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 PROTEST OR REMONSTRANCE 
 
 M. FIELD FOWLED, 
 
 AGAINST OPENING THE DOORS OF THE 
 
 PUBLLC LIBRARY, BOSTON, 
 
 ON THE LORD’S DAY. 
 
 For sale at Howard’s News Agency , Post Office. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 ROCKWELL & ROLLINS, PRINTERS, 
 122 Washington Street. 
 
 1 86 7. 
 
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 F*! 1 ) j. 
 
 REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP 
 
 IT HOLY. 
 
 To the Honorable City Council of Boston: 
 
 The undersigned respectfully protests against the passage 
 of the order proposing to throw open the doors of the Public 
 Library on the Lord’s Day. I have read the report of the 
 joint standing committee in favor of the same, which is drawn 
 up certainly with great ability, if not with insidious logic. I 
 feel a high personal regard for the gentlemen who signed that 
 report, and from their official position it is no doubt a docu- 
 ment that will exercise a wide and important influence in this 
 community, not only on this Public Library matter, but 
 opens up incidentally all the other questions agitating the 
 community on the observance of the Christian Sabbath, some 
 of which are specially mentioned in the report, and its foun- 
 dation, in fact, seems to me to rest on what are now considered 
 by the Christian community as mischievous practices or cus- 
 toms, and demoralizing usages. The report says the com- 
 mittee represent in their individual character the denomi- 
 national views of the various sects of the Christian faith . I 
 confess nothing said in the whole report has " wounded my 
 feelings” more than this assertion or assumption ; and I should 
 be very much astonished if any Christian sect or denomi- 
 nation in Boston should admit the assertion to be true, or con- 
 firm the premises on which the report is based. I, for one, 
 repudiate it in toto, and consider it an insult to the church, 
 or denomination to which I belong ; and I believe that to be 
 the sentiment of all evangelical Christian denominations in 
 the City of Boston. 
 
 The report says, "It is the custom and an acknowledged 
 convenience for the horse cars to run on Sundays in this 
 
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 city.” Admitting this to be true, so far as those who use 
 them is concerned, does not prove it to be right or beneficial 
 to the whole community, or sanctioned by the views of the 
 Christian denominations. 
 
 According to the report, out of about 200,000 population 
 in this city, not over one fourth, or 50,000, attend church on 
 Sunday. Further it says : "The fact is, that a large propor- 
 tion of our people, especially young men, seldom, or never, 
 attend any church.” This is certainly an admission that there 
 are some very bad " customs ” indulged in on Sunday by a 
 great majority of the people. As the horse-cars are used on 
 Sunday by only a very small proportion of the population, 
 and probably they are mostly of the class just alluded to, that 
 " custom” hardly justifies the deductions assumed by implica- 
 tion favorable to opening the Public Library ! I doubt if the 
 running of horse-cars on Sunday is sanctioned by anything 
 like a majority of Christian worshippers, or even voters, of 
 the city of Boston. 
 
 In the city of Baltimore, recently, with all the influence of 
 Boston example eloquently urged by a clergyman represent- 
 ing the liberal Christianity of Boston, it was decided by only 
 about 1,300 majority, out of 20,000 votes, in favor of Sun- 
 day cars. In Boston, last year, 1,072 men and 2,071 horses 
 were employed and worked to their utmost capacity during 
 the week, and then again on Sunday. This may be an ac- 
 knowledged "convenience” to some folks, but the Christian 
 heart that defends and applauds such a " custom ” must be 
 deplorably ignorant or blind to its evils and consequences on 
 all sides. My experience and observations on this Sunday 
 "custom” extends back to 1856, three years before the "dis- 
 cussion ” of the Public Library question commenced, and it 
 may therefore not inaptly be considered one of its children. 
 Perhaps some may say it is illegitimate ; but I think the horse- 
 railroad is the mother of it, although there may be some 
 doubts about the father, or paternal progenitor. I plead 
 guilty to being one of the grandfathers, and have acknowl- 
 
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 edged my shame a long time ago, and feel now that it is time 
 to stop the propagation and generation of such evils, or 
 "customs,” by destroying the root, instead of cultivating it. 
 
 I certainly think it is a very slim and feeble argument for 
 the " conservators of the morals of the community ” to be 
 forced upon, when they appeal to the example of the Mer- 
 chants’ Exchange, and other reading-rooms and clubs, to jus- 
 tify the City Government of this old and Puritanical City of 
 Boston in keeping their reading-room open on Sundays ! If 
 His Honor the Mayor, or some one or more of the Council, 
 should personally superintend, and hand out the "books, 
 magazines, and papers,” at the room, Sundays, it would be, I 
 think, consistent, if not appropriate. 
 
