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THE NEXT MOVE

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 8, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 32, No. 24.

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“THE NEXT MOVE.”

By Editor

There is a large and growing class of people in this country in whose minds the idea of giving this nation some marked religious characteristics does not slumber nor sleep. It seems to be taking possession of them more and more fully, leading them to corresponding efforts to carry it into effect. Hence the agitation continues and increases. It shows itself in various ways. The movement on foot to amend the constitution of the United States so that that instrument shall recognize God, and the Christian religion, the agitation of the Sunday question, and the wide-spread efforts to make a profession of Christianity a qualification for office, are the surface indications of the under current. And we expect it will continue till the question is brought to a prompt and decisive issue. We regard the movement in the light of prophecy as one of the most significant events of the day, and shall watch its development with increasing interest.
A late number of the Church Union, the largest religious paper published in this country, and the organ of the union movement, which is designed to combine all professed Christians into one vast co-operative body, under the heading of “A Christian Party the Next Move,” thus openly and urgently advocates the prosecution of this work:
“A CHRISTIAN PARTY THE NEXT MOVE.—Of course it must be understood, in the order of Providence, that universal suffrage and universal fellowship must precede all other steps. After these, the next great evil to meet is the tendency to corruption. Democratic governments have no enemy more dreadful than that of corruption. It has destroyed every republic on this footstool but ours, and it has begun its work here, and fearful are the ravages. Our readers know that we go in for the largest liberty to all; but mere liberty will work no good. Liberty is French anarchy when it comes without Christ. The liberty which Jefferson, Paine, Theodore Parker, the Boston Investigator, the Radical, the Liberal Christian, and the political editor of the N. Y. Independent, claim, is a Christless liberty. We would be no better off in the clutches of Wendell Philips than in the hands of Fernando Wood without Christ. Now, by this remark we mean this: We desire to purify our government. There is no purity out of Christ. It has got to be established, this dogma, that nothing but Christ can cure our republic of all its diseases. New York will never be swept clean by women even, and we believe women to be the purest. Woman, with Christ, can do the work in an hour. What we wish to accomplish in New York is to get every one to voting, women with the rest, and this because she is the purest and the best. Then we need to combine all Christians, have for once a Christian mayor, a board of aldermen, and common council, and judiciary of Christians, and then down goes the bad, come from what source it may. These things will not come of themselves. A party must be formed. 1872 ought to give such a party prominent mention. Let some few men band themselves together, and take steps to organize a party. Do not wait for numbers. Twelve is all there were to begin the mightiest revolution of any age. Nor need these be great men. Fishermen and publicans did once; they will do again the work. We shall constantly, from time to time, dwell on this subject, until we have thoroughly tested the matter whether there is yet grace enough given to the church to take her place. If not, she must move aside, and Christ will refine and purify her until she does come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
In connection with the above, another significant movement may also be mentioned. It is no less than a proposition on the part of the Jews to abandon their Sabbath and take their day of rest on the Christian Sunday. For this we are indebted to a Chicago paper which lately contained the following:

A COMMON SABBATH.

A writer in the Israelite, published at Cincinnati, makes an appeal to his Hebraic brethren to unite with the Christians in the observance of the same day as the Sabbath. He writes that there is no special command that the Jews shall keep their Sabbath on a Saturday, and therefore that there is no reason why the whole body of Christians and Jews may not keep the Sabbath on the same day—the Sunday. The present rule, he argues, is especially hard upon the Jews. They have to close up their business and suspend their labor on Saturday, when all the rest of the world are fully employed; and they have to close their business virtually on the succeeding day, when the other portion of mankind have their Sabbath. If one day was agreed upon, the whole civilized world would keep their Sabbath on the same day.
The writer does not say in what mode this Sabbath should be observed—rigidly, or as a day of rest from labor and recreation for body and mind. This movement for a transfer of the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday marks the progress of the world in matters of religion.
The overcomers at the close of this dispensation will be observers of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and believers in Jesus Christ. So the Jew, although he may be keeping the Sabbath, inasmuch as he does not observe the faith of Jesus, cannot be reckoned among them. Yet it could hardly be supposed that the Jew, destitute of all the vitality of genuine religion, would cling to the Sabbath, through the fiery ordeal to which such observance is to be subjected before the end. And it seems that they are even now preparing the way for its abandonment.
The religious world thus presents at the present time the following significant phases: 1, Spiritualism, with all its evil tendencies, leavening the great mass of all the popular bodies of professed Christians. 2. A deep and wide-spread effort to make Sunday a legal and national institution; and, 3, The Jews preparing to abandon the ancient and true Sabbath in favor of this professedly Christian practice. Thus the believers in the truths of the Bible will soon become a marked and distinct people. May the divine Author of all truth give them grace to stand without compromise, and without fear.