p. 324 | Untitled article by W. H. M.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 16, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 41

The Divine Basis.

By W. H. M.

THE Pearl of Days says:—

An awakened moral conviction throughout the land must precede civil Sunday statutes, otherwise such legislation will be loose and below the divine standard.

The natural rules of construction upon which language is founded, and the inexorable necessity for a certain consecutiveness in mental action, make it well nigh impossible but that falsehood and misstatement should often bear unconscious and unintentional testimony to the truth.

It is so in this case. Before there is likely to be any legislation upon the Sunday question purely on a civil basis,—that is, before purely civil Sunday statutes will ever be passed, and the religious statutes upon Sunday observance be expurgated from the law books,—there must be “an awakened moral conviction throughout the land;” otherwise such legislation will certainly be below the “divine standard.” But what would be the divine standard of “civil Sunday statutes”?

We have the divine standard of religious Sabbath statutes in Exodus 20: 8, 9, 10: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” However, this law would not apply in any respect to Sunday, as the day mentioned in the divine statute quoted is the seventh day, and Sunday is the first day; it is manifest, therefore, that we must look elsewhere for the divine standard. No human court of law would accept the assertion in Exodus, “The seventh day is the Sabbath,” etc., as authority for a law on the statute book of any State, that “no servile labor shall be performed on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday.” Certainly not, the discrepancy is too patent. Such an assumption would be preposterous.

A careful search of the divine statute book from the first phrase, “In the beginning,” at the opening of Genesis, to the “Amen,” which closes the last chapter of Revelation, fails to produce a single precedent; Sunday must therefore stand solely upon its own worth as a secular day, with such extra dignity as human laws may have conferred upon it.

Finding no standard then by which human legislation may regulate itself as to the day in particular, it will be necessary to consider the other branch of the question, and ask what divine standard we are given by which to regulate civil Sunday legislation, as well as all other civil legislation? Upon this we have the authority of Christ himself in Luke 20: 25; and Matt. 22: 21, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” And again in another place, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” The divine standard by which all human legislation must be governed is here given. The first principle laid down is that that which is God’s is extra judicial, entirely, and cannot be trenched upon by civil regulations, either to be added to, detracted from, or in any way to be made a subject of adjudication.

Civil Sunday statutes, then, must be confined solely to such regulations of civil affairs, upon that day, as is acknowledged to be fit for the maintenance of good order and general civility upon the Fourth of July, and other legal holidays. For if it is a religious regulation it conflicts with the “divine standard,” and if purely civil it must contain no religious element. All civil Sunday statutes must also be strictly impartial; there must be in them nothing whatever which might not be equally applicable to any other day; otherwise they will be found to conflict here and there with the standard, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

When will there be “throughout this land” such an awakening of “moral convictions” as will raise our civil statutes to the divine standard? And when will the law-makers, and those who appoint them, understand that the statutes of God are his, and that he has drawn an unalterable line of demarkation between them and the civil regulations which he has granted man the privilege and the ability of establishing for himself? If it were possible for that day ever to come, there would be found in it no “loose legislation” in which men would go outside their legislative sphere to enforce or interpret divine laws, or under the title “Civil Sunday” to enforce a religious Sabbath. W. H. M.