Sabbath even so much as a pocket-handkerchief, except within the walls of his city. If there were no walls, it followed, according to their perverse logic, that he must not carry it at all. To avoid this difficulty in Safed they formerly resorted to what they called " Eruv. " Poles were set up at the ends of the streets, and strings at- tached from one to the other. This string represented a wall, and the conscientious Jew could carry his handkerchief anywhere within those strings. A pro- fane and quarrelsome fellow in Safed once asked a traveler to wind his watch just after sunset on Friday evening. It was now the Sabbath, and he could not SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 369 work. Nothing new could be begun on the afternoon before the Sabbath, for the workman might forget and go on after sunset ; if a man had stretched out his hand for a bunch of grapes and the sun went down before he had taken it back with the cluster in it, the grapes must be dropped lest he carry " a burden ;" a woman on the Sabbath could not wear an ornament, because it would be a burden ; false teeth could not be worn, for the same reason ; one could not walk on stilts because he would be carrying the stilts ; to pluck a blade of grass or to pick fruit was a sin ; ' 239 a radish might be dipped in salt, but not left in it, for that would be to be making a pickle ; the nails or the hair could not be cut ; a shower-bath could not be taken, nor a bone set, nor any surgery done, nor an emetic given ; an egg laid in the way of regular busi- ness on the Sabbath could not be eaten on that day, but if the hen were ke'pt for fattening, and not for lay- ing, it might be eaten ; if a wall fell down on Sunday and buried a man, it would be lawful to clear away the rubbish enough to. determine whether he were dead or alive, but if the former, the body could not be removed — and so on through hundreds of pages of solemn trifling. 141 Strangely enough, this pettiness was accompanied by an opposite and incongruous extreme, which is thus described by Dr. Lyman Abbott : 142 ' Walking, social visiting, domestic games and festivities, shared with the synagogue and the temple service in the observ- ance of the Pharisaic Sabbath. ' Meet the Sabbath with a lively hunger ; let thy table be covered with fish, flesh, and generous wine.' ' Let the seats be soft, and adorned with beautiful cushions, and let ele- gance smile, in the furniture of the table.' ' Assume 370 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. all thy sprightliness.' ' Utter nothing but what is provocative of mirth and good humor.' ' Walk leis- urely / for the law requires it, as it does also longer sleep in the morning.' ' Though spiders are nestling in your chambers and drawers, vex not at the matter ; be resolute and merry, though ruined by debt. ' Such are some of the Rabbinical precepts concerning .the Sabbath." It was a strange medley of ritualism and rollicking, like a Romanist Sunday of to-day. Those who follow the latter half of the Pharisaic pattern should not forget that it is a part of the Sabbath which Christ condemned. This petty trifling with God's law, which was ac- companied by as petty evasions of its spirit,, was what Christ attacked. The man-made amendments to God's Sabbath law He vetoed, but not the Divine original. As He snapped these trivial " strings" He reminded the Jews that " the Sabbath was made for man," and not man for such a Sabbath. One might as well say that one who was scraping barnacles from the bottom of a ship was destroying it, as to say that " Christ was a Sabbath-breaker." 14 ^ Removing bar- nacles is a sign that a vessel is to be sent out anew. Mr. Beecher, in his " Life of Jesus the Christ," says : " There does not seem to be one instance in which Jesus ever set aside an original Mosaic rite or insti- tute. It was the additions made by the Pharisees that He pushed away without reverence, and even with repugnance. He went behind the tradition of the elders to the law itself ; nay, He accepted the commands of Moses because they coincided with the Divine will, and condemned only the ' traditions that made the commandments of God of none effect.' ' More recently Mr. Beecher said in a sermon that SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 37 1 " Christ rebuked nothing in regard to the Sabbath but its abuse." Christ's condemnations of Pharisaic modes of Sab- bath observance no more abolish the Sabbath than His condemnations of Pharisaic almsgiving and pray- ing abolish benevolence and prayer. The Sabbath garments of glory and beauty which God had given to man at his Edenic coronation, these Pharisees had lined with iron. They made the Sabbath not only a " heavy burden, grievous to be borne," but also an iron strait-jacket to which men must be fitted. It was this hitman lining which Christ separated from the God-given Sabbath, without mar- ring the original, when He said to the Pharisees who opposed His Sabbath works of necessity and mercy, 238 " The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." But these words of Christ have been as grossly cari- catured in modern times as the original Sabbath ever was by the Pharisees. What is " man' ? Is he, as some one has said, " a stomach with appendages" ? That would seem to be the idea of those who quote the words of Christ as an indorsement for Sunday pic- nicking. To Christ the send is the man. That " the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," no more proves that it is not to be observed