An Entering Wedge by J. M. Hopkins

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 9, 1911

An Entering Wedge

By J. M. Hopkins

J. M. HOPKINS

IN one respect the writer, in the early years of his manhood, was like Abraham Lincoln,—a rail splitter,—and he well remembers that sometimes he would get a very tough, knotty, cross-grained log that refused to open. At such a time, he would, with the ax and maul, carefully check the log all across the end, and then endeavor to drive in the iron wedge. But after getting it nicely started, as he supposed, and giving it a heavy blow with the maul, behold, out it would jump several feet into the snow. This might be repeated many times before he could make the wedge stick and drive it into the log.

Moral

For several years Sunday-law advocates have been endeavoring to get Congress to commit itself by passing a Sunday-rest law. Bill after bill has been prepared and introduced, but so far only to meet with defeat. Were it not for the terribly serious nature of such legislation, the whole thing would be highly amusing. Such persistency and determination as are shown by these misguided men and women are certainly worthy of a nobler cause.

It has been very noticeable in former years how willing these Sunday-enforcement people have been to grant exemption clauses favoring those who observe the seventh day; and in the effort to secure the passage of the Johnston Sunday bill for the District of Columbia, it seems apparent that those who have the bill in charge are willing to have it shorn of this or that objectionable feature if only it will, like the iron wedge in the tough log referred to above, enter and stick. Just get Congress to commit itself by passing any sort of Sunday law, thus establishing a precedent, and the hardest part of the battle is over. Just get one Sunday wedge to stick, however unimportant and powerless it may be, and others will speedily follow and be driven home with all the vigor and strength that characterized such measures in the days of the Spanish Inquisition.

If Sunday really were the Lord’s day, how much better, how much more Scriptural, would be the course of those clergymen if they would preach the gospel of salvation from sin, preach “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,” as the apostle Paul did (Acts 20), than to go around besieging the State and national legislatures for a law of force. Christ commissioned his followers to preach the gospel, not to appeal for government aid. Beware of the wedge.

Hewitt, Minn.