Mixed by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 2, 1882

Mixed.

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

CONSISTENCY is a rare jewel, and nowhere do we find less of it than among the advocates of Sunday observance. A curious example was lately given in a meeting of the “Home Protection Society,” an organization to enforce the Sunday Law. In one of their resolutions it was stated that the weekly rest and worship of the “Christian Sabbath,” is a right guaranteed both by the laws of God and of the State. Later in the meeting, the individual who offered the above-mentioned resolution, stated that he thought that Seventh-day Adventists, in carrying on their printing business on Sunday, “do not violate the letter and spirit of the law of man, but they do violate the law of God.” Now here’s the rub: The advocates of the Sunday have claimed that the law which they were seeking to enforce was simply a “police regulation,” that there was no thought of enforcing the law as a religious enactment. These same individuals, too, at the society meeting referred to, regretted that Brother White, when arrested as manager of the “Pacific Press,” for working on Sunday, did not plead guilty. But an eminent member of the same society thinks that he has violated the law of God, but not any law of man, either in letter or in spirit. Of what, then, would they have desired him to plead guilty? Evidently of nothing, unless they hold that a Police Court is empowered to enforce the law of God. It has puzzled us to know just on what grounds the Sunday advocates stand, but we are not likely to have our curiosity gratified in this respect, at least not until they find out for themselves.

One thing, however, we would request as a special favor. We claim to keep the law of God. In fact, the requirements of our denomination are simply to “keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” But our friends say we are violating the law of God. We ask, Wherein? We think that, as a Christian duty, they ought to apprise us of our error. It will not be enough to say that we work on Sunday. We know that; but what we want is a plain statement of the law of God that we violate by so doing. Something if it exists, that shows that Sunday has any more claims as a day of rest than Thursday or Friday. We shall not be exacting; a single passage will suffice. All the commandments of God with which we are familiar are very plain—“thou shalt,” and “thou shalt not.” Give us, then, a statement of it that is plain enough to convict a man in any court—before a jury of unprejudiced intelligent men, and we will plead guilty, and at once and forevermore keep “the venerable day of the sun.” We are willing to be enlightened, but while we find no law of God in favor of the Sunday, we shall believe with Paul, that “where no law is, there is no transgression.”

E. J. W.