What Have Sunday Papers to Do with It?
In one of his recent sermons in New York City on the Ten Commandments, Mr. Moody is reported by the Independent as saying:— “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Now I come to the Sunday newspapers. I wouldn't touch a Sunday newspaper any more than I would touch tar. If there are any attacks on me next Sunday I won't see them, for if any one sends me a Sunday newspaper I always tear it up. Nothing is doing more damage to the church of God than the Sunday newspapers. The papers abuse Tammany, but Tammany never did one-quarter as much harm in this city as have the Sunday newspapers. There are about 25,000 divorces every year in the United States. Many of them are directly due to the Sunday newspapers, which publish accounts of divorces in all their details. The Sunday newspapers are responsible for many suicides and murders. All the theaters in Chicago are open on Sunday as the result of the Sunday newspapers. In Chicago men are knocked down and robbed in open daylight, murders occur every day, masked men go into the stores and rob them. There is not a divorce case which is full of filth, there is not a case of adultery, which the Sunday newspapers don't rake up and publish. The angel Gabriel could not be heard by the Sunday newspaper readers. Now, how many here will swear that they will never again read a Sunday newspaper? Raise your hands. (The hands of three-fourths of those present were raised.) Let the reporters take that down. Now we have no defense to make of the vile Sunday newspaper, nor the prurient press of any day of the week. But what has the Sunday newspaper and the Sunday theater to do with the command, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”? Why not condemn the vile Saturday sheets which are published on the day appointed of God? Now Mr. Moody knows, or ought to know, that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is not Sunday; it is the seventh day, from sunset of Friday to the sunset following. If the very proportion of time is important, why is not the very time itself? God gave it, and over and over has specifically emphasized it, that “the seventh day,” the day just before the first day of the week (Ex. 20: 8–11; Matt. 28: 1; Mark 16: 1, 2), is the Sabbath. Why not accept this word of God? The Sunday paper is often very evil; and it is about the same in kind all through the week; but the condemnation of the Sunday paper does not justify the transgression of the Lord's commandment, to keep, not Sunday but the seventh day, the day just before Sunday.