An Interesting Item

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 26, 1877

An Interesting Item.

Some one writing to the Sabbath Memorial from Naples, Italy, says:—

“Sunday law does not exist here, nor is Sunday treated as a day of rest, but as a feast, to the great horror of Methodists and Protestants of all denominations. Saturday [Sabato in Italian] is a fast day, but there is no half holiday as in England. Thursday is a holiday at all schools and a half feast. It is strange that this Italian word [Sabato] was the first that raised a difficulty in my mind, before receiving some of your tracts. I was speaking to some brethren on the profanation of the ‘Sabbath’ [Sunday] in this country, and referred them to the fourth commandment, saying: ‘Ricordati del giorno Sabato per santificarlo,’ when it struck me at once that I had not said what I intended, I had told them to sanctify Saturday and not Sunday. There it was in plain Italian, and there was no getting out of it. I stopped short; fortunately no one took me up on what I had said, for I would not have known how to reply. Shortly afterward a number of the Sabbath Memorial [No. 3] was sent to me, and I saw the whole thing at once. Armed with these weapons [Sabbath publications] I shall, asking God’s direction, do my best to call the attention of Christians here to the true nature of the fourth commandment, and to the fact of its universal perversion, perhaps the only corruption of the Papacy that the Baptists have overlooked.”