“ALL the great daily newspapers of this city now issue a Sunday edition,” says the Christian at Work. The statement is quite true; but will the Mail and Express take kindly to it? for that paper has no Sunday edition and is not therefore one of the great dailies.
THE Christian Statesman still insists that Seventh-day Adventists are parties to the Clingman injunction suit. Well that is not strange since the Statesman never misses an opportunity to excite prejudice against Adventists, regardless of the facts. The Statesman is as unscrupulous as a Jesuit or a ward politician. Suppose that Mr. Mason—Clingman’s attorney—had among his clients a single Adventist stockholder in the Fair, which however he has not, would the Statesman be justified in representing that “the Seventh-day Adventists” were parties to that suit? An honest man can give but one answer to the question.
THE Cleveland News and Herald is probably no worse than thousands of papers, but it is hard to believe that the following editorial note published by it on the 27th ult., was not inspired by malice:—
The legal warfare over the Sunday question in connection with the World’s Fair is not yet ended. The non-religious forces engaged have dropped out, but the Seventh-day Adventists, aided some what, it may be by a few Jews, are keeping up the fight against closing the gates on the first day of the week. Since it has been proved by experience that the financial interests of the Columbian Exposition Company would be best served by Sunday closing, the people who looked only at the money side of the question have been well content to let the latest decision of the directors be final, but the Adventists are not so ready to yield a point. They propose to stick out for their own ideas of the true time to observe the Christian day of rest and religious services, no matter what the result may be to the World’s Fair or any other interests, however great. It is such exhibitions of unreasonableness which make multitudes of men and women impatient of denominational and religious controversies.
The Adventists have had absolutely nothing to do with the litigation having for its purpose the opening of the World’s Fair on Sunday. Adventists have insisted from the first that the Government had no right to require the closing of the Fair on Sunday, and they have likewise insisted all along that the directors were the proper persons to decide whether the Fair should be open or closed on that day. They have made no appeal to any court on the subject, nor will they do so. It would be a good thing if the secular press would give the public a little less misinformation. We believe it was one of our great humorists who said he would rather not know so much than to know so many things that were not true. People who rely implicitly on the newspapers for information certainly have a good deal of the latter kind of “knowledge.”
SOME one has sent us a paper containing a marked article by the President of the American Sabbath Union in which the position is taker that polygamy is enjoined in the Old Testament, and that, therefore, the Morman [sic.] can as plausibly plead that he should be permitted to have several wives as the Sabbath keeper that he ought not to be molested for working on Sunday. For a complete refutation of this sophistry see No. 10 of the Religious Liberty Library, Review and Herald, Battle Creek, Mich. Price 3 cents single copy.
MR. CRAFTS, he of the “new method of petitioning,” by which men, women and children are counted again and again many times over as petitioners for his pet schemes, thinks that the reopening of the Fair on Sunday “is not to be feared, especially since Congress has been called for August. “It would,” he says, “inflict swift punishment if any second ‘contempt’ were put upon its authority and the people’s will.” So he would have Congress not only override the Constitution, by making an appropriation directly in the interests of a religious institution, but he would also have that body violate the charter of American liberty by passing an ex post facto law, that is a law imposing a penalty after the commission of the act. Moreover, he would have the legislative branch of the Government usurp the functions of the other two branches of the Government, namely, the judicial and the executive. There is nothing small about this gentleman except his ideas of other people’s rights.
WHEN an injunction was sought from Federal Judge Jenkins enjoining the World’s Fair Directors from keeping the Fair open on Sunday, on the ground that to do so would impose a financial loss upon the stockholders, because of the religious boycott, the judge held that he had no power to grant the relief prayed for because it was a question of policy to be decided by the directors, and with which the courts had no right to meddle. Some people have supposed that in granting an injunction forbidding the closing of the gates on Sunday, Judge Stein violated the rule thus stated by Judge Jenkins. This is a mistake. The Stein injunction was granted by a State court solely on the ground that Jackson Park in which the Fair is held, being dedicated to the city for a park “to be open to the people of Illinois for ever,” could not be closed to the public on any day of the week by anybody. This is a question over which a United States Court could not possibly have any jurisdiction, and is a very different matter from the question presented to Judge Jenkins.
IT now seems inevitable that the World’s Fair will be a financial failure. The latest estimate places its resources at $6,510,000, and its liabilities at $6,881,000, including the debenture bonds. The best calculations show a deficit of $71,200. These calculations take in $300,000 as an additional resource for certain material on the grounds not counted in the official figures. All calculations leave out the $11,000,000 of stock subscriptions and city bonds as items of liability. The idea of reimbursing the stockholders or taking up the bonds appears to have been abandoned. This is due in large measure to the general stringency of the times, but it is more than likely that as the Sunday people are claiming everything in sight, and counting it from two to six times, the whole gigantic failure will be charged up to Sunday opening. And in utter disregard of the fact that Sunday is not the Sabbath but is a fraud, the failure of the Fair will be cited as indisputable evidence of the divine displeasure
WE have received from the publishers, 28 Lafayette Place, this city, No. 33 of the “Truth Seeker Library,” the same being “Pen Pictures of the World’s Fair,” by Samuel P. Putnam. Mr. Putnam is a pleasant gentleman, and an excellent writer, and we cannot speak too highly of his “Pen Pictures,” except in one particular, namely, the hostility to Christianity which he plainly exhibits several times in this otherwise exceedingly meritorious pamphlet. “Pen Pictures” is well illustrated, is written in Mr. Putnam’s happiest descriptive style, and notwithstanding the objectionable feature which we have mentioned, is well worth the price asked for it (25 cents). It would not be a bad hand book for expectant visitors, who have sufficient stamina not to be influenced by what Mr. Putnam does not know about Christianity.