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sociation, reported at the Chicago Convention of
SABBATH SICKNESS.
1914 that in various cities, including Baltimore
and St. Louis, 'Catholioa and non-Catholics, including
Dr.
, among other valuable
Hebrews and Liberal Christians as well papers, a few years ago published one de­
as Evangelicals, had iOfficially united in a home
scribing this remarkable disease, which has
visitation campaign to invite all the people of
the city to "attend some place of worship," not yet been treated in the books of pathology.
there was a tremendous cheer of approval from
the vast audience, representing evangelical
churches oi fully sixteen millions constituency,
and later this co-operation was unanimously approved
1. This disease is of the intermitting kind,
attacking the patient by violent paroxysms,
by convention resolution. Sincere ob­
which return every seventh day. These par­
jection to that resolution has been voiced by the
Sunday School Times, but we think it will commend
oxysms return only on the Lord's day, and
itself to the great majority of religious hence it is called "Sabbath sickness," but by
people. There is a distinguished precedent for
the faculty it is technically known by no other
name than "Diei Domini Morbus."
it in all the Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations
(save one), which have invited Jew and
Gentile to meet and praise God "in their accustomed
2. It partakes somewhat of the nature of
places of worship."
ague, especially as it is attended with a great
On that same basis we have prepared this tenmonths'
course in Hebrew history and literature. deal of coldness. This coldness is firstapparent
in the morning of the Lord's day; in
It seems impossible that it can be opposed by
any Jew who will take time to think in what an
honorable place it will set his chosen race, in
many cases seizing the patient before he has
whatever school or college it is used, with consequent
left his bed. But it begins in the region of
abatement of anti-Semitic prejudice
the heart, and is attended with dulness of the
among pupils. Some few Christians exclaim:
"Are you going to shut out the story of the head, followed by yawning and lethargy.
crucifixion" To which I reply that so long as
that is made the excuse of many professed Christians
for killing Jews in other lands, and by
some for scorning them in the United States,
3. The patient is somewhat deprived of
the use of his limbs, especially the legs and
feet, so that he is indisposed to walk to the
we may well omit it from the assemblies where house of God.
the children of exiled Jews are seeking to clear
their minds of the memories of old-world wrongs.
4. In some cases this attack has come
There is probably no nation In the world that upon them after they have gone to the house
has not "crucified Christ" in some martyred reformer.
Surely the fact that God chose the Jew­
of God, and has been attended with yawning
and slumber.
ish race as the channel through which he would
give a world-religion to the race should be sufficient
proof that the Jews, with all the faults
5. In other cases there has been a great
uneasiness in the house of God, and a disposition
their own great prophets so frankly proclaimed,
were not inferior religiously to any other race.
to complain of the length of the
ser­
SMOKING A PUBLIC NUISANCE.
The following remonstrance was given
place July 10, in the Detroit Electric Railway
publication:
To the Editor:—As a constant reader and admirer
of Electric Railway Service, I have been
both surprised and pained by the stand taken by
some of our citizens in regards to the fact,, that
ladies, when the back par of the car is crowded,
enter the smoker to flndseats.
The mere fact that a lady must ride in a car
filled with tobacco smoke and reeking with
saliva, and have clothing saturated with the odor
of tobacco smoke or stained by its nauseating
juice, is in itself a stain upon our civilization.
I believe that womanhood should be respected,
and when we as men plead that she be barred
from a portion of the car that we may gratify
a depraved appetite, which, at the best, is unseemly,
uncleanly, unnatural, unnecessary, unhealthy,
and unpleasant, should cause us to blush
with shame and admit that we, as a nation,, are
the slaves of this terrible weed.
When we pollute the air with its smoke and
cover our streets and sidewalks with its juice
for others to look at and walk in we come very
near placing ourselves in that class "whose god
is their belly, whose glory is their shame, and
whose end is destruction."
Hoping that this may help some one to see the
other side of the question and cause men and
women interested in the betterment of society to
discourage its use in public places.
MILTON BISSELL,
, ,630 Fourteen Ave.
THE CHRISTIAN NATION. Vol, 61.
mon, though they have been known to sit
very contentedly in a play house for several.
hours at a time.
6. Persons affected with this disease never
mourn on account of their confinement
from public worship, as many afflicted with
other diseases often do.
7. These persons often surprise their
neighbors with their great activity and health
on Monday, however unfavorable the weather
may be.
8. Most of the faculty agree that there is
a low feverish heat, technicaHy called febris
mundi, or fever of the world, which may be
detected in these patients during the intervening
days of the week.
9. There also seems to be a loss of appetite
for savory food, and a want of reHsh for
panis vitae, bread of life, which in this case
is the indispensable remedy for the disease.
10. Persons affected with this disease
generally have a disrelish for private religious
exercises of the closet and the reading
of the Scriptures.
II. This disease is also contagious;
neighbors receive it from neighbors, and
children from parents. (Reprinted from R.
P. & C, January, 1873.)
TEMPERANCE REPORT.
The following was adopted by R. P. Synod
of our Church in Ireland:
The outstanding fact in the history of
Temperance during the year 1913 is the enormous
increase of 5 1-2 million pounds in
the Drink Bill of the United Kingdom. The
total Expenditure for the year 1913, as estimated
by the Secretary of the United Kingdom
Alliance, is the huge sum of tl66,681,-
000. Looked at from any point of view by
Christ's servants and earnest Temperance
reformers, this fact is saddening and discouraging
in the extreme; that the greatest
among the nations of the earth, the nation,
by pre-eminence of light and liberty, should,
by her citizens, spend on that which only
blights and blasts both body and soul, what
would support her vast Navy three times
over, and what is 180 times as much as is
yearly given to the cause of Foreign Missions,
and by her legislature continue not
merely to foster but to maintain in a privileged
position a trade which her own experts
and commissions have found to be
the cause of more than three-fourths of all
the social evils that prevail in the nation. The
explanation that this vast increase of 5 1-2
millions in the Drink Bill of the Nation is
due to the greatly increased prosperity that
has been experienced is probably correct, but
the fact that the increased blessings of Divine
Providence are so used is a dark commentary
on human nature. Discouraging as
this increase is, it is, however, not to be
magnified or misunderstood. At the most it
means, not necessarily more drinkers, but
simply increased drinking by reason of increased
opportunity. Besides, against this
increase we must place the fact that the increase
per head is very much less than during
the similar prosperous years of 1874 and
1879.
We are constrained to report also another
discouraging feature in the recent history of
the Temperance cause, and that is the defeat
in the House of Commons on the motion
for Second Reading of what was called the
Sunday Closing Bill for England, a Bill
which ought to have been considered nonpolitical
and non-sectarian, and which was
indeed a very mild measure of Temperance
reform, inasmuch as it proposed simply to
reduce the hours of sale on the Lord's Day
by three, yet it was rejected by a majority
of 19, not a single member of the Cabinet
speaking, and not a single Unionist member
voting in its favor. And all this, in spite ot
the fact that throughout the British Empire,
Ireland in measure excepted, there has
been complete closing of the public-house on
the Lord's Day for over 60 years, with such
beneficial results that no one has ever spoken
of repeal save those who had a direct
pecuniary interest in the trade.
On the other hand there is not a little
to encourage the disciple of Temperance
even in the sphere of legislation. The Scot-