Untitled article by S. O. LANE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · September 25, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 38

Strange Reasons.

By S. O. LANE

SOMETIMES when men are working for an object which in itself is not likely to meet with public favor, they give strange reasons for their course of procedure. This is forcibly illustrated by many of the excuses given for trying to force the observance of Sunday upon this Nation by those who style themselves National Reformers.

In the book, “The Sabbath for Man,” by W. F. Crafts, some very strange arguments are used to show why the laboring man should be made to keep Sunday. The author argues that Sunday, if kept, will give a man one third as much time for studying as he would get in a college course in the same time; also by keeping Sunday twenty-one years, a man would have as much time for mental improvement as he would get in a common college course. And further, that a life of seventy years of well-spent Sundays would give one’s mind opportunity for improvement equal in time, to three college courses. From this reasoning it would seem that the main object of Sunday legislation is a purely educational one.

Then he goes on to say that many of the Sunday-keeping workmen of a few years ago are the capitalists and leaders of to-day. Here this zealous advocate of Sunday legislation attempts to prove that the working man needs to keep Sunday to better his financial condition, and also he needs it to give him influence and power. Thus he gives as results of good Sunday keeping, education, wealth, and influence—things which human nature most earnestly desires.

But there seems to be a serious objection to these arguments, and that is, that notwithstanding the predicted results of compulsory Sunday observance are so much to be desired by the laboring man, he himself is not much in favor of having his rights restricted on even one day of the week; and therefore is not in favor of Sunday legislation. So after using the foregoing arguments, which Mr. Crafts calls “great facts,” he thus explains why the laboring man, generally, does not favor his Sunday-keeping schemes:—

Blind to these great facts, a Shoe Lasters’ Union in Brooklyn, at the publication of the new Penal Code of New York in 1882, adopted a paper which thus describes the Sabbath laws:—

We learn with regret that the churches are joining hands with tyranny and capital for the purpose of suppressing liberty, and oppressing the laborer—

Sentiments representative of many labor organizations, which show that holiday Sundays prevent those who follow them from learning the A B C of political science, and keep them in such ignorance of the true meaning of liberty that they mistake its champions for oppressors.

According to this, the poor laboring man is indeed in a dilemma. He has never taken advantage of his Sunday “educational” privileges, and so is blind—so blind that he cannot see his only source of education. The only way to get him out of this difficulty, Mr. Crafts thinks, is to force him to keep Sunday until he learns to appreciate these great blessings of education, wealth, and influence, and until he learns the “true meaning of liberty.” This is what Mr. Crafts and his friends who have probably kept Sunday long enough to appreciate these “great facts,” purpose to do for the benefit of the laboring man.

It is a useless expenditure of time to point out the fallacy of such arguments, as any thoughtful person, whether he has properly kept Sunday or not, can see the foolishness of such reasoning; but one is reminded by the course which these “reformers” propose to pursue, of the kind parents who tied their son to the bed-post Sunday morning, and left him there till he could repeat the hymn beginning—

Thine earthly Sabbaths, Lord, I love.

It is presumable that this boy liked rather to play or go a-fishing than to attend church. His parents enjoyed church privileges and were very anxious that their son should learn to love and reverence the day as they did, and the only way they could see to accomplish this happy result was to force him to rest on Sunday, and learn to repeat sacred hymns until he learned to love to spend his Sundays in this way. It resulted, probably, in the same way that all compulsory Sunday observance would.

There is a blessedness in keeping the Sabbath, as there is in doing all of God’s commands, which none but those who are Christians in fact can appreciate. He who feels this blessedness has the least disposition of all men to attempt to force it upon others, because it came to him in quite another way, and he knows it must come to others in the same way that it came to him; and he has learned that Christ’s kingdom is not a kingdom of force, but its ruling element is love.

“The Sabbath was made for man”—for his highest good intellectually, physically, and morally. It was given to him as a reminder of his obligations to the true God, the fear of whom “is the beginning of wisdom.” Man was not made for the Sabbath,—he was not made to protect it by law, or in any other way. God will do that work for his own day, and in his own good way. S. O. LANE.