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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 28, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 34

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Due to Religious Liberty Literature.

By W. H. M.

MR. L. A. CALLICOTT, of Lanes, Dyer County, Tennessee, was tried some time since, under the Tennessee statute, forbidding Sunday labor, and found guilty, but a new trial was ordered which took place July 21, before Judge Flippin. Col. T. E. Richardson, who is counsel in the famous King case, which has gone to the United States District Court, defended Mr. Callicott. The defendant is a Seventh-day Adventist, and the question was broached, as to whether the commandment, “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work,” made it a sin for him to rest on Sunday. E. E. Marvin, an elder of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, was put upon the witness stand, and the following was elicited, as reported in the Review and Herald:—
Colonel Richardson.—“Mr. Marvin, where do you live?”
Mr. Marvin.—“At Trezevant, Carroll County, Tennessee.”
Colonel Richardson.—“Are you a minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church?”
Mr. Marvin.—“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Richardson.—“What is the belief and practice of your church concerning the Sabbath?”
Mr. Marvin.—“We believe the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, as brought to view in Exodus, twentieth chapter, and keep it as such; and with James (chapter 2: 12) we believe this to be a law of liberty, and that we have a heaven-born right to obey it in any State or nation.”
Colonel Richardson.—“You regard it as a Christian duty to keep that day holy and no other?”
Mr. Marvin.—“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Richardson.—“Does your church hold that the working upon six days is as imperative as keeping of the seventh?”
Mr. Marvin.—“No, sir.”
Attorney-General.—“Mr. Marvin, what is the position of your people as to working six days?”
Mr. Marvin.—“They have never officially or publicly expressed any rule concerning it.”
Attorney-General.—“Do your people teach that it is a sin to rest on Sunday?”
Mr. Marvin.—“We believe that when required to—”
Attorney-General.—“But answer my question.”
Mr. Marvin.—“I will, sir, if you give me opportunity.”
Attorney-General.—“Well, go on, then.”
Mr. Marvin.—“We believe that when required to rest on Sunday, by laws based upon the religious aspect of the day, it would be wrong to obey them.”
Attorney-General.—“Do laws, requiring men simply to rest, tend to enforce religion or worship?”
Mr. Marvin.—“Yes, sir, if such laws be Sunday laws.”
Attorney-General.—“On what grounds?”
Mr. Marvin.—“On the grounds that there is not now, nor ever was, a Sunday law, that did not have for its basis the religious character of the day.”
Attorney-General.—“But it would not interfere with your religion to rest on Sunday?”
Mr. Marvin.—“Yes, sir. Sunday-keeping is a religious act—an act of worship; it would be conforming to an opposing religion.”
The Attorney-General then yielded the case, and the Judge charged the jury to bring in a verdict of not guilty.
This testimony is worthy of note, for it brings out the pith of the whole question of Sunday laws. Sunday keeping is a religious act, nothing else,—never was anything else since the Babylonians and their ancestors established the worship of the sun god, which the “venerable day of the sun” perpetuates to the present hour, with the added sanctities of the Christian Sabbath attached in these later times.
If any man believes that “the seventh-day” is the Sabbath of the Lord his God, to compel him to yield a formal allegiance to the first day (the day of the sun) is forcing him to conform “to an opposing religion.”
The Judge in this case charged rightly.
The report from which the above testimony is taken, closes with this sentence: “We attribute this victory largely to the National Religious Liberty literature.”
W. H. M.