THE SABBATH. BY J. W. MACKIE. [For Common Sense.] As When the Sabbath in America will have become an obsolete institution, civilization will be a thing of the past. When the Sabbath in America will have become the property of the priest, freedom will be buried in the ruins of the Republic. It is true, that Nature disclaims a Sabbath. Absolute rest is inconceivable. Nature incessantly labors. So must man. But the need on which the Sabbath rests as a blessing and a necessity to man is something different from that observed in natural operations below man. a thinking intelligent being, man finds no analogy any where to guide him. His only guides are reason and experience. In the present state of society the Sabbath is indispensable as a day of rest for all who labor; a day of re-creation of exhausted energies; a day in which thoughts can be diverted from the ruts in which they have moved during the six days of weary and ill requited toil. And even were the Utopian theories of dreamy philosophers realized in a world where there are neither employers nor employees, masters nor servants, rich nor poor, but all living equitably and equally, still then as an auxilliary to order, the Sabbath would be beneficial as a day devoted to the commingling of thought and feeling. But we are more deeply interested in the Sabbath of to-day than the Sabbath in the far, far distant. It is a day to be protected by the government. Not as a religious holy day, but as a legal holiday. It is claimed by some that this is a Christian government, and as such must enforce the sanctity as well as legality of the Christian Sabbath. Let it be granted that this is a Christian government, though it is hard to discern the grounds on which such a supposition can rest. The question next to be answered is, Is there a Christian Sabbath? There is a day which Christians have observed since the infancy of their faith. It is one day in seven, but it is not the Sabbath of the Decalogue. This day was a day of privilege, not a day of enforced requirements. It was a day on which Christians met to break bread, to mingle in social communion and sacred friendship, in which their souls united in a common cause, breathing a common inspiration. Coercion in such a Sabbath is impossible. Externally the primitive Christians were Sabbath breakers, else what is the meaning of Paul's words to the Colossians, "Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink, or respect of a holiday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath which was a shadow of things to come." Or to the Romans xiii, 5, 6,? Or what did Jesus mean in the words, "Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man ?" The Jewish Sabbath was a day of bondage, of imprisonment. But Jesus and his disciples set at defiance the bolts and bars of Judaism, especially in regard to the Sabbath, to the consternation, disgust and anger of the strict Jewish Sabbatarian. In no place in the New Testament is there a word as to how the Sabbath should be observed, or that it should be observed, and it is plainly stated that it is not a Christian requirement. The Ebionite Christians kept sacred Satur day and Sunday: Saturday as a day of humiliation because the Lord that day lay dead in the tomb, Sunday as a day of rejoicing, because on that day he was victorious o'er the grave. To consistently enforce the religious observance of the day, our government should be Jewish, not Christian. Imagine the United States groaning under the burden of a strictly observed Jewish Sabbath! New England and Scotland tried it, and failed. The Protestant laughs at the Catholic for accepting rowed from the Catholic Church rests the Protestant authordoctrine on the authority of tradition, yet on a tradition bority for the observance of Sunday. It was not till the year 321 that the day Sunday became an authorized Christian holiday, when Constantine, the founder of Roman Catholic Christianity, passed an edict enforcing Sunday as a universal holiday, during which all business should be suspended. This carried favor with the Christians, and compromised with the worshippers of the Sun, for Constantine does not name the day, the Lord's day, nor the Sabbath, but the Sun's day. The pagans were already Sun, the Father of Lights, in whom there is no variableaccustomed to the observance of that day as sacred to the ness, neither shadow of turning, and likely hailed it as gladly as did the Christians to worship the Sun of righteousness. In fact, Sunday is more pagan than Christian in its origin. Its very name tells a tale. Popular faith is conservative, and to-day pagan names and customs have survived fifteen centuries of suppression. The names of the days of the week are yet retained. Jupiter is still honored by the observance of fast days on Thursday. The Cabalists inform us that the Ten Words have referEven the Decalogue is suspected to be of heathen origin. ence to the ten Spheroth, the spheres of heaven. The three highest being the spheres of the gods, so the first three commands have reference to our duty to God; the planetary spheres our duty to one another. The following table of houses of the planets may be seen in the British Museum, found in the mummy-case of the Archon of Thebes, in ancient Egypt: It will require little learning or penetration to perceive the application of the above table to the ten commands. Saturn's day, as the sacred day of the Jews, was natural as worshippers of the Ancient of Days, Chronos, or Abraham. Jupiter has always been symbolical of religious and paternal reverence; every one knows of the martial charater of Mars; Venus as the goddess of Love and Chastity; Mercury as the thieving god; the Sun as the symbol of Truth, and the Moon of self-gratification and covetousness. CHINESE LABOR. drive off, as the case may be, any poor