More Authority for Sunday.
By D. T. Bourdeau
This is found, not in the Bible, but in a French letter which a Protestant French lady of Serena, Illinois, handed me a short time since. This letter claims to have been written by “God, the Almighty, the Lord of Heaven and earth.” It purports to have been communicated to man in a wonderful manner. It claims to have been first seen suspended in the air and magnificently written in gold letters, before the city of Magdenburg, Prussia, June 2, 1816. It opens with a curse against those who labor on Sunday, and reads thus:— “Whosoever worketh on Sunday, or the Lord’s day, is cursed. I, Jesus Christ, ordain that you should not work on Sunday, but that you should spend that day in going to church with that devotion which is requisite. . . . . Thou shalt labor six days, but shalt sanctify the seventh, which is the Lord’s day. Consider that I created heaven and earth in six days, and that it is in my power to destroy them. If thou dost not sanctify the Lord’s day, I shall send you war and pestilence, or I shall send you incendiaries, inundations, and famine. I shall poison your fields and chasten you with swellings as I chastened the Egyptians. If you do not repent, but continue to sin before the Lord, the Eternal, I shall punish you in the abyss of hell as I punished Sodom and Gomorrah.” “I, Jesus Christ, command you to not work late Saturday night, but to rest, that you may be able to get to church early Sunday to confess your sins, repent sincerely and reform, that you may be forgiven. Labor not for gold and silver, or for great riches which lead to perdition. Abstain from fornication, which is abhorred by Heaven, and will be punished in time and in eternity. Cease to swear and to speak evil of others. Keep your children under strict discipline. A slack discipline will prove their ruin. And you who fail in your duty shall be punished in body and in soul. Thou rich man, cause the poor to rejoice. Thou virtuous poor shalt be recompensed by my blessings. . . . Children, honor your parents by your piety, and you will receive the crown.” “I, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have written this letter with my own hand. Whosoever shall contradict it shall be excluded from my power and favor, and shall be cut off from the Christian church. He who shall have this letter in his house and shall not communicate it to the children of men, shall be cursed with his house. But if your sins are as numerous as the sand of the sea or as the blades of grass in all the earth, they shall be forgiven you, if you repent sincerely and reform. I shall call you to a strict account in the day of Judgment if you have had this letter in your house and have not communicated it to others. If you have committed this error, you shall not be protected against inundations, against incendiaries, or against the lightning; but he who shall communicate this letter to his neighbor and shall keep it constantly on his person through love for me, to keep my ordinances, such a one shall be recompensed publicly. “Communication made by an angel, June 2, 1816.” I was surprised to learn that even some Protestants in France as well as in this country respect this letter and preserve it as a choice relic. But I do not know as this is a greater error than to reject such documents and yet receive Sunday for the Sabbath on the authority of the Roman Catholic church. The curses that are here threatened are calculated to frighten the timid, who are kept in darkness, while the blessings that are promised, being associated with some good instructions, will lead some truly conscientious, but uninformed, souls to render implicit obedience to all that is here enjoined. But if the Bible is not a sufficient rule of faith and practice, and if the Catholic church is the only authority for the first-day Sabbath, why is not the letter before us as good an argument in favor of Sunday-keeping as any that can be produced? Here is a letter claiming to have been written by God, the Father, and by the very hand of Jesus Christ! At the same time, it is a “communication made by an angel!” It also presents curses and blessings which relate to this life and to that which is to come. If you obey it strictly you will have the privilege of going early to a Roman Catholic church every Sunday morning, and of confessing your sins to a Catholic priest. And you may derive as much virtue in carrying this letter on your person as you would in wearing any other relic of the Catholic church. Why should not those Protestants who so scrupulously observe the first day, knowing that they have no other authority than the Church of Rome for their practice, receive this document, and turn Catholic? The first lesson I ever learned on the authority of the change of the Sabbath was in an interview with a Roman Catholic priest eighteen years ago this winter. I claimed that as a true Protestant I took the Bible and the Bible alone as my rule of faith and practice, and promised that if he could show me that I did not follow the Bible, I would correct my faith and practice. The priest replied: “We, the Catholic church, take the Bible and tradition. We have changed the Sabbath to the first day by our tradition, and not by the Bible, which says not a word in favor of a change of the Sabbath. You Protestants are very glad to adopt this relic of our tradition. Why not come wholly over to the mother church?” Thank God for this lesson, and that I was disposed to correct myself by the Bible on the Sabbath question.