p. 292 | Sunday Observance

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 9, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 37.

Sunday Observance.

The American Sabbath Union did not have plain sailing in Los Angeles any more than in some other places in California, as is well shown by the following letter by the Rev. Thomas W. Haskins of the Episcopal Church in the Los Angeles daily Tribune of September 3:—

The Tribune yesterday morning says that all the churches of the city except the Baptist were closed last night in order to take part in the mass meeting at the Pavilion in behalf of Sunday observance. Christ Episcopal Church was not closed, and I am told that St. Paul's was not. I do not think that Epiphany or Ascension were closed. I have no authority to speak for my brethren of the Episcopal Church, but speaking only for myself I did not unite in the meeting because I could not have done so without opposing the methods to be advocated, both as wrong in themselves and ineffectual if adopted, and so stayed away.

Judging from what I have heard of the history of the movement elsewhere, opposition would not have been tolerated an instant even had I ventured to suggest it; the decree of infallibility has gone forth and now only seeks the sanction of Cæsar to force it upon the people. Straws show which way the wind blows, and the fact (if the Tribune report be correct) that the police were sent for to suppress the circulation of some printed matter in opposition to this movement shows its latest tyranny, under the specious plea of liberty and rest, to be developed when it shall have secured the power. The history of such efforts when they did come in the days of weal and power ought to make every humble Christian hesitate when he looks to the civil power to protect his liberty.

We are now living under the blessings of civil and religious liberty. There is nothing whatever to hinder any Christian man or woman from honoring either the Jewish Sabbath or the first day of the week, and the law will protect him in this liberty. What more do we want? It will be time enough to file our complaint when this liberty is taken away. It is a question whether or not Christian people are not most to blame for the present observance, or non-observance, of the first day of the week, and all this fuss is nothing but a cloak of righteousness to cover nakedness in the sight of the Lord Christ. I have spoken plainly, but I asperse no man's motives. I only question his judgment in establishing the righteousness of Christ among men and bearing witness to his lordship over our hearts and lives. THOMAS W. HASKINS. Los Angeles, September 2.

I will not allow that any Christian brother or minister of the gospel in this city or any city goes before me in sincere and unceasing endeavor to proclaim the gospel of Christ, nor minister the same when accepted, nor that any soul is straitened more than mine at the growing disregard of the Christian observance of the first day of the week, and it is very painful for me to have to differ from so many of my brethren in this latest effort to honor God's holy name. But as much as I love my brethren, I love truth more. A distinguished living divine has said that “men are so apt to settle into ruts, and think that certain things are to be taken as matters of course, that somebody needs to thrust an eternal interrogation point before them, if they are ever to stop and think at all whether the way in which things are going is the right way.”

Let this letter of mine be the interrogation point as to the method of Sunday laws. That we desire all men to be Christians and acknowledge Jesus as Lord there can be no doubt; but that a single Christian will be made by the passage of a Sunday law, and its observance enforced by penalties upon an unwilling people, there is grave doubt.

There is no warrant for such a method anywhere in the New Testament. No authority, or suspicion of such authority, was given by our Lord to his church. There is not a scintilla of evidence in the New Testament or the early Fathers that the Jewish Sabbath was transferred to the first day of the week, or that the observance of the first day was based upon the fourth commandment. In the earlier and purer days of the church, when under the shadow of heathenism and the curse of persecution, there is not a thread of evidence that the Christians sought to enforce their faith or customs upon the surrounding world. The history of such efforts when they did come in the days of weal and power ought to make every humble Christian hesitate when he looks to the civil power to protect his liberty.