Untitled article by W. A. Colcord

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

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 16

Which the Dying Cause?

By W. A. Colcord

MR. F. W. WARE, Secretary of the American Sabbath Union for the State of Michigan, in his paper for February and March, says:—

The Seventh-day Adventist papers are guilty of shamelessly and continuously insulting public intelligence by saying that those who are laboring to enforce laws enacted for the protection of the Sabbath from ordinary labor and noisy sports are trying to make men religious by law. . . . The Seventh-day Adventists ought to be ashamed of their course in this matter. . . . It is a poor and dying cause that is compelled to resort to such things.

One of two things must be true: this religious organization known as the American Sabbath Union, in its efforts to secure and enforce Sunday laws is either trying to make men religious by law, or it is not trying to make them religious at all, for this is its sole work, aim, and object, the enforcement of Sunday observance by law. If it, a religious organization, is not trying to make men religious, we would advise it to turn its attention to its legitimate and consistent line of work. There is little question, however, as to what it is trying to do. The modus operandi is the questionable feature in the case. It may be observed further that it must be a poor and dying Sabbath that is compelled to resort to law for protection and existence. In a lecture delivered in Battle Creek, Michigan, March 6, 1892, Mr. Ware attested this fact by saying:—

It was recognized about twenty-five or thirty years ago by the church that the American Sabbath was very fast passing out of our hands. . . . The churches which generally take the lead in moral reforms . . . saw as far back as that time that unless something was done more than ordinary, the American Sabbath, our Christian Sabbath, would soon with us be a thing of the past.

The “dying cause” is on the other side of the question from that which Mr. Ware would endeavor to make it appear.

W. A. COLCORD.