A Question to Decide with God.
By Editor
Recently, the Globe-Democrat, of St. Louis, tells us a Seventh-day Adventist was dismissed from a clerkship in the appraiser’s office in the port of New York, because he refused to work on the seventh day. The Globe-Democrat correspondent in Washington declares, under date of November 4, that this dismissal “has had the same effect as the death of the martyrs in the days of the early church.” Among those who have interested themselves in the Sabbath observers in the government employ at Washington, is, the correspondent declares, “a senator noted for the care he takes of his constituents already in the government service, or anxious to get into it.” This senator “has come forward in behalf of a clerk who hails from his State, and is employed in one of the auditor’s offices. This employee is reasonable enough to propose that he will take his thirty-days’ annual leave spread over as many weeks, one Saturday at a time, and that for the other twenty-two Saturdays of the year he shall be allowed to absent himself from the office at his own expense. As he is a very satisfactory clerk, whose services can be dispensed with only at a considerable sacrifice, the Secretary of the Treasury will have an interesting problem to solve when he returns from the West. It is not unlikely that a test case will be made of this man’s plea, and that the opinions of the civil service commission and the attorney-general may be obtained, with a view to making up a case for presentation to the President, who may have to make the ultimate decision, and establish a precedent. If the government only admits its liability to change the routine of departmental work in response to conversions to the seventh-day idea, it is feared that the consequences may become pretty serious. Some of the administration’s officers are feeling uncomfortable now on account of the publicity given to the New York case, in view of its sequel.” But there need be no great fear. There will not be such an overplus of them as to worry the government service. It will, however, be interesting to note whether a government boasting of its liberty in this period of the world’s history can be as liberal as were ancient pagan powers, in whose employ were devoted Sabbath-keeping children of God. Why should the officers of the administration feel uncomfortable? The publicity of the Sabbath question will not down, because it is of God; and men, all men, all governments, must decide concerning it, not because of a few men in government employ, but because it is a great God-given, world-testing subject. He who decides for God need not be uncomfortable.