devil who dare pre- EDITOR COMMON SENSE:-My attention has again been called to your paper by your reply to my letter on the subject of Chinese Labor. You admit that we have a natural right to any portion of "God's footstool," and in the next sentence assert that "while it may be a good thing for the Chinaman to come to America, it may not be the best thing for Americans to encourage his coming." I think this is inconsistent with your Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I accept the spirit of the above paragraph without comment. I don't know whether it means anything to you. I might quote your Bible (the so-called foundation of your system of morals) on the same subject, if it would have any weight with your readers. You say that if "human sympathy alone is to decide your course in the matter of employing others, that there is no room for argument" on this point. I refer you to the words of St. Paul (Acts 17-26) bearing directly on the question of "flesh and blood," and other matters that your legislators and courts seem dissatisfied with. You also aver that the labor of Chinese is a benefit to the State, as the labor of so many horses-with the difference in favor of the brute. In my travels through your State I have been painfully reminded of a fact somewhat akin to the above, for while your horses and other cattle, as a general rule, have been carefully housed and fed, "your own flesh and blood," the farm laborers of your country, were, as a rule, without a house to cover them, or a bed to lie on. In fact, your "blanket men," as they are called, are the only cattle in this country whose condition your Christian land holders persistently refuse to ameliorate, and wherever I work as cook on your ranches, I am invariably better treated in all respects than your boasted "flesh and blood" in the harvest field. Perhaps it is because I persistently refuse to overwork myself, or obey stupid orders from your women, whom you admit will not bring forth the "future workers of America," and knowing this fact, what respect can I have for them? Not overworking myself, I can work on steadily without getting drunk-as an excuse for rest which you admit is the bad habit of your working cattle. But this "improvidence" of your working men is another necessity of your system of civilization, for if your people did not drink their earnings, and otherwise squander them for fashionable "store clothes, the ranks of the labor market would be crowded by these saloon keepers, "waiter girls" your own flesh and blood-and the innumerable host of small dealers in nic-nacks, who only make a living for what our correspondent calls the "laboring class.' There is no necessity on the farming lands of America by constantly fleecing their "own flesh and blood," and periodically going through the court of bankruptcy. I say The land that can be held by owners should be practically that if the vices and follies of your laboring masses did not limited by placing a high tax on all over a certain amount. necessitate the existence of these parasites on your body Then the owners of land should, to a great extent, be the politic, they would be compelled to come down to the ranks of the "blanket men," and thus swell the list of competi-cultivators. By neighborhood co-operation in the use of tion, for you must admit that your so-called "middle class" labor-saving machinery, there would be demand only for in this country is getting to be a mere name. The people such help as could be furnished by the young men of the are rapidly forming into two classes, the enormously rich country, who have not yet attained to the dignity of freeand the frightfully poor. You tell your laborers that their holders. Let there be an apprenticeship at farming, as at squanderings would, in a few years, get them 160 acres of other industrial pursuits, and the apprentices and owners land. Where can a poor man get this land in your State would do nearly all the work necessary to be done. that he will not be at the mercy of some Christian land grabber with a Spanish title to float on him, as the hawk swoops down on its prey? In this manner many a settler has been forced to resume his place in the Blanket brigade, not having the money to contest a title in your courts of justice! And where there is no possibility of floating titles, your big land grabber hires men from out of the ranks of the laborers themselves, as "fighters," to kill, maim or We trust that hereafter, when our learned Chinese friend takes occasion to write to this paper, he will not, even by implication, attribute to the editor views which he does not hold, and certainly has never expressed. Such unfairness is not compatible with the honesty that is said to characterize the followers of Confucius. It smacks rather of Christian dealing, and any more of it will incline us to believe that "Ah Hea Lee” is a fraud, or at least that he is fast learning the wicked ways of the barbarians he affects to despise. As to forcing saloon keepers and others into the labor market, if it could be done, the sooner the better. If all men worked, the few who are now virtual slaves would have an easier time. It is not, however, by commencing at the surface that we are to effect any great reform. Great evils require severe remedies, and the changes in our industrial, monetary and social systems, which are near at hand, must bring with them more or less of suffering. COMMON SENSE is furnished to subscribers for Three Dollars per annum, in advance. Letters intended for the Business Department should be addressed: AMANDA M. SLOCUM, BUSINESS MANAGER, 236 Montgomery st. TRAVELING AGENTS.