p. 236 | Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 4, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 30

“The American Sabbath.”

UNDER this head the Patriot, published at Lamoni, Iowa, gives forcible editorial expression to some plain facts as to the present assault upon patriotism and religion in the United States. The Patriot speaks thus:—

The leading spirits in the move to secure the recognition in the United States by some sort of legal action of what they call the “American Sabbath,” may not have become fully conscious of the fact, but it is nevertheless true, that they are perpetrating a fraud upon the people in the name of religion. This consists first in the name which they have assumed for the day of the week upon which they propose to legally compel all men within our borders to seem to rest, the “American Sabbath.” In order to warrant the use of this distinctive phrase, there must either be a formal recognition of a certain day as the Sabbath day by the voice of the whole American people at some properly designated time when their voice upon that question could be heard, and there must be all but a universal observance of that day by the American people without such a recognition by formal voice or vote. Up to the present time there has been neither one.

The rather unpleasant conviction is forced upon the independent investigator, that the gentlemen of the cloth in using the phrase, “American Sabbath,” are following about the same tactics which liquor men and politicians do when they declare in favor of temperance—attempting to secure recognition for one thing by a specious pretense of devotion to something else.

There is not, and necessarily can not be, any such thing as an American Sabbath. There can be an American Congress, because the people of the United States have the right and power to elect one; there can be an American President, an American Government, American laws pertaining to the conduct of people as American citizens, or the course of the Government toward its citizens, or the citizens or governments of other lands, because all these the people of the United States have the power to elect, enact, or establish; but there can be no such thing as an American Sabbath, because the people of the United States have no power to appoint any day which is to be observed with reference to God and heaven, nor compel its observance when it is appointed. To attempt such a thing is clearly rebellion against heaven and God; and to look with favor upon it is to look with favor upon such rebellion.

If the observance of a Sabbath day is primarily the result of a heavenly command, then the expression, an “American Sabbath,” justly and properly construed, implies the following things: General authority from heaven vested in the American Nation to promulgate and enforce the commands of God; second, the formal promulgation by the American people of the decree that the first day of the week is the Sabbath of the Lord and shall be observed as such. We deny that either of these conditions has obtained. The American Nation has never been authorized to promulgate the decrees of heaven. On the contrary, the most authoritative and completely binding document which that people has ever adopted, formally and clearly forbids Congress, the highest power in the Government, making any attempt to exercise any religious authority whatever, even going so far as to forbid the application of any religious tests, which compels the equal recognition of infidel and Christian, Mohammedan and Buddhist. Having no authority to promulgate religious decrees or ordinances, and being specially forbidden to do so, the Government has not promulgated any decree authorizing or enjoining the observance of any day of the week as the Sabbath of the Lord, and therefore there is no such thing as the “American Sabbath.”

These are statements of truths which are patent. Congressmen do not even need to read them as they run, for they have both learned and relearned them from boyhood up, and their natural intelligence as American citizens, certainly, if of native birth, would, unassisted, teach them that these strictures are just. Why, then, will they permit their names to go on record as voting for legislation on religious subjects? Political religion already dominates Congress; how long before it will rule the country?