Hiving Bees upon the Sabbath.
By GEO. L. BUTLER.
There are many questions constantly arising in which our business is liable to conflict with the claims of the Sabbath of the Lord. This is one of them, and there is some diversity of opinion and practice upon it. It must be desirable to every conscientious Sabbath-keeper to have a proper course plainly set before him so that he can see what he ought to do. It is with the intention of assisting in this desirable conclusion that this article is written. The design of the Sabbath commandment is to secure a day of rest every week as a memorial of God’s creative work, in which the mind may contemplate sacred things and engage in the worship of the divine Author of our being, and the body may rest from physical labor inconsistent with such design. The seventh day of the week he selected and appointed for this purpose, and no other day; works of religion and mercy are exceptions, and are permitted by the law and by our Saviour’s teaching. But works merely involving pecuniary advantage to ourselves are not only not permitted, but are expressly forbidden. Where the life or suffering of man or beast is involved, we are to labor even on the Sabbath, to alleviate the one, and save the other. But there are certainly no exceptions made in the Bible in favor of laboring merely for pecuniary advantage. Our horses and cattle should be fed and watered. They will suffer without. Our teams may be harnessed and we may drive them to meeting. We could not well meet to worship God without. This is not “our work” in the sense of the commandment. But we may not hitch up our team and haul in a load of hay lest a shower coming up would spoil it. We claim that these principles are incontrovertible, and are acknowledged by Sabbath-keepers generally, and we believe they should apply to the bees, as well as other things. If there is any alleviation of suffering, or any principle of worship involved in the hiving of a swarm of bees on the Sabbath, we have no objection to our brethren doing it on the Sabbath. If it is merely a pecuniary transaction, the case seems clear that it should be avoided. But when persons stay at home, or have a portion of their families stay at home from meeting on the Sabbath, week after week, and drum on tin pans, and go through such other performances as are customary in hiving bees, we think, for the good of the cause and for their own good, they should realize that this is not consistent with our faith. What right have individuals to choose any vocation that will involve a necessity for breaking the law of God? If keeping bees did involve such a necessity, it would go very far to prove to me that it is inconsistent with our faith to keep them. But I do not believe there is any great difficulty in keeping bees and not swarming them on the Sabbath. But, says one, I might lose many swarms, amounting to a large sum in a year, if I did not stay at home on the Sabbath and attend to them. So you might lose a large amount of hay or grain by a coming storm if you did not hitch up and get it in on the Sabbath; and you might apparently earn a good deal of money by laboring Sabbaths, which you will not get by resting. It will hardly do to go to reckoning how much we might lose or gain pecuniarily by Sabbath labor. We find men here and there with mills and gangs of men under their employ, who would suffer a loss far exceeding many swarms of bees by closing up on the Sabbath, and yet we think it a solemn duty for them to do so. What business have we with God’s time, or what right have we to be considering how much we shall lose or gain by appropriating that time which he claims to our own purposes? Why is it better to steal that which he claims as his own, than it is to steal from others? We should hardly think it safe to set down to reckoning how much we might gain to occasionally violate the eighth commandment because we had a good chance to make well pecuniarily by so doing. What God claims as his let us render to him. He does claim the whole seventh day of the week, and only excepts labors of mercy and religion. The influence of this practice upon unbelievers must be to make them doubt our conscientiousness, when carried on as it is with noise and neglect of religious duty. Worldlings are watching us, and it will be bad indeed to do anything which will make us stumbling blocks in their way. The influence also upon our own children will be to lead them to think we value money higher than sacred things. And it is very doubtful to my mind if the apparent necessity of doing it or suffering great pecuniary loss is not imaginary. Many have learned the art of dividing their swarms and thus avoid the necessity of losing them when they swarm. It can generally be told when they are about to leave the parent hive, and in this way all difficulty may be obviated. At any rate it is safe to obey God, and his work should be done with carefulness. It will be seen in the end that it is wisest and safest. Big Springs, Kan., May 30, 1872.