So it is I am in favor of having the World's Fair open on Sunday. It will be a good day to look at the best the world has produced; a good day to leave the saloons and commune for a little while with the mighty spirits that have glorified this world. Sunday is a good day to leave the churches, where they teach that man has become totally depraved, and look at the glorious things that have been wrought by these depraved beings. Besides all this, it is the day of days for the working man and working woman, for those who have to work all the week. In New York an attempt was made to open the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, and the pious people opposed it. They thought it would interfere with the joy of heaven if people were seen in the park enjoying themselves on Sunday, and they also held that nobody would visit the Museum if it were opened on Sunday; that the "common people" had no love for pictures and statues and cared nothing about art. The doors were opened, and it was demonstrated that the poor people, the toilers and workers, did want to see such things on Sunday, and now more people visit the Museum on Sunday than on all the other days of the week put together. The same is true of the public libraries. There is something to me infinitely pharisaical, hypocritical and farcical in this Sunday nonsense. The rich people who favor keeping Sunday "holy," have their coachman drive them to church and wait outside until the services end. What do they care about the coachman's soul? While they are at church their cooks are busy at home getting dinner ready. What do they care for the souls of cooks? The whole thing is pretence, and nothing but pretence. It is the instinct of business. It is the competition of the gospel shop with other shops and places of resort.
The ministers, of course, are opposed to all shows except their own, for they know that very few will come to see or hear them and the choice must be the church or nothing.
I do not believe that one day can be more holy than another unless more joyous than another. The holiest day is the happiest day— the day on which wives and children and men are happiest. In that sense a day can be holy.
Our idea of the Sabbath is from the Puritans, and they imagined that a man has to be miserable in order to excite the love of God. We have outgrown the old New England Sabbath—the old Scotch horror. The Germans have helped us and have set a splendid example. I do not see how a poor workingman can go to church for recreation—I mean an orthodox church. A man who has hell here cannot be benefitted by being assured that he is likely to have hell hereafter. The whole business I hold in perfect abhorrence.
They tell us that God will not prosper us unless we observe the Sabbath. The Jews kept the Sabbath and yet Jehovah deserted them, and they are a people without a nation. The Scotch kept Sunday; they are not independent. The French never kept Sunday, and yet they are the most prosperous nation in Europe.
—Commercial Gazette, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 2, 1892.
AUTHORS.
Question. Who, in your opinion, is the greatest novelist who has written in the English language?