SUNDAY AND CIVIL LAW by James White

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 4, 1868

SUNDAY AND CIVIL LAW.

By James White

DR. EDDY, in an article in The Methodist on the opposition of the Germans to Sunday laws, and the disposition of politicians to favor them for their votes, says:

“It is time that these miserable pilots shall understand there are breakers ahead. Christian men have been pushed to the wall, and now they turn. Between God's law and party fealty they will hesitate not one moment. We tell these men, tell them coolly, yet sternly, that Christian men WILL NOT submit to the destruction of the holy Sabbath.”

Right there he has exposed the weakness of the Christian effort. If they could point to the place in “God's law,” where we are commanded to keep the Sunday; if they could show by the Scriptures that Sunday is the “holy Sabbath,” then might they make an appeal on the authority of God which would be effectual to restrain many who now disregard the day. But when German speakers at their festivals, as has been the case of late, openly challenge them to prove that the Sunday is a sacred day, or that it is obedience to God to do what he has never commanded, to attempt a reply is to further expose their weakness, and be again “pushed to the wall.” The last resort is to civil authority, and to this they are appealing. Here the issue will soon be taken. J. H. W.