-Prof. W. H. Chaney, Mrs. Flora Wellman Chaney, and J. L. York are authorized to receive subscriptions for COMMON SENSE, and receipt for money due this office. LoCAL AGENT-Miss Abbie W. Baker, San Francisco. CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. Relationship of the Sexes-Mrs C. F. Windle.. Spiritual Lectures and Spiritual Journals-Ed.. Rights of Children-Lecture by Jennie Leys.. Social Freedom-Pat J. Healey. An Open Letter to Rev J. C. Simmons. Brief Extfacts... 292 294 295 296 297 298 299 299 300 b01 302 AMANDA M. SLOCUM, ASSISTANT. MRS. ELIZA FULLER MACKINLEY will occupy the platform at 911 Market street to-morrow (Sunday) afternoon and evening. The afternoon subject will be selected by the audience. The evening discourse will be on Mediums and Mediumship. Mrs. M. is an excellent inspirational speaker. The price of admission is fifteen cents, or twenty-five cents for two. Two or three young women, desirous of acquiring a knowledge of the French language, can hear of an opportunity to join a Ladies' Class, under the instruction of one of the best teachers in this city, by applying at the office of COMMON SENSE. Monesca's system is used, two lessons per week, terms five dollars per month. The study of the language by this method is made very attractive, and the progress is rapid. The hour can be arranged to suit the class. LYCEUM FOR SELF CULTURE.-Last Sunday afternoon the meeting, owing to the inclemency of the weather, was not so well attended as usual, but those who were there took hold of the debate with more than usual eagerness. The opinion seemed to prevail that whether man might be properly said to have a free will or not, he was so much subjected to the influences of birth, education and other conditions, that in his faults and misfortunes he was more properly an object of commiseration than of vindictiveness and malice. The debate next Sunday afternoon will be on the question, "Have the working men of America made a good and wise use of the ballot?" Mr. Knight will open, after which the platform will be free for others. These meetings are growing in interest, and are well worth the attention of those who love free speech and free inquiry. The meetings open at 2 o'clock, at Social Hall, No. 39 Fourth street, near Market. SPIRITUAL LECTURES-SPIRITUAL JOURNALS. One of the Spiritual societies in this city has expended for lectures during the last six months $3,000, or at the rate of $6,000 per annum. What the other has paid we are not informed, but probably half this sum. Much good, no doubt, has been accomplished, but it is a question whether a portion of the money raised by contribution for the supply of deficiencies might not have done more for the cause if given to aid in the establishment on a firm basis of a Spiritual journal. For one thousand dollars per annum we will engage to print for free distribution five hundred extra copies, weekly, of this paper. These papers judiciously scattered as seed would soon produce a large number of permanent subscribers. In fact, we have no doubt that in this way our subscription list could be doubled within six months. By taking care that they did not fall into the same hands each week, the paper could soon be brought to the notice of a large number of persons who have never heard of it. Let us consider for a moment the relative cost and value of lectures and papers. Two lectures, each Sunday, for a family of four, would cost from eighty cents to $1 50, or COMMON SENSE costs the say from $40 to $80 per annum. comparatively insignificant sum of three dollars per annum, and it contains more ideas, more real information, than can be gained by the lectures. Both are desirable, while the difference in value is very little, and that is in but the disparity between the cost of the two is very great, favor of the paper. The paper, costing less than six cents, can be read by a dozen or twenty persons, while a lecture for one person costs from two to four times, occasionally eight times, the price of the paper. We know Spiritualists who pay sixty dollars per year for the support of Spiritual lectures in addition to their admission fee. This is right. We are glad to know there are some who are willing to do this; but the same persons, by a strange perversion of judgment, would consider it an absurdity if they were requested to pay one-sixth part of this sum yearly for the support of the only organ Spiritualists have on this coast. Many of these persons have declined even to invest $10 in the stock of the COMMON SENSE Company, although offered to them at one-fifth of its par value, and almost certain to be worth double its cost within one year, and to pay interest on the money invested. We wish to sell enough of the stock of the Company to enable us to purchase a job office, the profits on which will sustain the paper in its infancy, and assist materially to establish it on a firm basis. We desire also, ere long, to establish a Lib eral bookstore that the Spiritualists of the State need not be ashamed of. The business is naturally connected with that of publishing a Liberal journal, and the two can be made to sustain each other, and accomplish a vast good for the cause. Who will assist us in this enterprise? We ask no gifts, but merely the investment of capital in a legitimate, paying business. Lectures are well, but a good paper can be made to reach a much larger number of peo ple, and will do more and better missionary work. Spiritualists generally are not propogandists; they are, in fact, almost indifferent about extending their faith, but when an effort is made to reach the people, let it not be wholly in one direction. THE MIRACULOUS. Rev. Mr. Stebbins, on Sunday last, preached on the Supernatural and the Miraculous a carefully prepared, scholarly discourse. From a report in the Post we are told that Mr. Stebbins said: "The supernatural expresses generally that kind or quality of power of which the miraculous is the single variety." Well informed Spiritualists