than the fact that a man should eat to live, not live to eat, proves that eating should be abolished. It is strange indeed that any one should suppose that He who came to bring rest to those that " labor and are heavy laden" could have taken away their Sabbath rest, and so weighted their yoke instead of lightening it. Those who make Christ's Sabbath works of neces- 372 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. sity and mercy their excuse for regular Sabbath dese- cration would do well to ponder the reply of a Syrian convert who was urged by his employer to work regu- larly on the Sabbath, since Christ said it would be right to take an ass out of a pit on that day. 239 Hay oh quickly replied, " Yes, but if the ass has a habit of falling into that same pit every Sabbath, then the man should fill up the pit or sell that ass." So far from abrogating the Sabbath law, Christ prophesied that His disciples would observe it long years after His death should rend the temple veil and the ceremonial law. He said in His prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, " Pray that your flight be not in the winter nor on the Sabbath day." 241 What- ever else that may mean, it surely implies that His disciples would and should observe a Sabbath long after His death had canceled the Jewish ritual. Christ's chief purpose, however, in what He said and did upon the Sabbath was to open out its neg- lected side, to show that it was positive as well as negative ; that men should not only cease from their own work for money one day in seven, but that they should also on that day take a share in God's work of mercy. Incidentally He showed that works of neces- sity, such as watering an ox or rescuing him from a pit, or getting a Sunday dinner — of cracked wheat — were allowed by the law ; 239 but the many miracles of mercy which He wrought on the Sabbath in the four quarters of Palestine, and the discourses with which He accompanied them, were chiefly designed to teach us to rest, as God did on the first Sabbath, by change of work, turning from work among minerals, vege- tables, animals, to work for man, for the soul. As farmers rest their fields by change of crops, not by SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 373 leaving the idle soil to the weeds, so the true rest for fertile minds — which will think and plan on secular things unless the displacing power of a new affection, a new enthusiasm, a new occupation, turns the thoughts into a new channel — is in a radical change of activities, such as Sabbath works of mercy bring after six days' work for money. Christ's example teaches us that idleness as well as business is Sabbath- breaking ; while Sabbath-keeping requires such work as visiting the poor and sick and sinful, to do them good ; such work as Christian instruction in the home and Sabbath-school. " It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day." It is unlawful to spend it in worldly employments or in idleness. The Sabbath has been too much a day of don'ts. Its positive side has been too much neglected. Bad activities may be most easily displaced by good ones. The day is not only to be marked by a cessation of our work, but by a doing of God's work, especially in uplifting the sor- rowful and sinful. Constantine, in his second edict about Sunday observance, applies Christ's Sabbath teachings most admirably when he says of the Sacred Day : "It is most grateful and pleasing that those things should be done on it that are most desirable. Therefore it is our pleasure that all our ministers have leave to emancipate and manumit on that Holy Day, and enter all such acts as concern the same." 276 Christ loosed on the Sabbath those bound with infirm- ities ; Constantine made it a weekly emancipation day ; so should Christians of to-day use it to relieve the body and soul, by such works of mercy as the Sunday " Free Breakfasts" of Edinburgh, Glasgow Dublin, and Philadelphia, and other Christ-like activi- ties. 374 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. In a Book of Prayer, published in 1545, which con- tained the Lord's Prayer, Creed, Ten Commandments, etc., by which, after the recitation of each of the Com- mandments, the person reciting was required to make a general confession of any violation of it, the Fourth Commandment, which was reduced to the words, i( Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day," was followed by the confession, " I have not sanctified the Holy Day with works which be acceptable unto Thee, nor instructed my neighbor in virtue accord- ingly. " This ancient book, looking at the Fourth Commandment through the glass of the Gospels, un- derstood it far better than that modern religious news- paper which said, " If we ask the Old Testament to tell us in a word the Divine idea of the Sabbath, it replies, Rest.'' The editor attempts to show that the idea of keeping the Sabbath holy by sacrifices and ser- vices was all an afterthought of the prophets. 