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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 17, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 42.

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Editorial

By Editor

A Vital Need

ONE vital need of the church to-day, according to the Christian Observer of Sept. 11, 1912, is a sane Sabbath. Quoting an exchange, it contrasts the present insipid manner in which Sunday is observed in the average family with the Puritanic strictness with which it was regarded some years ago. While it feels that the Puritan Sunday may have been a mistake in that it filled the children’s minds with a distaste for religion, it feels that the modern Sunday is a gigantic blunder. It adds: “We must get back to the old-fashioned idea of a day of rest and reverence. These things are vital to our welfare. We need a Sabbath that brings peace.”
We commend to the Observer and to all our brethren who are observers of the Sunday sabbath the good old Sabbath of the Lord, which has descended to us from the days of man’s innocency in the garden of Eden. If this institution were given its proper place in the teaching and regard of the Christian ministry to-day, we believe it would do much to check the spirit of irreverence and indifference to sacred things which is so strongly possessing the minds of men at the present time. For the observance of the first day of the week no appeal can be made to the moral sense or conscientious convictions of the child of God. The observance of this day has no warrant in the Scriptures of truth. It stands as an interloper, as a counterfeiter, as a usurper of the true Sabbath of Jehovah.
Because there is no warrant for its observance is the reason why many to-day are appealing to the arm of civil law rather than to the Word of the Lord in seeking to bring about its more careful observance. Let us ask for the old paths. Let us “get back to the old-fashioned idea of a day of rest and reverence.” Truly “these things are vital to our welfare. We need a Sabbath that brings peace.” This we can find only in the Sabbath the Lord made for man.