Calling the Judgments Down by W. A. C.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 21, 1910

Calling the Judgments Down

By W. A. C.

At the recent session of the Methodist Episcopal Conference, held at Baltimore, Md., Rev. Charles C. Guthrie, pastor of Hamlin Methodist Church, of Washington, D. C., during a debate on the question of Sabbath observance, referred to the city of Washington as “wide open and alive with Sabbath desecration.” He said:—

“Washington is wide open and alive with Sabbath desecration. The moving-picture places are always open; what are termed sacred concerts are given in the theaters, and there is talk of playing Sunday baseball.

“A city of this type is bound to feel the wrath of God, and all because some of its citizens are looking for amusements rather than churches.”—Washington Herald, April 5, 1910.

Mr. Guthrie is a strong advocate of Sunday laws, and recently gave a number of addresses in his church on “A Fight for the Rest Day.” From his remarks, it is very plainly to be seen why he wishes a District Sunday law. It is to close up the places of amusement, that the “citizens” may have their attention turned to the “churches.”

His prediction that such a city “is bound to feel the wrath of God,” calls to mind very forcibly the following quotation from “Great Controversy,” page 590:—

“It will be declared that men are offending God by the violation of the Sunday sabbath, that this sin has brought calamities which will not cease until Sunday observance shall be strictly enforced.”

The Washington Herald is indignant at the utterances of Mr. Guthrie, and in an editorial, under date of April 6, says:—

“To say that Washington is ‘wide open,’ as the Rev. Dr. Guthrie said to the Methodist Conference at Baltimore, is to give the capital a bad name, which it does not deserve. Such an assertion, indeed, falls little short of slander. ‘Wide open,’ in common acceptation of the term, means a town or city wholly given over to worldly pleasures and indulgences, where laws and regulations are discarded, and where, in the language of the street, ‘everything goes.’”

“Washington is no such city. It would require the wildest stretch of the imagination to bring it within that category. There is not a more well-behaved, well-ordered municipality in the United States than this capital of the nation.”

W. A. C.