p. 8 | What Does it Mean ?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 1888

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 3, No. 1.

What Does it Mean ?

WHAT means this almost universal uprising over the question of “How shall our American Christian civil Sunday sabbath be preserved?” Large Conventions of ecclesiastics are held solely to discuss this question. The W. C. T. U. works it up all over the United States. Prohibition Conventions put it in their platforms. The leading preachers and lecturers of the Nation discuss it from pulpit and platform. Legislatures, both State and National, from beginning to end of their sessions, are petitioned for the enactment of stringent laws in its behalf. The religious papers of the country lift up one united cry that it must and shall be preserved. Knights of Labor, and workingmen’s unions, and socialists, call loudly for laws enforcing its observance. Political Conventions are “worked” and Legislatures are “lobbied” in the interests of the Christian Sunday. Saloon-keepers enforce laws for its observance. Only a few years ago there was no sign of any such thing, and even those who now make the most of it, then insisted that it was one of the least of the questions that concerned religion. But now, instead of its being the least and most incidental of the questions of religion, it is by their own confession the greatest and most urgent of all.

Now, instead of the question of how to reach the masses with the gospel being the greater, that question must take a back seat, while there comes to the front the universal demand for stringent Sunday laws strictly enforced, that by this means the masses may be reached. Now instead of the questions of infidelity and atheism taking the far greater precedence, it has come to this, that if you don’t favor Sunday laws you are an infidel, and if you oppose them you are an atheist. Now, instead of the questions of infidelity and atheism taking precedence, it has come to pass that the question of the Sunday sabbath is made the test of fidelity and theism. Yet in “demanding” laws to compel everybody to observe the day, and submit to the test, they will gravely argue that the movement is entirely civil, and that there is nothing religious about it.

What, then, does all this mean? It means that, through this question of compulsory Sunday observance, the civil power is to be subordinated to the ecclesiastical in these United States. We know that this statement will be pooh-poohed by many, and especially by those who are working for it, but in making the statement we but speak forth the words of truth and soberness. This is precisely the way in which the civil power was subordinated to the religious, in the fourth century, out of which came the tyranny of the Papacy; and both time and events will shortly demonstrate that we state the exact truth. Therefore, without hesitation, we lift up our voice against the whole scheme. To laugh at the fears of the SENTINEL will not avert the evil. To despise its warnings is only to rivet your own chains. In perfect sincerity the AMERICAN SENTINEL adopts the memorable words, “I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.”