Iniquity by Law by A. H. Lewis

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 26, 1870

Iniquity by Law.

By A. H. Lewis

The signs of proscription on account of the Sabbath are steadily increasing. The movements in the Legislatures of Rhode Island and Illinois are indicative of the state of the public mind concerning Sabbath-keepers. These refusals to modify or remove the disabilities under which Sabbath-keepers now labor, show a state of things which, with very little change, would readily increase the present burdens. “Orthodoxy” is steadily manufacturing that sort of public opinion which says, “Minorities are a nuisance, and must be abated.” In all questions of Sunday legislation, Sabbath-keepers are a most troublesome element. No-Sabbathists carouse and plead for “free lager” on Sunday; they are infidels too; and so orthodoxy can oppose them on both moral and theological grounds, with some degree of consistency. But Sabbath-keepers are quiet, law-abiding, temperate, and orthodox. There is really no argument against them, except the powerful (?) one that they are in the minority and are troublesome. Every week their practices condemn the sin of the majority. Every sermon preached by them, every book sent forth, helps to tear away the mask which hides the deformity of orthodox Sunday-keeping; this is far from being agreeable. There is no hope for the popular cause in the Bible, and hence the appeal is to the civil law. “Save the Sunday,” is the watchword. This can never be done so long as a Sabbath-keeper is allowed to tell the truths which are so damaging to the Sunday. Listen to the Christian logic of Hon. William Knowles, in the General Assembly of Rhode Island: “A Seventh-day Baptist carpenter might work right in view of the church windows in Providence,” therefore, Seventh-day Baptists must be proscribed. “Great is Diana, goddess of the Ephesians.” This is the universal spirit of the Sunday laws in the United States. In no State in the Union—unless it be one or two of the South-western—can a Sabbath-keeper (under protection of the law) carry on any business on Sunday, if he “disturbs any one who observes that day.” In some States he cannot leave his own premises.

The same proscriptive spirit is being manifest in all recent conventions which look toward political reform. The late “National Convention” which assembled at Pittsburgh, with the purpose of “securing a recognition of God in our National Constitution,” was attended by about four hundred delegates, among whom those from the Reformed Presbyterians were largely in the majority. The tone of the discussions and resolutions was decidedly favorable to a union of church and state.

The New York State Temperance Convention, which met at Albany on the 16th of March, evinced much of the same spirit. We had the pleasure of sitting in that Convention, and know whereof we affirm. The object of the Convention was to forward the work of forming a new “temperance party.” The majority of the Convention were opposed to any party on the single issue of prohibition, and so the Sunday law and the Bible in the schools were both incorporated as parts of the new platform. The vigorous protests against the Sunday-law plank only served to reveal how eager the leaders were for its adoption. “Sunday law is the issue of the time,” was the oft-repeated assertion. “If we ignore that, we fail.”

So the tide drifts. Men in the church seek “Sunday law” as an element of religious reform, and politicians seek it as a means of political success. Between the two, the truth would be crushed, were it not invincible. But the “wrath of man shall yet praise Him” whose eye is watching over the truth, and will not leave it to defeat.—A. H. Lewis, in Sabbath Recorder.