Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1894 — COD’S HOLY DAY [ARTICLE]

COD’S HOLY DAY

Should Not Be Made a Modern Holiday. “Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep It Holy”—A Timely B seourje—Df;— Talmage's Sermon, For last Sunday. Dr. Talmage chose for his subject a theme of timely interest, viz., the necessity of guarding the Christian Sabbath against invasion that aim at its destruction. The text selected was Exodus xxxi. 13: “Verily my Sabbath ye shall keep.” The wisdom of cessation from hard labor one day out of the seven is almost universally acknowledged. Tbe world has found oat-t Eat it can do less work in seven days than in six, and that the fifty-two -days of - the year devoted to rest are an addition rather than a subtraction. Experiments have been made in all departments. The great Lord Castlereagh thought he could work his brain 365 days in the year, but after awhile broke down and committed -suic-ide r *nd-W i Iber force said -of-hinu “Poor Castlereagh! This is the result of the non-observance of the Sabbath.”

In other words, intelligent man. dumb beast and dead machinery cry out for the Lord’s day. But while the attempt to kill the Sabbath by the stroke of ax and flail and yardstick has beautifully failed it is proposed in our day to drown the Sabbath by flooding it with secular amusements. They it very decently under the wreath of the target companyand to the music of all brazen instruments. There are today in the different cities 19,000 hands and 10,000 pens busy in attempting to cut out the heart of our Christian Sabbath and leave it a bleeding skeleton of what it once was. The effort is organized and tremendous, —and unless the friends of Christ and the lovers of good order shall rouse up right speedily their sermons and protests will be uttered after the castle is. taken. There are cities in the land where the Sabbath has almost perished, and it is becoming a practical question whether we who received a pure Sabbath from the hands of our fathers shall have piety and pluck enough to give to our children the same blessed inheritance. The eternal God helping us, we will ! Gothrough the streets where the theaters are open on a Sabbath night; go up on the steps; enter the boxes of those places of entertainment, and tell me if that is keeping the Sabbath holy. “Oh,” says some bne/“God won’t be displeased with a grand sacred concert.” A gentleman who was present at. a “grand sacred concert” one Sabbath night in one of the th<?ate''s o.f our great cities said that during the exercises there were comic and sentimental songs, interspersed with coarse jokes, and thereAvere dances, and a farce, and tight rope walking and a trapeze performance.’ . I suppose” it”

was a holy dance and a consecrated i tightrope. This is what they call a ! “grand sacred concert.” The prophet asks a question which I can easily answer, “Will a man roti God?” Yes; they robbed i Him last Sunday night at the thea-| ters and the opera houses, and I charge upon them the infamous and high-handed larceny. I hold the same opinion as a sailor I haveheard bf. The crew had been discharged from the vessel because they would not work while they were in port on j the Lord’s day. The captain went” out to get sailors. He found one man, and he said to him, “Will you serve me bn the Sabbath?” “No." “Why not?” “Well, replied the old sailor,“a man who will rob God Altnighty of His Sabbath would rob me of my wages if he got a chance.” Again, l am opposed to this desecration of the Sabbath by’secular entertaiments because i t is a war on the statutes of most of the States. The law in New York State savs:

“It shall not be lawful to exhibit on tbe first day of .the week commonly called Sunday, to the public, in any building, garden, grounds, concert room, or other room or place within the city and county of New York, any interlude, tragedy, comedy, opera, ballet, play, farce, negro minstrelsy, negro or other dancing, or any other entertainment of the stage or any part or parts therein, or any equestrian, circus or dramatic performance of jugglers, acrobats or rope dancing." Still further, I protest against the invasion of the Sabbath, because it is a foreign war. Now, if you heard at this moment the booming of a gun in the harbor, or if a shell from some foreign frigate should drop into your street, would you keep your seats in church? You would want to face the foe, and every gun that could be managed wduld be brought into use, and every ship that could be brought out of the navy yard would swing from her anchorage,and the question would be decided. You do not want a foreign war, and yet I have to tell you that this invasion of God’s holy day is a foreign war. How do you feel, ye who have been brought up artlid, the hills of New England, about giving up the American Sabbath; ye who spent your childhood under the shadow of thh Adirondacks or the Catskills; ye who were born on the banks of the Savannah or Ohio or Oregon, how do you feel about giving up the American Sabbath? You say: “We shall not give it up. We mean to defend it as long as there is left any strength in our arm or blood in our heart! Do not bring your Spanish Sabbath here. Do not bring your French Sabbath here. It shall be for us and our children forever a pure, conse-

