Building on the Sand

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 27, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 44.

Building on the Sand.

An exchange quotes from the words of Rev. Dr. Strong the following concerning the “civil Sabbath”:—

“Rev. Joshua Strong, secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, in the course of an excellent discourse on ‘The Civil Sabbath,’ recently delivered, has this to say regarding the grounds for its observance:—

“We observe two Sabbaths, entirely distinct in origin, character, and authority—the one civil, the other religious. The latter is divine in its origin and authority, and sacred in character; the former—the civil Sabbath—is wholly human in its origin and authority, and secular in character. Because these two Sabbaths coincide, they are very easily and commonly confounded, and there results much popular misconception as to the meaning and value of Sabbath laws. . . . Much bad blood and much injury to the cause of Sabbath observance result from the common failure of both the enemies and friends of Sabbath laws to perceive that they are wholly secular, and that they in nowise depend for justification on the divine authority and sacred character of the religious Sabbath. If the words, “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,” had never been uttered, there would be exactly the same ground for Sabbath legislation which now exists,—a ground full, broad, and solid.’”

“The tenable grounds, therefore, on which legislation regarding Sabbath observance rests, are these, namely: ‘First, the duty of the State to secure to every man the right to rest on the Sabbath; and second, the duty of the State to guard the leisure of the day from uses subversive of its object as a day of rest, and uses dangerous to public morals.’”

The position here laid down by Dr. Strong—one of the most thoughtful and able American writers concerning national questions—is as strongly put as it is possible to make an illogical position. He fails to recognize the fundamental truth that “Sabbath keeping” is primarily and only a religious act, and that the benefits which come from it to man’s lower nature, and to the so-called “non-religious interests of a community, come only when the abstinence from labor is brought about through religious conviction. In other words, the expression “civil Sabbath” is at once and always contradictory; this is shown by the fact that in all places, and on the part of all individuals where rest is induced without religious conviction, Sabbath keeping and its blessings disappear. The “continental Sunday,” of which so much is said, and concerning which so much fear is expressed, is the unavoidable result of a social and civil system from which the idea of a divinely-appointed Sabbath has been eliminated. When a religious conviction does not control, abstinence from labor induced by social customs, by mere desire for relief from the fatigue of labor, or by the compulsion of civil law, must result in holidayism, the character of which will be determined by the religious and moral atmosphere of the time. Holidayism thus induced has always resulted in much positive irreligion and immorality.

The statement that the State must “secure to every man the right to rest on the Sabbath,” finds no counterpart in existing Sunday legislation. If that be all which the State may do, it can only declare that each man shall be free to cease from labor on Sunday if he choose so to do. The moment that it forbids labor, it has passed beyond the matter of guaranteeing rest, and has introduced compulsion. The evident confusion into which so clear a thinker as Dr. Strong falls, must continue until men cease to teach the illogical and impossible theory that there can be a “civil Sabbath.” We shall escape from the thralldom of this inconsistency only as we rise from the lowland into which the pagan-born State-church theories out of which Roman Catholicism grew, are wholly laid aside. —Sabbath Recorder.