Untitled article by W. A. COLCORD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · April 21, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 16

What Is Proper Sabbath Observance?

By W. A. COLCORD

SAYS the Michigan Sabbath Watchman:—

The Sabbath rightly observed would prove a source of great good to the people of this Nation.

Granted; and a blessing to the people of all other nations as well. But what is proper Sabbath observance? This statement of the Watchman can be of no practical value unless we can ascertain what proper observance of the Sabbath is. How must the Sabbath be kept in order to be “rightly observed,” and thus prove a blessing to him who observes it? Only he who made it and gave character to the Sabbath day is competent to answer this question; and this he has done. God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” Only when the Sabbath is thus kept, only when it is observed as a day which is “sacred; reserved from profane or common use;” as a day “set apart to the service or worship of God,”—as the term holy is defined to mean,—is it rightly observed. The right observance of the day is, therefore, to devote it to God and to his worship. This and this only, is either proper or profitable Sabbath observance.

But this stamps both the institution and its proper observance as religious, and religious wholly; for religion is “the recognition of God as an object of worship, love, and obedience.” Any law, therefore, looking toward the proper observance of the Sabbath is a religious law, and the enforcement of it is the enforcement of a religious observance. Sabbath laws are, therefore, religious laws, and nothing else; and the enforcement of them is simply an attempt to make men religious by law. These conclusions are unavoidable, allowing God to say what the right observance of the Sabbath is, and words to have their common and accepted meaning.

But, although the attempt can be made, men can not be made religious by law, and the attempt is not only futile but wicked. The most that law can do toward making men religious is, in view of certain pains and penalties, to exact an outward conformity to certain religious rites and ceremonies. And this is all that any Sunday law, or any effort to secure Sunday laws, and enforce Sunday observance by law can ever accomplish.

The friends of such laws bear witness to the truthfulness of this fact themselves. A writer in the Christian Statesman of Dec. 25, 1891, refers to the work of the Pittsburg Law and Order League as having given “unmistakable signs of success in reducing crime and vice, and especially in procuring a better outward observance of the Sabbath.” (Italics mine.)

And this is as good Sabbath observance as any Sunday law, or Law and Order League, can ever secure; simply an outward observance. But this without the inward grace is hypocrisy. Said Jesus, “God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” No other kind of worship is acceptable to God, and no other form of Sabbath keeping than that holy, spiritual, religious observance of the day is Sabbath keeping in his sight. Therefore all such Sabbath observance as comes from the Pennsylvania Sunday law, backed up by the Pittsburg Law and Order League, makes the one who renders it no better, nor any more a Sabbath-keeper, in God’s sight. In fact it would be better for him not to render it, for there is some reason for believing that God has more respect for an honest sinner than for a hypocritical saint.

The whole Sunday-law movement is therefore nothing more nor less than an effort to make men hypocrites, and persecute all who will not act the hypocrite and worship God after its hypocritical fashion. The promoters of it may secure millions of convictions under Sunday laws, but they can never by such means convert a soul. Away with the wicked and hypocritical thing! W. A. COLCORD.