p. 211 | Unnecessary Work

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 27.

Unnecessary Work.

THE “unnecessary work” done on Sunday is the great bugbear of some National Reformers; and the Des Moines, Iowa, Register takes up the cry, with, however, the following comforting assurance:—

“There is plainly a reaction in public sentiment in favor of refraining from all unnecessary work on the Sabbath.

There is no doubt that unnecessary work tends to wear out the physical system as well as to squander means that would be better expended in necessary employment. The true philanthropist will oppose unnecessary work at any time. But the National Reformers are in this, as in some other ideas that are in themselves good, entirely too exclusive,—they want them confined to Sunday. Having no other than human authority for the sanctity of the day, they evidently hope, by piling all the good things upon it, and confining them there, to make it holy.

First, they want to have temperance principles specially applied to that day, and are willing to have temperance limited there; thus their theory

of closing saloons on Sunday is virtually an argument that it is the peculiar character of the day that makes intemperance wrong. Then comes their plea that unnecessary work on Sunday is so very injurious to the health and morals of the people. It is a strange physiological theory that any unnecessary strain on the muscles or brain can be more hurtful on one day than on another; but such is the muddle in which they become involved who attempt to turn everything into a bolster for the Sunday-sacredness dogma.

Yet true to National Reform inconsistency, these Sunday law crusaders, while deploring the evil effects of unnecessary labor on Sunday, persist in paving the way for such labor by making it impossible for the masses to engage in legitimate work. There is more unnecessary strain indulged on Sunday by many people than would be if they were not otherwise shut up to idleness.