crated, Christian, American Sabbath.” I will make a comparison bptween the American SabbulK as some of you have known it, and the Parisian Sabbath. I speak from observation. On a Sabbath morning I was aroused in Paris by a great sound in the street. I~ said? -’-What is this?” “Oh,” they said, “this is Sunday.” An unusual rattle of vehicles of all sorts. The voices seemed more boisterous than bn other days. People running to and fro. with baskets oi’ bundles, to get to the rail trains or gardens. It seemed as if all the vehicles in Paris, of whatever sort, had turned out for the holiday. The Champs Elysees one great mob of pleasure seeking people- Balloons flying. Parrots chattering. Foot balls rolling- Peddlers hawking their knick-knacks through the streets,. Punch and Judy shows in a score of places, each one with a shouting audience. Hand organs, cymbals and every kind of racket, musical and unmusical. When the evening sun came down all the theaters were in full blaze of music and full blaze of light. The wine stores and saloons were throng- - ed with an unusual number of customers. At eventide I stood and watched the excursionists coming home, fagged out men, women, and children, a gu.’f stream of fatigue, irritability and wretchedness, for I should think it would take three or four days to get over that miserable way of Sundaying. It seemed more like an American Fourth of July than a Christian Sabbath. Now, in contrast, I present one of the Sabbaths in one of our best American cities. Holy silence coming down with the day dawn. Business men looking more deliberately into the faces of their children and talking to them about their present and future welfare. Men sit longer at the table in the morning because the stores are not to be opened and the m’echan ical tooisarenot to be taken up.—A hymn is sung. There are congratulations and good cheer all through the house. The street is silent until 10 o’clock, when there is a regular, orderly tramp church ward. Houses of God, vocal with thanksgiving for mercies received, with prayers for comfort, with charities for the poor. Rest for the body. Rest for the soul. The nerves quieted, the temples cooled, the mind cleared, the soul strengthened, and our entire population turned out on Monday morning ten years younger, better prepared for the duties of life, better prepared for the life that is to come. Again, I oppose this modern invasion of the Christian Sabbath because it is a war on the spiritual welfare of the people. You have a body? Yes. You have a mind? Yes. You have a soul? Yes. Which of thesecular halls on the Sab bath day will give that soul any culture? Now, admitting that a man has a spiritual nature, which one-of the places of amusment will culture it? —Which one of the Sabbath performances will remind men of the fact that unless they are born again they cannot see the kingdom of God? Will the music of the “Grand Duchesse” help people at last to sing tbe song of the one hundred and forty and four thousand? Besides, if you gentlemen of the secular en ter tain men t have six days in the week in which to exercise your alleged beneficial influence, ought you not to allow. Christian institutions to have twen-ty-four hours? Is it unreasonable to demand that if you have six days for the body and intellect we should have one day at least for our immortal soul? Or, to put it in another shape, do you not really think that our imperishable soul is worth at least one-seventh as much as our perishable body? Still further, I am opposed to this invasion of the Sabbath because it is unfair, and it is partial. While secular amusements in different cities are allowed to be open on the Sabbath day, dry goods establishments must be closed, and plumbing establishments, and the butcher’s and the baker’s, and the shoemaker’s and the hardware stores. Now tell me by what law of justice you compel a man to shut the door of his store while you keep open the door of yonr worldly establishment. May it please your honoi s, judges of the Supreme Court, if you give to seeulap places the right to be open on the Sabbath day, you have to give at the same time, the fight to all commercial establishments to be open. If it is right in the one case, it is right in all the cases. Bring your voices, your pens, your printing presses and your pulpits into the Lord’s artillery corps for the defense of our holy day. Today in your families and in your Sabbath-schosls recite, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” Decree before high heaven that this war on your religious rights and the cradles of your children shall bring ignominious defeat to the enemies of God hnd the public weal. For those who die in the contest battling for the right we shall chisel the epitaph: “These are they who come out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.” But for that one who shall prove in this moral crisis recreant to God and the church there shall be no honorable ’epitaph. He shall not be worthy even of a burial place in all this free land, but the appropriate interment for* such a one would be to carry out his remains and drop them into the sea, where the lawless winds which keep no Sabbath may gallop over the grave of him who lived and died a traitor to God, the church and the free institutions of America. Long live tbe Christian Sabbath! Perish forever all attempts to overthrow it|