The Sunday Institution Condemned

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 16, 1907

The Sunday Institution Condemned

A SUNDAY-LAW advocate, in denouncing those firms which permitted Sunday work, gives expression to the following truth which condemns the whole Sunday institution. He says:—

Any institution which can be maintained only by the violation of divine law does not deserve to live.

Apply that to the Sunday institution. It exists in defiance of divine law, and Sunday-law advocates seek to compel men to violate divine law in order to keep that institution alive. For instance, the divine law says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” and commands that it be kept. The Sunday institution usurps the place of the day appointed by divine law, commands the keeping of that pseudo-sabbath, and arraigns, condemns, and imprisons the one who has obeyed the divine law, if he presumes to exercise the right given him by divine law, the right of laboring on Sunday. As the Sunday institution can not exist without violating the divine law, it, therefore, according to the logic of the Sunday-law advocate above quoted, “does not deserve to live.” The statement is true, it is logical, but instead of helping the Sunday institution, it pronounces the death sentence of that institution. Given rope enough, error will hang itself. It has done so here.