p. 21 | Untitled article by W. E. Cornell

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · January 19, 1893

Just the Facts in the Case.

By W. E. Cornell

No one at all observing can fail to see that there is a growing disregard for Sunday as a day of religious worship, and in spite of the increase of churches and the multiplicity of pastors, the tide is not checked, but rather as was recently expressed in these columns by a typical National Reformer, “We can hardly tell now when our holy Sunday comes.” What is the matter? It is simply this, there is no divine authority for such an observance, and the people are beginning to find it out; and having found it out, what is more natural than that it should lose its sacredness in the minds of those who had previously regarded it as of divine appointment. One of the things that this enforced Sunday rest agitation is developing is this very fact; and when the real facts are brought to the attention of those who are clamoring for a Sunday law, the same old spirit is aroused that had possession of the persecutors of the early Christians, and wherever possible, manifests itself in about the same way. As a specimen of how some of the press is airing this subject, the following from the Davenport (Iowa) Democrat is submitted:

It is amusing to hear the Massachusetts congressman, Elijah Morse, warn the American people against the opening of the doors of the Columbian Exposition on Sunday because of the disregard of the Decalogue command to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. This command, he says, was handed down by Jehovah unto the sons of the earth amid the thunderings of Sinai. Let it be admitted that such was the fact, what then? The Massachusetts man knows, or ought to know, that the command that he quotes as being binding to an extreme degree upon the sons of men, through all the generations, had no reference whatever to Sunday, any more than it had to Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. It referred to the seventh day, and every Biblical or other scholar knows that the seventh day of the Decalogue was Saturday and not Sunday. There seems to be no conscientious gleam in the congressman’s mind about keeping the Fair open the Sinaitic Sabbath day. His pleading is for the pagan day of worship—the day so dear to the sun-worshiper—even Sunday. He and all the Christian world disregard the Sabbath with a perfect recklessness, and defy the seventh day of rest from birth to death. He is clearly out of the case, and is not to be regarded with the least degree of seriousness.

It is evident that by means of this controversy thousands are being made acquainted with the fact that Sunday is not the Sabbath by divine appointment, but that it rests only upon human authority.

W. E. CORNELL.