America for Americans! | Page 8

temporal pontiffs. I hold that under our laws of naturalization, that it is the duty of every cardinal, every archbishop, every bishop, and every priest, every monk, Franciscan or Jesuit, to solemnly renounce before God and the holy angels, all political allegiance to the Pope as a temporal prince, who to-day is seeking to re-establish diplomatic relations with England and other European nations in recognition of his temporal sovereignty.
And he is a true American citizen, whether foreign-born or native-born, who maintains, as an American institution, the Holy Sabbath-day. He can call it Sunday, after the old pagan god, but he must rest on the seventh day, rest from toil, rest in the interest of the dignity of labor, rest as discount upon capital, rest for intelligence, rest for compensation, rest for domestic happiness, rest for pious culture. The seventh day of every week should be consecrated to cessation from labor and devoted to physical and mental repose. It should not be a day of recreation to be spent in riotous living and in brawls, but a day peaceful, in harmony with the institutions of religion and the dominant sentiment of the country. Our fathers consecrated the Sabbath, and had you the patience to hear and I, the time to read from Franklin, from Jefferson, from Washington, touching the Sabbath, in recognition of it as indispensable to the welfare of our body politic, you would be confirmed in this great truth. The danger to-day is that we are becoming un-American in cutting loose from the Sabbath-day as a day of rest and of worship. I cannot invoke the civil law to do more than to say that it shall be a day of rest. I cannot invoke the civil law to say that that man shall worship here or worship there, or worship at all, but I can invoke the civil law to say that it shall be a non-secular day; not a day for the transaction of business, but a day on which the laboring man shall walk out under God's free skies and say: This is my day, the day of a freeman. [Applause.] The tendency is to transplant a European Sabbath here; the German with his lager, and the Frenchman with his wine, and the Irishman with his shillalah. [Laughter.] No, no, gentlemen, stay on the other side of the great deep. We don't want these things or this day on this side of the broad Atlantic.
There is another attribute that belongs to the true American citizen--the recognition of Christianity as the religion of our country. Webster, our greatest expounder of constitutional law, did not hesitate to declare that Christianity--not Methodist Christianity, not Roman Catholic Christianity, not Presbyterian Christianity--but Christianity as taught by the four Evangelists, is the recognized religion of this land. Recognized how far? So far that its ethics shall be embodied in our constitutional and statutory law; so far that its teachings of the brotherhood of mankind shall be accepted; so far that its lessons of fraternity, equality, justice; and mercy shall be incorporated in the law of society. Those beautiful moralities that fell from the lips of the divine Son of God have been incorporated in the laws of the land, and that with few exceptions. Our chaplains for the army and navy and for Congress are in recognition of this. On that sacred book the oath of Presidential responsibility is taken. And this Thanksgiving Day, appointed by the President, is a monument of proof. These point to Christianity as the dominant religion of the land, not to the exclusion of the Jew, not to the exclusion of the Greek, not to the exclusion of the Mohammedan, not to the exclusion of the Brahmin, but permeating society with its principles.
Then, citizens, the danger which comes from this foreign population is to be met in this way, first, to hold that this country is for Americans who are clothed with these seven attributes.
I do not exaggerate the danger when I remind you that there are great movements among the peoples of the earth, as never before. Remember that the population of Europe has increased twenty-seven millions from 1870 to 1880, and at this rate of increase Europe can send to us two millions of immigrants a year for the next hundred years. Our foreign-born population is said to be seven millions, and their children of the first generation would make fifteen millions. In 1882 immigration reached the enormous figure of eight hundred thousand, and at the present rate of immigration it is said there will be in the year 1900, fourteen years from now, nineteen millions of persons of foreign birth, and with their children of the first generation there will be forty-three millions in this land of foreign born. Now the question, and a