LOSING REVERENCE FOR SUNDAY.
By L. A. S.
The Church Standard (Philadelphia), a leading organ of the Episcopal Church, declares that a remarkable change has taken place within a few years’ time in the sentiment of Protestant clergymen in this country touching Sunday as a day of divine obligation. There has of late, the Church Standard observes, been much discussion of the question of proper Sunday observance, particularly as regards the propriety of allowing Sunday saloons; but, says this authority, “in all the discussions of this subject that we have seen, perhaps the strangest thing is this, that no one, not even the most earnest of Christian ministers, seems any longer to entertain the question whether the observance of the Lord’s day is required by divine ordinance. Twenty, or ten, or even five years ago, no such observation could have been made; and the fact that it can be made now is a startling evidence of the rapid change of belief and sentiment that has been unconsciously taking place in the minds of Christian people here in America. The very idea of the religious obligation of the Lord’s day seems to have been dropping entirely out of people’s minds until, as a principle of action, it remains with only a few survivors of a bygone generation. It is surely a significant fact that one Presbyterian clergyman should openly favor a regulated permission of Sunday liquor selling, without the least apparent recollection that the standards of his Church attach to the first day of the week all the sanctions of the Fourth Commandment; and it is hardly less remarkable that ministers of nearly all other denominations should oppose the same measure on the ground of expediency, good morals, and even American prejudice, but hardly at all on the ground that it would authorize the violation of divine law.” The Church Standard in some further comments expresses great fear “that the growing disregard of Sunday observance cannot be stayed, and that in the just reaction from arbitrary and very modern rules of mere human invention, all thought of the Sabbath and the Lord’s day as having any divine authority whatsoever is simply vanishing from the minds of men.” And here the Church Standard accidentally touches the root of the whole difficulty. Sunday observance is “of mere human invention,” and has long been treated as such, by agitators for Sunday laws, by the people, by legislatures, and by the courts. The assumption of the right to regulate Sunday observance by human law, is a denial of any higher authority for such observance than that of the human lawmakers. Hence the more agitation there is for Sunday legislation, and the more laws there are enacted or revived enforcing Sunday observance, the more must the idea of Sunday as a merely human institution eclipse the conception of Sunday as a day appointed of God. The proper remedy, therefore, would be to drop at once all efforts to secure Sunday observance by any exercise of human authority; but even this would fail, since, as stated, divine authority for the day is entirely wanting. Sunday is a human institution merely, and this truth has now obtained almost universal recognition in the Protestant churches. The only way out of the difficulty is to return to the day which God has sanctioned. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” Ex. 20: 8-11. L. A. S.