Untitled article by J. H. WAGGONER.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 1, 1867.

SUNDAY IN POLITICS.

By J. H. WAGGONER.

Conversing lately with a friend in Green Co., who had been hearing our sermons on the Sabbath, on the future of Sabbath-keeping in this country, he expressed the belief that as these views were disseminated, and the people became more liberal-minded, the Sunday laws would be erased from our statute books. Of course I dissented, for the “sure word of prophecy” has foretold the perverseness of men in these last days, already so prominently displayed, and their preference for fables, rather than for truth. A few days after I was reading the Western Christian Advocate, published in Cincinnati, of Sept. 11, 1867, in which was an article on “Sunday Rail Reading,” which urges a rigorous enforcement of Sunday laws, and ended with the following remark:—

“This Sunday question may yet have a bearing on our State politics. Sabbath [Sunday] lovers everywhere should gird themselves, stand to the truth and fight it through.”

Sunday lovers well know that they stand a much better chance in the political field than in a Bible argument; and, though their movement will meet with strong opposition, they are numerous enough to make it an object for unscrupulous politicians to do their bidding to secure their votes. This is where the controversy will soon be carried. Let the warning of the third angel be faithfully given, that the faithful may be warned.

The same paper contains a notice of the fact that the English and American departments in the Paris “Exposition” were closed on Sunday, while all was life and activity in the departments of all other nations, which caused a Frenchman to remark: “These Protestant heretics observe the Catholic commandments better than the orthodox Catholics themselves!”

This is significant, and points to the origin of the commandment. If the “heretic Protestants” had not got ashamed of their cherished institution—ashamed to call on him for “absolution” for breaking the “commandments of the church,” their practice would be somewhat different, and more in conformity to that of Europe; and if they would be consistent, and reject the institution as well as its author, they would not have to seek the field of worldly “politics” to promulgate their faith. J. H. WAGGONER.