“SECULARIZING” SUNDAY by W. N. G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 33.

“SECULARIZING” SUNDAY.

By W. N. G.

THE great burden of Sunday observers, especially that increasing class who desire to compel its observance, is that the day is in danger of being “secularized.” Now, if the first day of the week ever was made anything but a secular day (and no power but God could do so), no one but the authority which sanctified it could by any means secularize it, or take away its sanctity. But suppose the day had been sanctified by a competent authority, and suppose that unsanctified men could take away the sanctity thus bestowed, what could be more conducive to such a result than cumbering it with secular law, making it to rest upon secular law, and enforcing it by the power of secular law, under penalties inflicted by secular law?

At the recent Christian Endeavor Convention in San Francisco, Dr. Temple, in referring to the defense of the Sunday institution, said, “We have to stand guard over it with drawn swords, lest some new form of iniquity put its hoof upon this sacred institution, and defile it.” The thought of defending a so-called sacred institution with the secular sword is at least a tacit admission that the assumed sacredness is a very thin varnish. When it comes to defending any doctrine of Christ’s promulgation, he says emphatically, “Put up thy sword.” Only secular institutions need secular defense, and when the human law and the human sword are called to defend the Sunday sabbath, it is indubitable proof that the defenders have no practical faith in the sanctity of the day.

When Israel took the sacred ark of the covenant into battle, and attempted to defend it with carnal weapons, they were sorely defeated, and the ark was carried away by the Philistines. But when the holy law of God and its sanctified receptacle were out of the hands of those who would defend them with carnal weapons, they were successfully defended and rescued by an unseen hand. The fact that even a measure of temporary success has attended the enforced observance of Sunday by secular power, is evidence that the institution so defended is a secular one. And no class of people is doing so much to prove this fact as those who persist in such enforcement. They are doing more to “secularize” the day, or rather to demonstrate that it is nothing but a secular day, than all other forces combined.

W. N. G.