“Back Page” American Sentinel 9, 31, p. 248.

THE Christian Statesman says that the Government, by its mail contracts, requires “hundreds of thousands to set at naught the law of the Most High,” in the Sunday mail service. Will the Statesman please to be more definite and point out the divine law which prohibits the carrying of mail on Sunday? Our contemporary must realize that the claims of the Sunday Sabbath are at a great disadvantage because without the vestige of biblical authority. What would not the whole National Reform outfit give for one “Thus saith the Lord” for Sunday observance! But they have it not. The wealth of the world could not buy it, and so they must continue to steal the livery of heaven in which to serve the pagan Sunday. Oh, the wickedness of applying the fourth commandment to Sunday!

THE National Reform Association has one of its secretaries at Albany trying to secure the adoption of a so-called “Christian” preamble to the new constitution. The present preamble reads thus:—

We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this constitution.

It would seem that this ought to satisfy even a National Reformer, but it don’t, and so Mr. Weir, a citizen of Pennsylvania, wants this adopted in its stead:—

We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, as a Christian people in the name and by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, on whose shoulder is the government, do establish this constitution.

This is monstrous. To begin with, the people of this State are not, properly speaking, thankful to God for freedom; they are not, in any proper sense, a “Christian people;” and certainly as long as Tammany bears rule, the government of New York is not on Christ’s shoulder. Let no lie be incorporated into our fundamental law. Let the old preamble stand; or better yet, substitute this:—

We, the people of the State of New York, in order to secure to ourselves and our posterity the benefits of good and stable government, do establish this constitution.

AND now let the National Reformers rise up in their wrath and pronounce curses both loud and deep on the nation: the attorney for the District of Columbia has decided that ordinarily the word “daily” would not include Sunday, that being a dies non, but that in the matter of removing garbage it means just what it says. “Garbage is accumulated on Sunday as well as on other days,” writes Mr. Thomas, “and since its presence is just as objectionable to health on Sundays as on other days, the word ‘daily,’ it seems to me, must be considered as used in the contract with reference to the service to be performed, and must, therefore, in the nature of things, include Sundays.”

Now let Mr. Crafts declare that the nation cannot be preserved without religion, nor religion without the Sabbath, nor the Sabbath while the District of Columbia removes its garbage upon Sunday. Let Dr. George renew his onslaught on Congress, and let Joseph Cook expand his broad palm and closing his fingers one by one, clinch the Sunday argument in this most unhappy and inconclusive way.

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