The Sabbath Agitation in Washington
By W. A. COLCORD
THROUGH the efforts to secure Sunday laws for the District of Columbia, and the agitation for better Sunday observance in Washington, the Sabbath question is coming to the front at the nation’s capital. December 12 seventy-five Protestant ministers of Washington met and decided that “the first Sunday in the coming year should be devoted to the discussion of the question of ‘Sabbath Observance’ in the city of Washington.” The sermons to be preached then were to be expressly aimed at the governmental practise of making certain employees work on Sunday. A systematic campaign, therefore, it was reported, was to be inaugurated “to remedy this state of things.” To us this seemed a providential opening to present the claims of the true Sabbath in contrast with the false, and the evil involved in the movement to exalt the Sunday, and enforce its observance by law. We therefore decided to address an “Open Letter” to the Protestant clergy of the city on the Sabbath question. This we did, giving in it the plain Bible argument on the Sabbath, the perpetuity of the law of God, the change of the Sabbath, and the final warning against false worship in the matter of Sabbath observance. The letter, which appears in another part of this paper, was published in two of the leading daily papers of the city, which have a combined circulation of something like sixty-five thousand copies. We also published ten thousand copies of the letter in tract form, which were circulated in the city in connection with an announcement for a mass-meeting to be held December 28 in one of the large halls of the city, to discuss the question, thus giving a total circulation to the document of seventy-five thousand copies, which would mean a reading audience of three hundred thousand or more. Two days after the publication of the “Open Letter,” the Washington Post came out with a leading editorial on “Sabbath and Sunday,” in which it was pointed out that beyond all question Sunday is not the ancient Bible Sabbath, that the Seventh-day Adventists are consistent in their keeping of the seventh day, and that the great danger in connection with the Sunday movement is that the friends of Sunday observance will become intolerant. The mass-meeting was held in Pythian Temple, December 28, as announced, in which Elders K. C. Russell, W. W. Prescott, G. B. Thompson, J. S. Washburn, Luther Warren, Prof. B. G. Wilkinson, and the writer took part in the speaking, each dealing with a different phase of the question. Good reports of the meeting appeared in all three of the19daily papers of the city the following day. A few days later there appeared in two of the papers a reply to our “Open Letter,” written by Bishop Satterlee, of the Episcopal church of Washington, and in one paper a very weak and brief attempt at a reply by Mr. W. F. Crafts. The bishop took the position that because the Supreme Court of the United States has decided in favor of Sunday laws as utilitarian in character, therefore whatever our personal preferences or convictions may be in the matter, these should be laid aside, and as loyal patriots, all should heartily support the Sunday laws of the country. On the religious side of the question, while admitting that the Sunday Sabbath has been established by no divine command, he held that the ‘universal Christian consciousness of the church’ is the real authority in the church, and as this approves of Sunday observance, the practise is warranted,—positions plainly at variance with the fundamental principles of Protestantism, which assert that the rights of conscience are above the state, and the authority of the Holy Scriptures is above the visible church. A reply to the bishop’s letter was prepared by Professor Prescott, and appeared in the Washington Post of January 7, occupying over a column. Thus the agitation is broadening, and the attention of many is being called to God’s downtrodden Sabbath here at the capital of the nation. Within a week ten columns of matter on the subject have appeared in the daily papers of Washington. And to speak through the Washington papers means much; for they are widely circulated, and speak for the nation.
W. A. COLCORD.