Walking According to Tradition
To the Pharisees who asked him, “Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders?” Jesus applied the prophecy of Isaiah: “This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.” If Jesus were on earth now, what would he say to those who assert divine authority for the observance of Sunday, “the wild solar holiday of all pagan times,” and who declare that to treat that day as a secular day “is a violation of the commandment of God respecting the observance of the Sabbath”? And yet this is being constantly done by Protestants who profess to believe that the Bible, and the Bible alone, is a sufficient rule of faith and practise. The latest and one of the most flagrant instances of this determined effort to make God responsible for the transgression of his own law is found in resolutions adopted by a Methodist church and by the Methodist preachers’ meeting of Chicago, asking that the United States government should grant an annual holiday to the mail-carriers of that city so that they might not be compelled to hold their annual picnic on Sunday. In two short preambles and two short resolutions Sunday is called “God’s day” four times, the violation of this day is characterized as “a sin against God,” and it is declared that “Sunday kept in quiet as God meant it,” etc. In commenting upon this action, the Northwestern Christian Advocate, whose editor is one of the committee to carry out the design of the resolution, says:—6We hope that the recommendation of the congregation of St. James church and of the preachers’ meeting will receive the favorable consideration of the President and postmaster-general, and that an annual holiday will be set apart as a national holiday on which government employees may hold their annual picnic. Here is an attempt to secure from the officers of the general government an action based upon governmental recognition of Sunday as the Sabbath, —one more effort to commit this government to the settlement of a religious controversy, and to the support of a religious observance which rests solely upon human authority and is directly contrary to the commandment of God. We can only hope that many who lend their influence to such movements do so in ignorance of the real issue involved, and that when the light from God’s Word comes to them, they will repudiate their former course in rejecting God’s commandment for the precepts of men, and will become loyal observers of the only genuine “God’s day.” “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” It is this day which the Lord calls “my holy day.”