do not believe in the supernatural. The word itself is a self contradiction. Nature embraces everything. Nothing can be superior to or outside of it. It is the "all in all." They believe in, or rather they know, something of the super-mundane; it is the foundation of their faith; but the supernatural, strictly speaking, is a name for that which, by the very nature of things, can have no existence. Mr. Stebbins says, according to the Post: New forms of literature, new habits, reason, faith and skepticism have set bounds to the sea of credulity. In an age of credulity religion is a perpetual panic; in the age of reason and faith the genial power of divine love brooding over the world. This change has come as the morning comes, gradually, silently, mightily. But in the midst of these great changes of feeling the supernatural remains, and there seems no probability that it will ever be eliminated from the mind. The chief cause of miracles is associated by many with religion, and a reluctance of the mind to believe in them is called skepticism. To rest the claims of the gospel on miracles is a mistake, and to separate them is one sign of the spirit of the age. Miracles are not proof, because it is easier to believe in the thing to be proved than in the proof. This may not be a correct report. If it is, the inference may be drawn that Mr. Stebbins does not believe that the events narrated in the New Testament, and called miracles, actually occurred. Now, Christian Spiritualists believe that they did occur, and that most of them are constantly occurring at this day, but that they are in accordance with law, and consequently not miraculous. Mr. Stebbins goes on to say: There is nothing so valid as the spirit to prove the truth of the gospel, and a thousand wonders cannot remove it from its place. A man can work wonders in my sight, but without other evidence I cannot believe he was sent from God. The miracles of the New Testament were not wrought to force conviction, but as deeds of love. In one town it is stated that Christ did not many mighty works there because of the unbelief of the inhabitants. If it had been his intention to convict by miracles, he would have piled wonder on wonder till all were convinced. To intimate that Christ could have performed his wonders notwithstanding the unbelief of the inhabitants, is to contradict the plain meaning of the text, which is that he could not because of such unbelief; that is, he could not do anything contrary to law, and the law under which spiritual works are performed requires harmony, which is induced by belief. Belief, however, is not absolutely necessary, because harmony may exist without it; but the writer of this gospel was evidently of the opinion, as many Spiritualists are to-day, that utter unbelief is unfavorable to spirit manifestation. The following, also from the Post's report, will be cordially approved by most Spiritualists: I believe all controversy about religion being decided by miracles is a mistake. Miracles are no part of ChrisChristian. Christ is his own authority. Our ideas of tianity, nor is a belief in them necessary to become a miracles depend on our idea of nature, what is included by the latter in our minds. by the latter in our minds. Nature is the name given to our bounded experience, our knowledge of law. As nature advances, the miracle of one age becomes the knowledge of another. The mistake is to say the miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. Some higher and unknown law may hold the known law in suspense. When a ball is thrown into the air the laws of gravitation are not suspended. The universe is full of law, and it may be that the ascending series extend where no knowledge of the law can reach. A miracle is improbable, understanding it as a physical effect. Each event of fact is a miracle till seen from its own plane. POWER OF THE MIND.-Prof. J. H. Stinson has been lec turing in Jacksonville, Oregon, on "Science, Superstition and Automatology." By "Superstition" the Professor probably means Spiritualism. The lecture was illustrated by experiments made by Hon. I. Cox, which consisted in the movement of sticks of various sizes, from three to nine feet long, and one-half inch to two inches in diameter, about the stage "by the force of the mind." These sticks were made to stand unsupported at various angles, and even to remain suspended in the air. The Oregon Sentinel says: "The exhibition was intended to show that what has heretofore been attributed to the supernatural is but the beginning of a new science, and as that science is developed the belief in the supernatural must decrease." Such experiments, instead of furnishing evidence against Spiritualism, tend to sustain it. Intelligent Spiritualists have never denied the power of the will to act on substance and produce motion, but they claim that after spirits have passed to the higher life, unfolded their powers, and learned to comprehend more fully the laws of force and matter, this power of moving objects is greatly increased, and they are able also to perform many other acts considered by us as contrary to law-that is, contrary to what we know of law. Silas Farrington says rational religion differs from the current Christianity in nothing more than this, that it cannot ask an unreasoning acceptance of even its most precious thoughts from any one. It must give all the freedom which it takes. We cannot worship a Book and despise a Uni "THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN." Miss Leys in her lecture, on Sunday afternoon last, in reply to the question which may be asked, “What has this subject to do with Spiritulism?" said Spiritulism has to do with all questions that relate to the welfare of the human race. Children are dying, and shall we close our eyes to the little graves