The Disregard of Law by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Aug 10, 1905

The Disregard of Law

By L. A. S.

THE United Presbyterian, in an exhortation on “Obedience to Law,” says:—

We are under law. We are constituted to be in harmony with law. He who gave us our being gave us our place in his kingdom of law, in obedience to which there is the completeness of life and the fulness of enjoyment.

The Presbyterian has particularly in mind, however, not the law of God, but the law of man, and especially the Sunday-observance statute; for after some general observations on the subject, it says:—

We are led to these remarks by the return of the season when a popular sentiment permits an almost wholesale disregard of some of the best laws of God [not specified], and especially the law of his day of rest. Our crowded trains, our thronged parks, our military parades, our numberless places of resort especially patronized on the Sabbath, are indications of a lowered standard of law, and of a tendency to throw off the moral restraint by which virtue, truth, and right are maintained, and manhood brought to its maturity. The disregard of the Sabbath which finds so much encouragement at the present time is an indication of moral degeneration. It tends to the disregard of all law, and so to the destruction of the foundations of society, as well as of personal character.

As to disregard of the law of God, the truth is that that is due to the prevalence of the carnal nature in men,—the sinful, unregenerated heart. “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.” Mark 7:21, 22. All this is in violation of the law of God, and the general disregard of the law of God in this age of the world is made appallingly manifest in that men are “lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” All these evils, these violations of the law of God, are alarmingly prevalent and on the increase, as the columns of the daily papers show. But it is not this that the Presbyterian has in mind. It is not this state of things over which it is troubled, nor the formal, powerless representation of godliness in the church. What it is concerned over is the fact that “crowded trains,” “thronged parks,” “military parades,” etc., are to be observed at this season of the year on a day set apart in the statutes of men to be observed as a day of rest; namely, the first day of the week. It refers to no law of God which is being violated by these things; for there is no law of God which enjoins the observance of that day.

Would it not be vastly better if this religious journal would devote itself to the work of exhorting men to obedience to the law of God, through repentance and faith in the divine Sacrifice, instead of holding up another and human standard of righteousness? The Christian’s business in this world is to exalt the law of God.

Has it never occurred to those who so deplore the desecration of Sunday, that the lack of any divine authority in support of its claims must be one great cause of the disregard of, and indifference toward, it on the part of the general public? This is not an imaginary influence; for however well the clergy and some enthusiastic adherents of the day may persuade themselves that there is good Biblical ground for Sunday observance, the general public know by this time that Bible authority supports the seventh day as the Sabbath, and not the first. Here is the fatal, inherent weakness of the Sunday cause. The people, now that they have heard the claims of the seventh day as being the Sabbath of the Lord, resting upon a commandment which is part of a universal, eternal, and unchangeable law, know that the first-day sabbath rests upon tradition, custom, and human authority rather than upon the Word of God; and no amount of argument can blind their eyes to the fact. “Every plant, which my Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up,” is a divine statement which foreshadows the failure of the Sunday cause. L. A. S.