212 But all this sophistry falls before the fact that the Fourth Commandment itself puts into its foreground the word " holy,'"' and underscores it with " Remember ;" while the command, " Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work," implies, as Christ shows, that on the Sab- bath our rest is to be chiefly found in doing unselfish and Godlike works of mercy and charity. These seven reasons are considered by British and American Christians, 400 for the most part, as proving the universal and perpetual obligation of the Fourth Commandment. Do they also prove that Saturday is the perpetual and universal and only weekly Sabbath ? As a matter of history we know that the Jews, after the giving of the Law, observed Saturday as the •SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 3?5 weekly Sabbath. Does the Fourth Commandment require all men everywhere to keep that day ? All but a few thousands of those who believe in the perpetual and universal obligation of the Fourth Com- mandment say No, for one or more of the following reasons : (i) There is nothing in the Fourth Command- ment about keeping Sattcrday as a Holy Day. Men are there told to work six days and rest the next. The people that begin work on Monday and rest on Sun- day do that as surely as those who rest Saturday. 144 (2) // is at least unprovable and improbable that the original Sabbath was Saturday. In the record of Crea- tion, God's seventh day is man's first day, from which history is reckoned (Gen. 5 : 3). There is strong evi- dence that the primitive Holy Day was the first day of the week. The ancient nations all about the Jews de- voted the first day of the week to what was at first the chief symbol of God and then the chief god, the sun, calling it Sunday.™ This holy day was strangely enough one day after that of the Jews. This remark- able fact may be explained by the theory of many scholars, with which the Scriptures harmonize, that the first-day Sabbath, which Adam bequeathed to all nations — not under that name, however — was at the Exodus changed for the Jews only as " a sign" of their separation, and a protection against idolatry, to the preceding day, .this change continuing until the ceremonial mission of the Jewish people had been completed. Then the Saviour buried in His own grave, by sleeping there on Saturday, the Jewish part of the Sabbath — its sacrifices and its order in the week — partly because Christians now needed to be separated from Jewish ceremonies as much as the 376 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. Jews of the Exodus had needed to be separated from heathen days of worship ; partly because the narrow Jewish dispensation was now to give place to one as broad as mankind, which called for a return on the part of Jewish Christians to the original Sabbath of Adam, which the missionaries of the cross would find was already regarded sacred as " the venerable day of the Sun" 276 in the Roman Empire and other nations to which they were sent. [See Appendix (204) (980) (981).] (3) During the last days of Christ's earthly ministry, and in the subsequent ministry of the apostles, and among their immediate successors, the first day of the week was treated as the " chief of days." *' The Lord's Day was established either by apostolic, or by ecclesiastical authority. For the former supposition, we have the statements in the epistles abrogating the Jewish Sabbath, 211 yet affirming the Decalogue, the use made of the first day of the week, and patristic testimony referring the custom back to apostolic times. For the latter supposition there is not a shred of evidence, but deep, unbroken silence. No enact- ment of the Lord's Day can be found among the de- crees of any council of the Church." (Rev. George Elliott, D.D., in "Abiding Sabbath," p. 234.) Apostles taught the churches which they organized to meet together on the first day of the week to cele- brate the Lord's Supper, to engage in worship, to hear preaching, and to make their weekly collections. (Acts 20 :6-u ; 1 Cor. 16 : 1.) These were the very substance of the preceding Saturday Sabbath, which began with a home sacrament, such as I saw at sunset of a Friday in Jerusalem — a Jewish father standing in the midst of his family to " bless his house" as David did, and reciting the Fourth Commandment, SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 377 followed by comments from the Mishna, a prayer, and the passing, first of bread and then of wine, to each member of the family ; which, in turn, was followed, at the synagogue, by social worship, public teaching, and the weekly collection. When the only parts of the seventh-day observance which were adapted for universal adoption, the only elements of it that were not ceremonial and so local and temporary — when the very essence of the Sabbath had been transferred by apostolic example and command to the first day of the week — what matters it whether the old label was also at once transferred, or a new one applied ? As the Pass- over took on a new name as ' ' The Lord's Supper, ' ' why might not the Sabbath become " the Lord's-day" ? The apostles often went to the synagogue on Sat- urday to evangelize the Jews, 255 but we have no record that any Christian assembly, after the resurrection, met on that day for preaching, or for the Lord's Sup- per, or for public worship. Converted Jews raised some controversies as to whether Christians ought not to keep the seventh day as well as the first, but there is no record of any controversy in the early church in regard to keeping the first day. This fact explains the misinterpreted words of Paul about the Sabbath. They can not mean an abrogation of the law which he pronounces " holy, just, and good " (Rom. 7 : 12), and which his Master five times reaffirmed. All becomes clear when we keep in mind in our reading that the observance of the first day of the week was never controverted in the early church, but only the question whether the preceding day, the Jewish Sabbath, was also " a day of obligation" to Christians. Paul advises