A Work Foretold by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 30, 1908

A Work Foretold

By C. M. S.

On the eighth of January a mass-meeting was held in New York City, representing the various churches of Greater New York, in the interests of Sunday observance. The mass-meeting was held under the auspices of the "American Sabbath Union," which proposes to hold many such meetings in the near future in the larger cities of the country. Two resolutions covering the purpose of the union were adopted at this meeting, one of which we quote as published in the Episcopal Recorder of January 16:—

Resolved, That as public teachers and representatives of Christian sentiment, we can only view with alarm the tendency to use any portion of the legalized day of rest for secular recreations. This is not the purpose for which the fathers of our government enacted the Sabbath laws and set an example in Sabbath observance which was wholesome, and which challenges our conscientious imitation. Even the elimination of religious considerations on the part of the individual does not justify the devotion of the Sabbath day to secular amusements. He is under religious as well as civil law. If there be a divine commandment enjoining the observance of one day in seven as a time for worship, it has not been displaced by the passing from the old dispensation to the new, nor can it be abrogated by any enactment of Senate or Parliament. Rather does the commandment stand solitary and forever conspicuous, emphasized by the reverberating thunders and the flashing lightnings of Mount Sinai, as the spectacular setting in which the great Jehovah accompanied its bestowal on mankind. We dare not temporize with the decalogue. If the fourth commandment is binding at all upon the twentieth century, it is binding for all the twenty-four hours of the Sabbath day. All its hours are equally sacred; so that all entertainments in the late afternoon and in the evening of the Sabbath day, whether "educational" so-called or social, are in our judgment both desecrations of the day of rest and also defiant of that commandment which the great Maker has given unto men to observe.

The propositions set forth in the above resolution would, if carried out, subvert every principle of human liberty. For instance, the proposition is put forth in the third sentence that he who will not use the first day of the week in a religious manner shall not use it in a secular manner. Such a proposition would justify any set of men in taking from others the right to use any day which they might choose to set apart for special purposes. Who has granted to men the right to levy upon a portion of a man's assets in order to compel him to comply with their religious practises?

The resolution continues: "He is under religious as well as civil law." Very true; but "to his own master he standeth or falleth." The magistrate who attempts to administer religious law unites church and state, and puts himself in the place of God, as if God were not able to administer his own law, arrange his own system of rewards and punishments, and take care of his own kingdom. He who breaks the law of God must render account of himself to God, not to the state.

The resolution declares that the Sabbath law can not "be abrogated by any enactment of Senate or Parliament." That is true. It is also true that it can not be strengthened or improved "by any enactment of Senate or Parliament." Every civil law enacted for the purpose of enforcing a divine law is an insult flung in the face of the Almighty—as if his law needed the help of human law to save it from dissolution and obsolescence.

We confess to a feeling of wonderment when we read the words: "We dare not temporize with the decalogue," "emphasized by the reverberating thunders and the flashing lightnings of Mount Sinai," when we know that they who are saying this are not only temporizing with it, but literally tampering with it, to make it mean what God did not intend it should mean, and what in the very nature of the case it could not mean. Temporizing with the decalogue never could be, in the sight of heaven, so defiant an act as that actual tampering with the sacred instrument which is seen to

day wherever Sunday laws are being urged by ministers of the gospel who try to use the fourth commandment as an authority for their acts.

The fourth commandment is binding to-day, as the above resolution intimates; but it is the fourth commandment as God gave it, not as it is being to-day misinterpreted to mean when men use it to give life to the Sunday institution, and thereby throw discredit upon the day which the commandment specifically enjoins.

Concerning the work which the American Sabbath Union is to do following this meeting, the editor of the Recorder says:—

That the matter is not to be allowed to rest with the passing of these resolutions, was evidenced by the passing of a third, which provides for an interdenominational committee, to consist of at least one representative of each Christian denomination. This committee "shall have in charge the calling of other mass-meetings, if this be necessary. It shall also wait upon the mayor, and otherwise express the sentiment of the mass-meeting representing the Christian citizenship of the community and the State."

In various parts of the country are springing up interdenominational committees, consisting of representatives of the various denominations, whose one purpose is to make the observance of Sunday compulsory upon all. Thus are they binding themselves together, all joined to the one great standard, the Sunday institution, pledging themselves to its enforcement. This work, so long ago foretold, we are seeing accomplished before our eyes; and seeing this, we know that the hour of the final conflict is nearing, and the glad day of our Saviour's return will not be long to wait.

C. M. S.