Double Confusion by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 23, 1911

Double Confusion

By F. M. W.

Is the government accountable for its violation of the fourth commandment? Many wrong conclusions are drawn from faulty premises, or from a confusion of terms and definitions. This is the mistake of Rev. Geo. W. Grannis, secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance, in his advocacy of Sunday-closing of post-offices. In a recent address in Detroit, Mich., according to the Journal of that city, of February 22, he said:—

If the government breaks the fourth commandment, it ought not to prosecute those who break the eighth commandment, which says, “Thou shalt not steal.”

Mr. Grannis's conclusion leads him into double confusion. In the first place, he contrasts the moral responsibility of the government with the moral responsibility of the individual. As a matter of fact, the government as such does not possess moral responsibility. A government of itself has neither soul nor body, mind nor intellect, heart nor conscience. Christ never died for a nation as a nation. He did, however, die for the nation as individual units. The individual has a heart to which appeal may be made, a conscience that may be enlightened, an intellect and a judgment which can correctly weigh questions of morality. An individual may be called to an account; for right-doing he may be rewarded, for wrong-doing there may be meted out to him just punishment. This is the first error into which Dr. Grannis is thrown by his arguments in behalf of Sunday-closing.

The second error is equally great. He compares the responsibility of the government in the violation of the fourth commandment to the responsibility of the individual in the violation of the eighth commandment. Admitting the moral responsibility of the nation, this comparison is equally as illogical as the first. Sabbath observance has to do with the relationship existing between God and man alone. Into this relationship, government may not rightly enter. God only has a right to call man to account for what he does in this regard, whereas the principle of theft involves a civil relationship,—a relationship existing between man and his fellows,—over which the government has jurisdiction. The government has no right to deal with theft from the standpoint of the command of God, but wholly on the basis of the civil relationship. The doctrine of the moral responsibility of the nation is a taking catch-phrase with National Reformers. Its analysis, however, reveals its evil sophistry, and the wicked scheme its use is designed to foster.

F. M. W.