Nineteenth Anniversary of the New York State Sabbath Association
By G. B. Starr
The meeting was held at Middletown, N. Y., Oct. 24-26, 1909. The first day of the meeting, Sunday, was spent by the various visiting ministers and officers of the association in occupying the pulpits of the Protestant churches of the city, and delivering strong discourses upon the subject of Sunday desecration and the apparent demand for Sunday legislation and the enforcement of existing Sunday laws. From some notes taken at this gathering I present the following of general interest:— Rev. Geo. W. Grannis, D. D., general secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance, addressed the meeting. One of his most energetic and oft-repeated statements was that “God was going to maintain his Sunday!” Said the speaker, “He may have to go to Japan to get witnesses to it, but he will sustain it.” He then related of the Japanese merchants, that, while recently visiting the United States, they refused to attend dinners or visit the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition on Sunday, giving as the reason for their refusal, that they were Christians. The speaker stated that the greatest assistance they were having at the present in securing Sunday legislation was from the laboring classes. He also informed the meeting that the “American Sabbath Union” had been transformed into the “Lord's Day Alliance,” and assured us that under this new name “no less emphasis would be laid upon the worshipful and spiritual features of the day.” One speaker, Rev. David J. Burrell, D. D., LL. D., chose for his subject the “Sunday newspaper,” and from the standpoint of Sunday sacredness made a number of telling points against it, none of which, however, were applicable to Sunday except on the ground of its being a sacred day. This he emphasized in the beginning of his talk by stating that the whole question was based upon the fourth commandment, which he very deliberately quoted in full, dwelling upon the fact that God blessed the “seventh day,” and rested upon the “seventh day,” and commanded that it should not be forgotten, but “remembered.” He stated that this Sabbath law had never been abrogated, and that “no minister or layman had any right to state that it had been.” He affirmed that as the Bible was a sacred book, separated in our minds from all other books, so was the Sabbath a sacred day, separated from all the other days, and should be so regarded. He affirmed that Christ did not abrogate the Sabbath law, but simply removed from it the “Jewish appurtenances,” and placed it back on its original basis, “made for man,” even as a vessel is put into dry dock to remove barnacles. All this, so far, sounded like a champion of the original seventh-day Sabbath speaking, but instantly, and without warning or proofs, he metamorphosed the Sunday, the resurrection day, into a more glorious sabbath than the seventh, having all the sacredness of the original day somehow transferred to it, and “all the original commands and sacredness made more sacred by the associations connected with the resurrection day.” And thus Ezekiel 13 was again fulfilled in our hearing. This new day, he affirmed, “was Christ's gift in his church.” The “Saturday half-holiday” was recommended as a solution of many difficulties. The leading speakers disagreed as to how the Sunday laws were to be best enforced. Some thought that it was only as the ministers and people formed themselves into “vigilance committees,” and spied out offenders, and had them prosecuted, that they would stop the many violations of the law. The president, however, not knowing what position the other speakers had taken, as he was not present until the last day, denounced very emphatically, as out of place and “unministerial,” any spying on the part of the clergy. He urged that magistrates be pressed to do their duty, and fulfil the sacred oath of office which they took promising to enforce the laws and bring all offenders to justice. He waxed eloquent in his denunciations of the magistrate who would so far forget his sacred oath as to neglect his duty, and recommended that he be put out of office. Mayor Lawrence, of Middletown, attended two meetings, and in welcoming the association to his city, assured them of his sympathy and co-operation. He stated that there were no Sunday theaters, moving pictures, or baseball games at present in Middletown, nor were there likely to be while he was mayor. The attitude of the mayor greatly pleased the members, and his speech was eulogized as the best of the session.