GOOD, LET THE “EDUCATIONAL CAMPAIGN” BEGIN.
In speaking of Sunday closing and its future in New York the Christian Work propounds this despairing question:— Are we here in this year of 1895, in this Christian metropolis of a Christian land, to surrender a goodly portion of our divinely ordained Day of Rest to the demands of Beerdom, its rulers, and its subjects? It closes its article in these words:— If the issue must come, as it seems now that it will, let the believers in the sabbath day prepare themselves for the struggle, and make it an opportunity for such an educational campaign on the whole question of sabbath observance, as shall settle the matter, so far at least as Sunday saloons are concerned, for all time to come. This is good if the education given is true. Let the people be told that saloons are wrong every day, just as bad on Monday or Tuesday as on Sunday. Let them be told also that the only “divinely ordained Day of Rest” is the seventh day, not Sunday. Tell them that the Christian Work itself has said (July 11, 1895):— The Church has set apart Sunday; but it might have utilized another day had it chosen to. Certainly it is futile to attempt to place Sunday, as we now have it, on a New Testament basis. Sunday did not become the definite worship day in which all work was forbidden, until in the fourth century it was so made by government authority in conformity with the sentiment of the church. In its issue of Jan. 8, 1885, the same paper says:— The selection of Sunday, thus changing the particular day designated in the fourth commandment, was brought about by the gradual concurrence of the early Christian church, and on this basis, and none other, does the Christian sabbath, the first day of the week, rightly rest. This is consistent with the quotation preceding. The same thing was stated by the same paper one year before. But these quotations hardly agree with the first two quoted above. Yet the latter are true. The Sunday Sabbath rests wholly on the tradition of an apostate church, enforced by civil law. It is therefore not “Christian” any more than this country is Christian or New York City is Christian. It is not a “divinely ordained Day of Rest” unless the voice of the apostasy is the voice of God. Let there be “an educational campaign on the whole question of sabbath observance” throughout the country, and let Christians use the great standard textbook, the Bible. It will be found that there is no Scripture authority for Sunday. The Christian Work is right on that question. Now what day ought to be observed?