p. 17 | The Sabbath and Sunday Question in Manitoba

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 21, 1906

The Sabbath and Sunday Question in Manitoba

By W. M. Adams

REV. FATHER DRUMMOND, S. J., of the St. Boniface College (Catholic), Winnipeg, while giving his views of Sunday street-cars, tells the Winnipeg citizens that those who created the Sunday sabbath ought to know best how to keep it.

He says: “Where Sunday cars are in use, people do use them very largely to attend church, and besides rational amusement is not at all against the spirit of the Lord's day as instituted and organized by the Catholic Church. All the rest of the Christian world, which takes its observance of the first day of the week from the Catholic Church alone, has no right to dictate to us as to which way we shall observe the Sabbath.” — Winnipeg Telegram, April 11, 1906. (Italic ours.)

In Gladstone, where I have recently held a course of meetings, resulting in twelve conversions to the truth, two ministers preached against the Sabbath. The Presbyterian minister said, “The Sabbatarians claim that Jesus Christ kept the seventh-day Sabbath, and that he never gave commandment to change it. They are right in both points.” Then after such an acknowledgment, he tried to show that we ought to keep Sunday anyway. His man-made arguments and human philosophizing simply confirmed the new believers.

The Methodist Episcopal minister based his sermon on Gen. 2: 1-3. After making of none effect this text, he said, “How did Moses get this idea of the seventh day's being set apart in the beginning? I'll tell you. He received it as any minister gets his ideas to-day. Moses was simply a preacher, that was all.” In closing his remarks he said, “There is no command in the Bible for the change of the Sabbath, and we do not need any.”

The acknowledgments of these Protestant ministers will appear the more self-stultifying as the “Pope's True Position” is heralded by Father Gregory O'Brien in the Winnipeg Free Press, of April 5, 1906. He says: “If the Bible is the only guide for Christians, then the Seventh-day Adventists and the Jews are the only people observing the law of God with regard to the Sabbath day; those who claim the Bible as their sole guide have no right whatever to keep Sunday, but are bound to keep the seventh day—the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath question is stirring this field. Especially at this time is it brought prominently before the people by the agitation of Sunday laws. Winnipeg is now stirred over Sunday street-cars.

We greatly need both men and means to push the work in this field at this time. Statistics show that over three hundred thousand immigrants, during the last three years, have come from the United States; this number is not quite one third of all the immigration to this country.

We shall be pleased to receive help for the advancement of the work. Any one interested and wishing to know more about the progress of the cause in the Manitoba Conference, should address the writer at 438 Selkirk Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba.

We are of good courage, and are planning to put three or four tents into the field this summer to give the people the truth of the third angel's message. Now is the time to work. Pray for the work in Canada. W. M. ADAMS.