 I have been the target for the sneers of a certain daily pa- 
 per in Boston on the Sunday Car question. I asked them why 
 they did not publish their valuable paper on Sunday afternoons, 
 with " the thoughts of great and good men ” to " inspire and 
 ennoble their readers but they have not yet answered my 
 question, but are probably waiting for the Public Library to 
 open. "As a question of practical morals” no doubt there 
 are many in the community who would petition in favor of 
 opening the public schools on Sunday, and back it up with 
 stronger arguments than have been so far advanced in favor 
 of opening the Public Library. The teachers do not work 
 half so hard as the conductors and drivers of horse-cars on 
 week days, and are much better paid. I question the need or 
 propriety of keeping the clubs or merchants’ reading-rooms 
 open on Sundays. Although I am no fanatic, I don’t think it 
 is parallel with the laws of God and customs of our country. 
 The New York Merchants’ Exchange is never opened on 
 Sundays ; neither is the London Merchants’ Exchange, which 
 is the largest in the world, and has this inscription conspicu- 
 ously on its front : " The earth and the fulness thereof are 
 the Lord’s,” which struck me forcibly. 
 
 No institution, people, or government can expect God’s 
 blessing, if the Bible is to be believed as his " word,” that 
 
does not publicly acknowledge God in all their ways, and 
 especially in remembering the Lord’s Day, or Christian 
 Sabbath, to keep it holy. It is originally not only a law of 
 creation from the dawn of time, but an act of benediction 
 for the physicial, intellectual, and moral constitution of our 
 nature as it came from the hands of its Creator. The fourth 
 commandment, like any other of the ten commandments, was 
 written by the great JEHOVAH, not on paper, like the Pen- 
 tateuch, but on tables of stone, the symbol of durability. 
 It received the express sanction of CHRIST and his Apostles, 
 who declared that the Gospel, far from overthrowing the law, 
 establishes and fulfils it. Hence, it is called "a schoolmaster 
 to bring to Christ,” and we are " under the law to him.” The 
 forms of obedience may change, but virtue is unalterable ; 
 consequently, moral obligation is the same in its principle 
 under the Patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian dispen- 
 sations. And under whatever dispensations mankind may be 
 placed, and whatever requirements the Creator may see fit to 
 institute, man can never be released from the binding duties 
 which originate in the very constitution of his nature. It 
 would reflect on the character of God, who is unchangable, to 
 suppose that under one dispensation he has prescribed a law 
 which is at variance with the principles he has established 
 under another. It is to place Deity in opposition to Him- 
 self and virtually to deny his perfections. The Jewish Sab- 
 bath rose with the Saviour from the grave as a new creation 
 on the morning of the resurrection with the fulness of the 
 gospel salvation, and descended with the Holy Ghost from 
 his exalted throne of glory, on the day of Pctecost, to be ob- 
 served as the Christian Sabbath or " the Lord’s Day ” in 
 his church to the end of time. 
 
 In conclusion, I would echo the truthful and eloquent sen- 
 timents in a pamphlet published by the New York Sabbath- 
 Committee : — 
 
 " The day of holy rest, to a land bearing the Christian name, 
 and to a republic based on equal lights, has the highest Civil 
 
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 Worth. Man needs it, physically, as a season when Labor 
 may wipe off its grime, and breathe more freely after a week’s 
 exhaustion, and when Care shall slacken its hold upon the 
 frame and the heart. Man needs it, morally , to rise by its 
 aid out of engrossing secularities and materialism to the re- 
 membrance of his spiritual interests, his final account, and his 
 eternal destiny. Toil needs it, to rescue its share of rest, 
 and its season of devotion from the absorbing despotism of 
 Capital ; and Capital needs it, to shield its own accumula- 
 tions from the recklessness and anarchy of the imbruted and 
 the desperate, and to keep its own humanity and conscien- 
 tiousness alive. The State needs it, as a safeguard of the 
 public order, quiet and virtue, — human laws becoming, how- 
 ever wise in form, effete in practice, except as they are based 
 upon conscience and upon the sanctions of Eternity, as recog- 
 nized voluntarily by an intelligent people ; and God’s day 
 cultivating the one and reminding us of the other. And in a 
 republic more especially, whose liberties, under God, inhere 
 in its virtues, the recognition — freely and devoutly, by an 
 instructed nation — of God’s paramount rights is the moral 
 underpinning requisite to sustain the superstructure of man’s 
 rights; and without such support from religion, — not as 
 nationally established, but as personally and freely accepted, 
 — all human freedom finally moulders and topples into irre- 
 trievable ruin.” 
 
 And if the City Council shall decide to open the Public Li- 
 brary reading-room on the Lord’s Day, I hope they will buy 
 a few hundred volumes of a work recently published by the 
 New York Sabbath-Committee, entitled " THE SABBATH, 
 viewed in the light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with 
 sketches of its Literature, by the Rev. James Gilfillan, 
 Sterling, Scotland,” and put it on the tables for the use of 
 visitors. 
 
 M. FIELD FOWLER. 
 
 Boston, June 3d, 1867. 
 

 
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