No Divine Sanction

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 25, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 45.

No Divine Sanction

GOVERNOR BALDWIN is a pillar in the Congregationalist Church of Connecticut. Congregationalism was the first form of the Christian religion known in the original Connecticut settlements. And in the proceedings of the New England Presbyterian Synod, held at Hartford, we find this sentence:

“We pleaded with Governor Baldwin to veto the bill authorizing them [Sunday sports], but he seemed to be inclined to think that Sunday did not have any divine sanction, but an economic origin.”

The governor regretted, so the reports from the meeting indicate, that Connecticut had fallen into the habit of permitting Sunday sports; but when it came to a question of the divine sanction for Sunday, the governor seemed to think that that important factor was lacking.

And the governor is perfectly correct in this matter, for there is absolutely no sanction in the Bible anywhere for the observance of Sunday. The intelligent and fair-minded men of this world are coming more and more to recognize that this is so. If there were a single word anywhere in the Bible authorizing the observance of Sunday, some one would have found it long before this, for the Bible has been ransacked from cover to cover, during the recent discussions of the Sabbath question, in order to find some such evidence.