“SECULARIZING THE SABBATH.”
By G.
The National Reform organ, the Christian Statesman, is still complaining about the “secularizing” of the Sabbath-day. Of course it means Sunday. But those who do secular business on that day do not “secularize” it. They have the authority of the law of God for their action. That law says: “Six days ‘shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the sev- enth day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it ‘thou shalt not do any work; . . . for in six days ‘the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all ‘that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath [or rest] day, and ‘hallowed it.” So it was the Lord who “secularized” the first day, and those who labor at their own work, if their own work be in itself a proper work, have the Lord’s example and precept as a precedent. If one’s own work be not proper work, it is wrong on any day. People who observe the Sabbath of the Lord have no worry about anybody’s secularizing it. It is still the Lord’s day, and a sacred day, no matter what men may do. The day is sacred, if all the people in the world should work or play during its sacred hours. No man can secularize what God has made holy, and all the people in the world can not make holy that which God has made common. The Sabbath of the Lord does not need any protection from the civil powers; for all of them combined can not add a feather’s weight to the power of God’s law, or the sanctity of anything that he has sanctified. The demand for protection of Sunday by civil law is a tacit acknowledgment that it is only a civil, or man-made, institution. No one ever asks the civil powers to enforce any institution that they really believe is of God. Who asks the government, or the State, or the city, to enforce the rite of baptism, or the ordinance of the Lord’s supper? If the Sunday rest-day is of God, why not let the Spirit of God impress people to observe it, just as we are willing to wait for the Spirit to move people to observe the other ordinances? God never blessed and hallowed any other weekly Sabbath than the seventh day. How do we know? We know because there is no record of it; and “surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants ‘the prophets.” Amos 3:7.