p. 9 | PLAIN TO ALL by W. N. G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 19, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 37.

PLAIN TO ALL.

By W. N. G.

It is no longer a surprise to be confronted with the fact that the Sunday institution is a creature of the Papacy. It is now a matter of common knowledge, as shown by many comments of even the secular press. Here is a striking sample of such comments:—

“The strict observance of the Lord’s day [Sunday] as the successor to the Jewish Sabbath is a Roman Catholic peculiarity which Protestants have retained. Indeed, when Rome, after the fourteenth century, began to relax the severity of the regulations she had previously enforced, forbidding not only servile work but amusement on Sunday, the Puritans of King James’ time adopted them without modification. No doubt it would horrify our straight-laced Sabbatarians to be told that their pet ideas are but cast-off ‘rags of popery,’ but so they are. There is not a blue law of the bluest dye that cannot be paralleled by the Sunday laws of the Roman Catholic rulers of England and of France from the sixth to the fifteenth century. Any one who doubts this may have his doubts removed by consulting Hessey’s ‘Sunday’ and Neal’s ‘Feasts and Fasts.’”—N. Y. Sun.

Time was, not long ago, when such a statement startled Protestants, and set them to thinking. Many of them were ready to renounce the observance of Sunday if it could be shown to their satisfaction that the practice was an acknowledgment of a papal dogma. Some have returned to the observance of the true Sabbath on finding that God had not authorized any change in his law, while others allowed their misgivings to be calmed by the “majority” argument, the example of their “learned” leaders, and other like sophistries.

But the fact that Sunday observance is not only a fruit of apostasy, but even the special “mark” of papal authority,—but the masses want it so, the laws of the land decree it to be so, there is no use of a few trying to stem the flood of the popular will, etc., etc. Thus Rome’s power and authority wax stronger and stronger; under the banner bearing her distinguishing “mark,” a debilitated Protestantism is marching on, picking up one by one her festal days, bits of her ritualistic service, her spirit of persecution, her craving for the support of civil law, and following in her footsteps to such an extent that the line of demarkation is fast becoming obliterated. Truly has the prophet said:—

“A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so; and what will ye do in the end thereof?” Jer. 5: 30, 31. W. N. G.