THE Dayton Republican says it is rumored that more Seventh-day Adventists have been indicted by the grand jury of Rhea County, Tenn.
THE compulsory Sunday-observance crusade has become so universal that it is impossible to notice all the conventions held and the legislation perfected and proposed in its interests.
IN view of the fact that the Senate of Massachusetts has passed a bill prohibiting “sacred concerts” on Sunday, special attention is called to the editorial from the Boston Traveller, which appears in this used—page 101.
THE London branch of the International Tract Society, whose manager was recently fined $19 for permitting work to be done at the society’s office on Sunday, was notified on the 15th inst., that unless the fine was paid by the 21st inst., the property of the society would be levied on to collect it.
MORE information is furnished this week regarding the imprisonment of Seventh-day Adventists at Dayton, Tenn. Let no reader of the SENTINEL forget for a day that a number of honest men are imprisoned at Dayton, Tenn., for performing inoffensive labor on the first day of the week after they had “rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.”
THOMAMS DIXON JR., has for six years held the position of pastor of the Twenty-third Street Baptist Church of this city. A few weeks ago he resigned, and has since established an independent church. In his letter of resignation he announced that he would establish a church “to proclaim this as the hour in which the gospel of Jesus must have its special fulfillment, if society be saved from anarchy. That the State is even now the outline of the kingdom of God, being the only organ through which the people can act as one man in the pursuit of righteousness…. That political action is a sacrament.” We see no reason why Mr. Dixon should have to start a new church in order to proclaim this doctrine. The Presbyterian Church indorses Dr. Parkhurst who teaches this doctrine. The Christian Endeavor Society, as a body, has commenced to act on these ideas. The National Reform Association and the American Sabbath Union teaches all this. The Baptist Church is fast accepting this doctrine, one evidence of which is its indorsement of the work of the “Civic Federation” movement; and another, the fact that it is beginning to teach that “before conscience is law,” thus putting the State, managed by the preachers, in the place of God. This is an old doctrine, as old as the papacy, and we know no reason why Mr. Dixon could not have connected himself with that organization. But against this, the error of our time, we quote the words, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
THE following is from the opinion of Judge Parks, rendered at the trial of the Seventh-day Adventists who are now in jail at Dayton, Tenn., for doing common labor on Sunday:—
“Do the defendants in keeping the seventh day and working on the first, thereby interfere with any natural right of their neighbors? Or is it an artificial right created by human law? Haw any power but the divine will the right to establish any one day as the Sabbath? If the day has been appointed by divine edict, but two or more persons honestly and conscientiously differ as to what day was appointed, can the dispute be settled by legislative enactment? And shall one be given rights which are denied the other? Does might make right, and have the majority the right to dictate in matters purely of conscience?“
The American people must answer these questions, and upon a correct answer hangs the destiny of civil and religious liberty in America and the world.
BISHOP MCGOVERN, of Harrisburg, Pa., has given out an open letter addressed to the legislature of Pennsylvania, criticising the action of the House in passing a bill prohibiting the wearing of a distinctive religious garb by teachers in the public schools of that State. The bishop predicts the speedy triumph of his church over all her enemies in this country and refers to her triumphs in Europe in the following boastful manner:—
Bismarck, of the iron hand, in our time, but with a manly chivalry which recoiled from stripping the religious of their dress, yet drove them out of the schools, hospitals and asylums, and expelled them from their homes, kindred and native land, and in the floodtide of persecution, when cautioned against resorting to these extreme measures, in the self-confidence of a tyrant, he boasted that he would not go to Canosa. Yet he did go, and paid homage to the power he had defied, and returned, but not with the penitential spirit of Henry the Fourth, and was hurled from office and now molders in obscurity. The Emperor of Germany seats at his right hand Cardinal Ledochowski, whom Bismarck expelled from his see in Posen, and with royal munificence, presents him with a gold snuff-box, set with jewels, from which the cardinal, from time to time, gives a pinch of Roman snuff to wake up the sleepy ex-chancellor.
The religious in their garb are returning back to Germany and doing business at the old stand; a Catholic, for the first time in the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns, is chancellor, and poor Bismarck, as his last resort, has the privilege to make snoots at him in the dark. The irony of fate. We are all aware of the savage barbarities—priests hunted down like wolves, forfeiture, imprisonment, death, quartered and scored—which were meted out to Roman Catholics in England and Ireland for three hundred years; but to-day a Roman cardinal holds the place of honor on state occasions, next to the heir apparent to the throne.
How unlike the Master is this defiance, and how it argues the tyranny of the church when she finally conquers as she surely will.
AMS shown by our first article Rome thrives on the ruin of nations. She must therefore observe with pleased anticipation the growth of mobocracy in this country as manifested during the last few days. With murderous mobs defying the civil authorities of Louisiana and Colorado, and the civil authorities themselves in the person of the Indiana legislature reënacting the scenes of the French Revolution, it would appear that the Republic is fast drifting toward ruin. Bishop McGovern, of Harrisburg, Pa., says, in the Johnstown Tribune of March 7: “The Catholic Church will govern the storm and gather the spoils which their violent impetuosity leaves behind.”
THE evening edition of the World has invited short contributions treating on the question, “What Shall Our Sunday Be?” The following is one of the contributions which appeared under date of March 21:—
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH MADE SUNDAY
TO THE EDITOR: William R. Jacobs seriously tells the Evening World’s many readers that in violating the Sunday laws you violate the law of God, by which he means the Bible and the ten commandments, and throughout his letter he calls Sunday the Sabbath. Now for that gentleman’s benefit I would inform him that the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, commonly called Saturday, and was the day kept holy in the old law and by the apostles; it was later on changed by the Roman Catholic Church, and every Protestant who keeps Sunday thereby acknowledges that church to be the true church with the right to make religious laws for the entire Christian world. If Mr. Jacobs doubts me I refer him to the Catholic Mirror’s challenge to the Protestant world to prove by the Bible or commandments that they were authorized to change the day of rest from Saturday to Sunday, and to the AMERICAN SENTINEL, a Protestant weekly, which has the same challenge in its columns every issue. If Protestants want to know how to keep Sunday they should ask the Roman Catholic Church, as that body, having made the day, knows best how it should be kept. P. M’G.
Paterson, N. J.
The writer of this letter is not known to the SENTINEL, but seems to be acquainted with the SENTINEL and with the fact that Sunday observance, as a so-called Christian practice, is solely of papal origin.