SUNDAY AS A DAY FOR MILITARY OPERATIONS.
It has often been asserted that Sunday must be the Sabbath, because that those armies which make attacks on that day, are sure to be defeated. Such assertions supply the lack of argument from the Bible with many persons. Yet the assertion is utterly untrue. The following extract from the history of the seventeenth century is an admirable illustration of the absurdity of this statement. It is much better to believe and obey that precept of the law of God which says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,” than to establish a Sabbath out of human inventions, and fabulous assertions. “Other victories of the Polish hero scarcely less important, are recorded in the annals of Poland; but what has immortalized the name of John Sobieski, is the deliverance of Vienna in 1683. A revolt of the Hungarians from the dominion of Austria, and an alliance formed between them and the Turks, had brought an army of nearly three hundred thousand men against the Austrian capital, which was defended by its citizens, and a garrison of little more than eleven thousand men. After an active siege of more than two months, Vienna was reduced to the last extremity. In the mean time, the Austrian emperor, who had left his capital to make what defense it could against the immense hosts of Turks that poured down upon it, had solicited the aid of the Polish king; and Sobieski was not long in making his appearance at the head of a small, but resolute army of eighteen thousand veterans. The combined Polish and Austrian forces, when all assembled, amounted to only seventy62thousand men, whom the Turks outnumbered more than three to one; but Sobieski, whose name alone was a terror to the infidels, was at once the Agamemnon and Achilles of the Christian host. “Sunday, the 12th of Sept., 1683, was the important day that was to decide whether the Turkish crescent, or the cross, was to wave on the turrets of Vienna. At five o’clock in the afternoon, Sobieski had drawn up his forces in the plain fronting the Mussulman camp, and ordering the advance, he exclaimed aloud, ‘Not to us, O Lord, but to thee be the glory.’ Whole bands of Tartar troops broke and fled when they heard the name of the Polish hero repeated from one end to the other of the Ottoman lines. At the same moment an eclipse of the moon added to the consternation of the superstitious Moslems, who beheld with dread the crescent waning in the heavens. With a furious charge, the Polish infantry seized an eminence that commanded the Grand Vizier’s position, when Kara Mustapha, taken by surprise at this unexpected attack, fell at once from the heights of confidence to the depths of despair. “Charge upon charge was rapidly hurled upon the already wavering Moslems, whose rout soon became general. In vain the vizier tried to rally the broken hosts. ‘Can you not aid me?’ said he to the cham of the Tartars, who passed him among the fugitives. ‘I know the king of Poland,’ was the reply; ‘and I tell you that with such an enemy, we have no safety but in flight. Look at the sky; see if God is not against us.’ “So sudden and general was the panic among the Turks, that at six o’clock, Sobieski entered the camp where a hundred and twenty thousand beds were still found standing; the innumerable multitude of the Orientals had disappeared; but their spoils—their horses, their camels, their splendor, loaded the ground. The cause of Christianity—of civilization—had prevailed; the wave of Mussulman power had retired, never to return. But Sobieski received little thanks from a jealous monarch for rescuing him and his country from irretrievable ruin; and Poland—unhappy Poland! had saved a serpent from death, which afterward turned and stung her for the kindness.”—Outlines of History, by Marcius Willson, pp. 386–388.