less than a span long, and not raise the voice for their redemption? Let no one write on tablets of stone "God's Providence," "Dispensation of Heaven," when Nature had been defrauded and her laws broken. Whatever perfects life here enhances the life beyond. Hence, Spiritulists should know, above all others, that children have either a right to be well born or not born at all. Could the children have the power to select their own progenitors, would they select the poor, the wretched, the impure? Would they accept any person as a parent who would give them the seeds of disease, crime, and death? The time will come when parents will be considered guilty for the child's transgression. Parents whose sins extend down to the third and fourth generation must learn to understand this law. If humanity would be free it must learn to co-operate with these germinal truths. At the basis of life alone is the place to operate. Look upon the race as it is, and then ask, Is it the best? The florist and agriculturist are careful to perpetuate the best; but who ever thinks of applying this law to the human race? In this genesis of immortal life can any one be too pure? Can any justify themselves in the transmission of passion, disease, and depravity? The first right of a child is a healthy constitution. No one has any right to curse a soul with their own transgressions; thus defrauding it of its own divine birthright. Only the healthy should procreate, and they only when they are living in harmonious relations. Whenever there is non-affiliation, the child must partake of the discord. Hatred to brothers and sisters, and even murder comes into the world through the aversion which the mother feels to the giving life to her child. Until the creative functions are held to be as sacred as the apple of the eye, children will come into the world stunted, dwarfed, and impure. Foticide and infanticide are peopling the spirit world, for which grievous sin mankind are responsible. There are troops of little children in spirit life thus evoked in passion and lust, who will claim their parentage, and there will be no escape from the fearful responsibility. Not one birth should ever be an accident. Loss of physical pleasure, is it? Oman, wandering in the Sodoms, just for one moment of physical pleasure to cast a lifetime of anguish into an immortal soul, destined to live on forever and forevermore!! of both father and mother are bathed in joy and healthfulness. Make the creative act the act of a God, and gods will walk the earth. The marriage system of to-day appears before the world in the character of an almost universal state of disappointment in the kindliest and sweetest aspirations and expectations-a state in which love must still do duty in a charnal-house, from whence all hope or joy has flown--a sepulchre worse than death; a state where, though the spirit of love has vanished from life, taking with it all the beauty and glory of existence, the outward form must still be kept up through fear of the law which has no right to thus deform the individuality. The fruits of this state of affairs are to be seen in the unfortunate offspring brought through undesired maternity, by uncongenial mates, into the world of material life; in the determined expression of self, in utter defiance of all law; in the feet that walk with desperation the road of prostitution" which leads down to death," where that Nemesis holds sway whose scourge visits even the third and fourth generation; and finally in general disease and death which has no right to be here, and which will eventually disappear as the race draws nearer the true spirit of Nature's law. The epoch and the light has come! The new gospel of the true life of the spirit, which is to save the children of the future, and the bleeding hearts of our times, also, is dawning in glory upon our earth. THE PEAVINE MINE.-This mine, in which a number of prominent Spiritualists are interested, is said to be one of the best mines in Washoe county, Nevada. It has been badly mismanaged, the object of the manipulators being to mine the pockets of shareholders; but recently four of the members of the Board of Trustees were forced to resign, and a new Board was chosen, consisting of Joseph Brown, E. C. Dickey, A. D. Griffin, Mrs F. P. Kingsbury and M. E. Morse. The company is somewhat in debt, and money is required to complete the furnace and purchase wood and timber, consequently an assessment of 25cts per share has been levied, which it is believed will be the last, and to favor stockholders who have been nearly beggared by previous assessments, a loan is to be negotiated, at 2 per ct. per month interest, for which the stock on which the assessment is not promptly paid will be given as security redeemable on paying the assessment and interest. ments will be forwarded by M. E. Morse, No 11 O'Farrell street. Assess Stealing a loaf of bread is low business, and people are sent to jail for doing it; but robbery according to law, is what makes men respectable, and those who are very successful at it are rewarded by the people with a seat on the Bench, in Congress, or the Legislrture. Consequently the makers and expounders of our laws are mainly the ones who are interested in sustaining the present order of things.Vive la humbug. When will the people see that they are the source of power, and that the rights of humanity, rather than the protection of property, should be the object of The feasting and wine drinking at the marriage feast has often resulted in an idiotic child, born of lust from the first night's debauch. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" is truer of the creative functions than any other. The child has the right to be produced only when the physical and mental are full of brightness, when the spirits | legislation? |