toleration and patience with' those who can not yet see that all that was Jewish 378 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. about "days and months and years" is superseded. This, we think, includes the order of the Sabbath in the week, which was not^a part of the Decalogue, but only a Jewish by-law. 2B0 Paul's words are consistent with a change of date, but not with a change in^the Decalogue. He teaches that " love is the fulfilling of the law," not that love is the breaking of it. James also in his epistle warns us not to disobey it even " in one point." (Jas. 2 : 10.) Those who insist that the Divine authority for a change of day can not be established by anything less than a specific New Testament command, forget that Christ's acts are legislative " acts," quite as authorita- tive as His sermons. It was by His resurrection, more than by any words, that He was " declared to be the Son of God with power." (Rom. I : 4.) If seventh-day Christians were consistent in apply- ing their logic to all subjects they would reject the doc- trine of the Trinity because it is nowhere proclaimed in the Bible in so many words that " the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three persons in one God ;" and they would reject such scientific truths as gravitation and the rotundity of the earth, because the evidence is not mathematical but inferential ; and they would not condemn slavery because the Bible gives anti- slavery principles rather than abolition commands. As Christ, for wise reasons, set forces at work that would melt the chains of the slave gradually, instead of breaking them by a premature and peremptory emanci- pation proclamation, so He timed His resurrection and subsequent visits to His disciples in such a way that, with or without specific commands 146 from Him, the first day of the week would gradually become the Christian Sabbath, displacing the Saturday Sabbath as quietly SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 379 as Christianity displaced other parts of Judaism, just as we should expect from Him who makes the dawn- ing light to shine more and more unto the perfect day. 147 At the time when the last of the apostles wrote the book of Revelation, the first day of the week had come to be known, by way of pre-eminence, as " The Lord's-day," 248 which name was applied to it as one familiar and well-known in the earliest extant documents of the Church Fathers 148 who succeeded to the work of the Apostles — by Ignatius, 252 by the compiler of " The Teaching of the Apostles," 255 by Dionysius of Cor- inth, 257 and by Tertullian, 262 all of them writing within one hundred years after the death of the Apostle John. When we leave the New Testament and enter the literature of " the Church Fathers" for evidence as to the change of day, the fact should be kept in mind that their opinions on Biblical or spiritual matters are not more but less valuable than those of the Church " fathers" of to-day. No one would claim that they understood the teachings of the Bible as to slavery as well as we do. Their opinions about the Sabbath of Adam and the patriarchs, and their allegorizing about the spiritual Sabbath are also to be rated as mere opin- ions, less ripe than those of our present leaders. The mere opinions of Justin and Origen on the Sabbath are as valueless as those of Luth^ and Calvin. We live in an age when Protestant Christians have generally learned, in searching for doctrinal and spiritual truth, to go back of the " Fathers," to the grandfathers — the Apostles — and especially to the All-Father Him- self as He speaks in Christ. What the " Fathers" say of the Sabbath is of value chiefly as affording incidental and so reliable testimony 380 THE SABBATH FOR MAN. to several facts — namely : 1. The Old Testament cus- tom of setting apart one " stated day" in each week for a sacrament, a collection, and social worship, was not abolished by the Apostles, but was uninter- ruptedly continued by their immediate successors. 2. The first day of the week was thus kept as a Christian festival. 3. The day of the week most highly esteemed in the days of the Post-apostolic Fathers was not the seventh, but "the first day of the week," called also "the eighth day" and " Sunday." 4. The additional observance of the seventh day was for a while tolerated in converts from Judaism. 5. " The first day of the week" was commonly called " The Lord's-day," as in Rev. 1 : io. 250 It is not claimed that this day was then called " the Sabbath." 149 Just as Catholic Protestants seldom call themselves so because the word " Catholic" is collo- quially understood to mean a Romanist, so it was nat- ural that the early Christians should call the Christian Sabbath by some of its other names, as " Sabbath" was colloquially understood to mean the Jewish Satur- day. The seventh-day Christians might as fitly argue that broad-spirited Protestants are not " Catholics" because they are not generally called so, as to make their sim- ilar claim that the Lord's-day is not the Sabbath be- cause for sixteen centuries it was seldom if ever called so. The editor of The Outlook, the leading paper of the Seventh-day Baptists, says on this point : " We hope all our readers will clearly understand our position on this question. We make no attempt to show that the Sunday was not devoted to religious worship and SABBATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY CITIES. 38 1 church assembling. All this we concede to have been done from an early time. Neither