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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to the uses of man, while the puritani- 

 cal Sunday, which represses recreations 

 and stifles worldly enjoyments, is re- 

 sisted and repudiated. The institution 

 in its theological aspects is, therefore, 

 destitute of any authoritative religious 

 sanction. But, after centuries of con- 

 test between liberality and intolerance, 

 the issue is still the same. As a day of 

 rest from labor, Sunday is objected to 

 by but few ; and to the slave and the 

 convict, and the millions of toil-worn 

 operatives in factory, mine, and field, 

 who earn their subsistence by the sweat 

 of the brow, it is indeed a precious 

 boon. To the multitudes doomed to a 

 life of brutalized drudgery in barbaric 

 times, it came as a blessed relief; and 

 it is, perhaps, scarcely less necessary 

 when the pressures of enterprise and 

 competition would wear men out if 

 no check was interposed. But the sour 

 and gloomy Sunday of religious asceti- 

 cism the austere Sabbath of the sanc- 

 timonious Pharisee requires to be re- 

 sisted now as much as it was resisted 

 by the founder of Christianity himself. 

 In regard to the strict observance of 

 Sunday, men have undoubtedly a right 

 to do as they please under our guar- 

 antees of religious liberty ; but they 

 have no right to force their views upon 

 others by perverting the legal day of 

 rest to assumed religious objeets, and by 

 making it a hinderance to enjoyment 

 and improvement on the part of those 

 who desire so to employ it, and who 

 are not to be judged by others in their 

 manner of doing it. 



It is objected to the opening of the 

 exhibition on Sunday that it would 

 involve the labor of many in attending 

 to its operations, running trains, etc. 

 But even the superstitious Jews had 

 sense enough to interpret the fourth 

 commandment as allowing works of 

 necessity. A certain amount of Sunday 

 labor is everywhere recognized as un- 

 avoidable, and as long as cooking, the 

 running of Sunday cars and carriages, 

 police surveillance, and the distribution 



of the mails, are carried on in Philadel- 

 phia under Pennsylvania laws, the ob- 

 jection to opening the exhibition be- 

 cause it would violate the law against 

 Sunday labor is futile. 



But we insist upon keeping the ar- 

 gument upon its highest grounds. We 

 showed at the outset that the charac- 

 ter and influence of such an exhibition 

 are not only in the highest degree moral 

 and salutary, but are also essentially 

 religious; its opening every day of the 

 week is therefore defensible on strictly 

 religious grounds. We have further- 

 more shown that the religious reasons 

 offered, for shutting it up on Sunday, 

 are baseless. The considerations urged 

 for closing are hence exactly those 

 which require it to be free of access to 

 the public in other words, religion re- 

 quires the opening. If it be alleged that 

 the people would not see these higher 

 meanings of the objects displayed, that 

 only shows the defects of their religious 

 training; and that there is all the more 

 need of insisting upon this higher office 

 of the exhibition. And if they are thus 

 insensible to the moral and religious 

 significance of so grand a collection of 

 the noblest and most perfect products 

 of human thought and skill, what more 

 proper than to point out to them the 

 elevated lessons that they teach? And 

 if, instead of demanding that the exhi- 

 bition shall be suppressed one day in 

 the week, as if it were a public nui- 

 sance, the committees who have taken 

 so deep an interest in the matter had 

 asked the commissioners to arrange 

 for religious services in one of the great 

 halls, and to provide for discourses de- 

 signed to bring out the higher instruc- 

 tiveness of the occasion and the demon- 

 stration, we think that they would have 

 much better subserved the interests of 

 true religion. The religious lesson that 

 the commissioners have now lent them- 

 selves to inculcate is that people shut 

 out from the Centennial buildings shall 

 go to other buildings to think upon 

 God ; and that, therefore, the Centen- 



