The Presbyterian Alliance and Sunday Observance
By W. A. S.
Strong words were spoken by Justice Harlan, of the Supreme Court, at a banquet of the Presbyterian Alliance, February 28, in Washington. His words have called forth some criticism, and on the other hand have helped to strengthen the forces working for Sunday laws. He said:— I believe that the sabbath day should be observed and kept holy by all classes of people; that only such labor as is necessary should be performed, and that the delivery of mail should be dispensed with. There are a lot of snobs who have come down here from New York and other cities where wealth is paramount, and have set up customs which are injurious to the people of this community. Sunday afternoon teas, musicales, and other social functions are, in my mind, a desecration of the sabbath. The power of the Presbyterian Alliance is great, and it should be exerted toward the correction of these evil practises. I am much pleased with the great work the alliance has done in this city so far, but I believe its influence should extend further. Something must be done to stem the tide of depravity which will otherwise sweep over us. We honor the spirit that would rebuke selfishness and sin in high places. The trouble with society, high and low, is that it does not sufficiently fear God and revere his Word. But we know, too, that reform unto godliness will never come by setting aside the Sabbath of the Lord, and making Sunday observance the test of the proper religious life. As a matter of fact, the Presbyterian Alliance view of Sunday observance is not the original view of Presbyterianism. Speaking of the use of Sunday in Scotland, in the days of the Scottish Reformers, Professor Gairdner, of Scotland, quotes the following from Joseph Robertson:— Sunday, indeed, in that age was the day generally chosen for mirth and revel. . . . It was on a Sunday that the Reformed municipality of Edinburgh gave its grand banquet to the queen’s French kinsfolk. Knox traveled on a Sunday, wrote letters on a Sunday, and had the duke of Chatelherault and the English ambassador to supper with him on a Sunday. The Gaelic translator of Knox’s “Forms of Prayers,” the Reformed superintendent of Argyle, and the bishop of the isles, feasted the queen and the ambassador of Savoy on a Sunday. For more than twenty years after Knox was in his grave, Robin Hood plays were acted on Sundays, and the king of May held his gambols on Sundays in Scotland.—Gairdner and Spedding’s “Studies in English History,” page 293. It was in later times that men began to attach to Sunday all the sanctity that belongs only to God’s Sabbath, the seventh day. Wherever churchmen talk of Sunday observance, they are unable to appeal to the authority of the Scriptures to maintain the institution. And thus comes the demand for civil authority to enforce it. It is in the face of the stern warnings of history, and in contradiction of the principles of the gospel, however, that the churches are making their campaign for legislation in the supposed interests of religion. One lesson to the point comes from the days when Presbyterianism was the controlling power in the British Parliament. It was in the time of the civil war in England, in 1648. On May 2 of that year an act was passed, entitled “An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament, for Punishing Blasphemies and Heresies.” It provided that any one teaching that there is no God, or denying the divinity of Christ, or denying the resurrection, or holding that the Holy Scriptures are not the Word of God, etc., should be held guilty of felony; and,— In case the indictment be found, and the party upon his trial shall not abjure his said error, and defense and maintenance of the same, he shall suffer the pains of death, as in case of felony, without benefit of the clergy. Be it further ordained by the authority aforesaid, that all and every person13or persons that shall publish or maintain, as aforesaid, any of the several errors hereafter ensuing; viz., that all men shall be saved; or that man by nature hath free will to turn to God; or that God may be worshiped in or by pictures or images; or that the soul of any man after death goeth neither to heaven nor hell, but to purgatory; or that the soul of man dieth or sleepeth when the body is dead; . . . or that the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper are not ordinances commanded by the Word of God; or that the baptizing of infants is unlawful, or such baptism is void, and that such persons ought to be baptized again, and in pursuance thereof shall baptize any person formerly baptized; or that the observation of the Lord’s day, as is enjoined by the ordinances and laws of this realm, is not according, or is contrary, to the Word of God— Thus the act ran on. “In a word,” says Crosby, the Baptist historian, “all England, save rigid Presbyterians, are expressly condemned.” And the penalty provided was that the person convicted should be required to “renounce his said errors in the publick congregation;” and in case of refusal,— he shall be committed to prison by the said justices, until he shall find two sureties . . . that he shall not publish or maintain the said error or errors any more. Thomas Crosby, who quotes this act entire in his “History of the English Baptists” (London, 1738), says:— I may challenge any one to produce a more cruel and bloody law in the times of popery, except the act de heretico comburendo [for burning heretics]. And he adds the warning for all religionists that this act shows “that the governing Presbyterians in those times would have made a terrible use of their power if it had been supported by the sword of the civil magistrate.” Those men were as sincere as other men. Many a good deed they did. But the record of this shameful act is left as a witness to show how dangerous it is for any body of religionists to want civil power or to get it. It is all absolutely a denial of the principles of Jesus Christ. Those men lived when still the long period of papal supremacy had not passed, and they had not the light that men have now. Thus, while they protested against papal tyranny over conscience, they sought to set their own religious views into power in very likeness to the Papacy. Now it is different. Those who now seek civil power to enforce the supposed interests of religion are turning from the light to darkness. Yet here are associations, federations, and leagues, all professedly Protestant, uniting in efforts to compel the recognition of the Sunday, which they set forth as the badge of the religious life, and which has ever stood as really the mark of the assumed authority of Rome. The Sunday provision in that old act of Parliament was aimed to compel Sabbath-keepers to cease teaching that Sunday sacredness was “contrary to the Word of God.” That is exactly what witnesses to God’s Sabbath were then teaching. And all the history of religious legislation shows the thing ultimately aimed at is to silence the witnessing for the truth. The crisis is nearing; and while the forces are working to exalt the Sunday institution as the badge of religion, and to compel its recognition, there is spreading from nation to nation the message foreshown in Rev. 14:6-12, calling men to fear God and keep his commandments, and warning them from God not to worship the Papacy and its image or receive its mark. Truly, the end of all things is at hand, and the last witness is being borne.