This marks an epoch in the history of the Sabbath. It is to be sacred in a religious sense in this country no longer. Henceforth in the United States the Sabbath is for the use of man.
Many of those who labored for the closing of the Fair on Sunday took the ground that if the gates were opened, God would visit this nation with famine, flood and fire.
It hardly seems possible that God will destroy thousands of women and children who had nothing to do with the opening of the Fair; still, if he is the same God described in the Christian Bible, he may destroy our babes as he did those of the Egyptians. It is a little hard to tell in advance what a God of that kind will do.
It was believed for many centuries that God punished the Sabbath-breaking individual and the Sabbath-breaking nation. Of course facts never had anything to do with this belief, and the prophecies of the pulpit were never fulfilled. People who were drowned on Sunday, according to the church, lost their lives by the will of God. Those drowned on other days were the victims of storm or accident. The nations that kept the Sabbath were no more prosperous than those that broke the sacred day. Certainly France is as prosperous as Scotland.
Let us hope, however, that these zealous gentlemen who have predicted calamities were mistaken; let us be glad that hundreds of thousands of workingmen and women will be delighted and refined by looking at the statues, the paintings, the machinery, and the countless articles of use and beauty gathered together at the great Fair, and let us be glad that on the one day that they can spare from toil, the gates will be open to them.
A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.
TWO articles have recently appeared attacking the motives of George Jacob Holyoake. He is spoken of as a man governed by a desire to please the rich and powerful, as one afraid of public opinion and who in the perilous hour denies or conceals his convictions.
In these attacks there is not one word of truth. They are based upon mistakes and misconceptions.