Moral Suasion Versus Sunday-Law Enforcement
Those Chicago ministers who are grieved because men will drink Sunday, and because the mayor whom they helped to elect will not prevent their doing so, might read with profit the remarks of Elder Waggoner at the convention of the Seventh-day Adventists at Bloomington early this week. Said he:— “If men can be brought to the observance of Sunday by persuasion, by preaching and writing, that is right, but to enforce it by law is destroying the purpose of evangelical work and making hypocrisy compulsory. When the law of Sunday rest is on the statute books and enforced it will not result in bringing people into the churches but will send them to find recreation and amusement elsewhere.” In other words, that which some of the short-sighted preachers demand that Mr. Cregier shall do for them, is something they should do for themselves. They want to leave their pulpits and let him take their places and do missionary work for them, backed by the cudgels of his police. They will accomplish more if they take Elder Waggoner’s, and follow Brother Murphy’s, example and try a little moral suasion. St. Paul did not ask Felix to detail a few Roman centurions with swords and spears to help him in his work, but he went up and down preaching mightily, and made many converts. He did not sit still and wait for men to come to him to be convinced, but he went after them. He did not depend on militant coercion to make men good and to refrain from an indulgence of appetite.—Chicago Tribune, Sept. 12, 1889.