p. 21 | Untitled article by C. P. B.

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

Bearing False Witness.

By C. P. B.

THE following is from the Pacific Methodist Advocate, published in San Francisco, California:—

A PESTILENTIAL SECT.

A body of Seventh-day Adventists packed the meeting of the American Sabbath Union at Chicago last week, and, when the ballot on Sabbath observance at the World's Fair was taken, voted a small majority against the resolution. The effrontery of these people is something amazing. Both self-respect and a sense of justice should have kept them out of a petitioning religious meeting, with the principles of which they were notoriously at variance. They were led by a man well known on this coast as a bitter foe to the civil Sabbath, and insinuated themselves into the meeting in violation of every rule of social decency. Ingersoll and his sympathizers could as properly assume to take part in the deliberations of the Evangelical Alliance. And yet the secular papers announce that the resolutions were defeated by the friends of the Sabbath. A pestilential sheet, known as the AMERICAN SENTINEL, the organ of this school, has been for several years past fulminating maledictions against this Government for even recognizing such a day as the Sabbath. It would sweep every vestige of the institution away. It is a malevolence rarely surpassed. Nobody objects to these people keeping Saturday as their day of rest; but the impudence of Lucifer is equaled in their effort to rob this Nation of its best badge of civilization and Christianity.

Our old readers will remember that the facts concerning this meeting were published in these columns three weeks ago. We shall, however, state them very briefly again.

The meeting which, according to the Advocate, the Adventists packed, was not a meeting of the American Sabbath Union, but was advertised as a “mass-meeting,” and everybody was invited. Of course anybody who wanted to go had a perfect right not only to be present but to vote.

The meeting, though advertised as a “mass-meeting,” was so very slimly attended that only about one hundred persons were present, and but little more than two-thirds of those present took interest enough in the proceedings to vote. When the resolutions were presented the Adventists could not endorse them, and so voted against them, as they had a perfect right to do; and greatly to their surprise defeated them—being a majority of those voting, though as a matter of fact they were probably only a minority of the whole number present.

There was no packing about it. The Adventists simply attended the meeting because it was held in the quarter of the city in which they reside, and because they wanted to hear what was said. They evidently made no effort to “pack” the meeting else they would have had present a much larger number than they did have, for they certainly had no idea that a mass-meeting in the city of Chicago would consist of less than one hundred persons, and that such a meeting could be controlled by less than fifty persons.

In the light of these statements to which the common sense of every man who reads them must assent, what must be thought of the religious paper that would publish such a tirade of abuse as is here quoted from the Pacific Methodist Advocate.

C. P. B.