SUNDAY BASEBALL by Stemple White

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 15, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 15.

SUNDAY BASEBALL.

By Stemple White

The Sunday question is now on in baseball circles. It so happens that the Cleveland, Ohio, National League Team has so arranged its schedule for the season of ’97 that it includes nine or ten Sunday games at home. Many protests and resolutions have been sent in to the club headquarters, and all the local ministers and several church organizations, have criticized the local management. One of these criticisms comes from the Men’s League of the Trinity Congregational Church, and denounces ball playing on Sunday as a “direct violation of the institution of the sabbath.”

Is it possible that physical exercise on the diamond on Sunday is a violation of the institution of the Sabbath? The Sabbath was made for man at creation, when Jesus Christ rested and blessed the seventh day after having worked six days. The apostles of the Author of the Sabbath tell us that the Sabbath, the Lord’s day, always precedes the first day of the week. No matter how early work be done on Sunday, there is in it no Sabbath-breaking.

The substance of the criticism was really this,—if you play ball on Sunday, we will not patronize you on other days. This means a religious boycott.

Chas. W. Mears, a baseball enthusiast, in defense of “Sunday games,” wrote of the criticisms as follows:—

“They display the narrowness of the holy mind and give ample evidence that church training has not had the effect of teaching the laborers in the vineyard that people who live in glass houses should not toss bricks. When it comes down to a question of theology, the people who object to ball games on the first day of the week, ought to be asked to prove that Sunday is the real Sabbath. In earlier years the writer attended several sessions of Seventh-day Adventist meetings, and he considers that these much-maligned religious workers have pretty good evidence of the truth of their claim that Saturday and not Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. We doubt the health of a moral sentiment that denies to any free American the right to do as he pleases at any or all times.”

The National Reformers could take some good lessons on religious liberty from Mr. Mears.

STEMPLE WHITE

Brighton, Iowa.