THE PASTORS’ APPEAL TO THE POLICE.
Not long since the ministers of a town in New Jersey headed a procession of about a hundred of the members of their several congregations, and marched to the chief of police to lay before him their complaint in regard to Sunday baseball playing. Those ministers, and the members of their churches who followed them, regard Sunday as the Sabbath, and for that reason they want ball-playing suppressed on that day. According to their belief, the law for the observance of Sunday originated with God; they look upon Jehovah as the Sunday law-making power. Of course the majority of mankind know that there is no foundation whatever in the Bible, or anywhere else, for the doctrine that the Lord instituted the Sunday-Sabbath. God has made no Sunday law; He gave the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week (commonly called Saturday), and has never changed His Sabbath commandment. But those friends who marched before the chief of police think that God is the Author of Sunday, and believing in that way, and acting as they do, they show a glaring inconsistency. The power that makes a law is the power to enforce it. Men do not go to a German officer to ask him to enforce the laws of the United States upon her own citizens. Neither do they go to the French to ask them to compel the subjects of the British crown to obey their own home laws. Then why should men appeal to a New Jersey chief of police to ask him, with his finite arm of flesh, to enforce a law that they regard as coming from the infinite Jehovah? The idea of going to that policeman for such aid is as unchristian as is the Sunday law itself. When the psalmist saw the disregard of God’s own true law, and that would include the desecration of God’s true and only Sabbath day, he sent up the petition, “It is time for Thee, Lord, to work; for they have made void Thy law.” Ps. 119:126. If professing Christians would only come in contact with the boundless oceans of God’s power, they would lose their desire for running to the chief of police with all their difficulties. We can well afford to trust the Lord to execute His own laws. There is no need of a policeman to enforce true Sabbath-keeping.