Sunday Railroad Travel—Proportion of Churches to Population

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Sunday Railroad Travel—Proportion of Churches to Population.

Our readers must pardon our frequent recurrence on this topic; for we are well assured that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" of locomotion on Sundays. As a specimen of the kind of opposition this just and reasonable measure has to encounter, we quote the following from the correspondence of the Star:

"The suburbs of our city are now peaceful, orderly and quiet; they are well supplied with churches and pastors of almost all denominations, within walking distance of all who can reach the cars. Now, that the churchgoer could enjoy the peace of his heart in the places of his choice, while the operatives of the road are, by his influence, without, demoralizing their conscience and urging on the weary, reeking animals that drag them along—that his increase could ascend to God from a pure heart, while the smoke of their torment is going up unceasingly, is absolutely incredible."¹

We have a high respect for the churchgoing portion of the community; we believe that they include the wealthiest, most intelligent and most prominent of our citizens; but we remember yet that there is another and far more numerous class, who do not go to church. They may be culpable in not going, we admit; but they are American citizens, and their opinions and wishes are entitled to equal consideration with those of others.

That the non-church-going class, even of the City of Churches, is a majority of the population, is a fact not generally understood, but easily demonstrable. The "Kings County Record" gives the number of churches of all denominations in Brooklyn, as 140. The population numbers about 200,000. In other words, there is one church per 1428 people. The average attendance, taking all the churches, large and small, cannot exceed five hundred persons at each church. The inference is, that only about one third of the population are habitual church-goers.

The question, then, stands thus: A class comprising two-thirds of the population, call for means of locomotion on Sundays. Many of the smaller class (the Mayor for example) concur with them. But a fraction of this minority object, and not only presume to attribute evil motives to the advocates of the measure, but claim that their wishes should prevail, against those of the great majority of their fellow citizens who differ from them. Our Common Council, elected to represent the will of the majority, can have no hesitation in repudiating such a claim.

Apropos of this subject, we observe that the Christian Intelligencer has not yet condescended either to explain or justify the paragraph we noticed last week.²

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