p. 5 | Saving the Sabbath by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 26, 1902

Saving the Sabbath

By L. A. S.

A RECENT issue of the Homiletic Review calls attention to “High-Handed Desecration of the Sabbath” in this country, and the Pittsburg Christian Advocate joins with it by reprinting its utterance. We quote some paragraphs:—

Thoughtful observers have frequently been startled of late by flagrant instances in high places of growing disregard for the Christian sabbath, and open defiance of the civil law and the Christian sentiment on which that institution rests. When King Edward VII lately shocked his English subjects, Dr. Joseph Parker said: “If the king goes to a Sunday concert, as he did recently, he deals a deadly blow to the Englishman’s Sunday. The king cannot attend a nonconformist place of worship, but he can go to a Sunday concert. If the king, who is the head of the church and defender of the faith, can violate the English Sunday, what can the people do but follow in his steps?”

When Prince Henry visited this country as the representative of Christian Germany, neither he nor the public officials having his reception in charge deigned even to notice the existence of such a thing as the American sabbath, carrying the fêting, feasting, and journeying, graceful and disgraceful alike, right through its sacred hours and across the continent. What the leaders did and permitted to be done was naturally and inevitably copied by the common people. It will take many a day to remedy the demoralization of it.

At about the same time the Christian people of the town of Aiken, S. C., were reported as having been obliged to protest to the authorities against the shocking desecration of the sacred day, by the unseemly doings and games of the multimillionaires who have so largely taken possession of that beautiful region, and whose swollen money bags have made them feel quite as independent of God and his government as do the king and the prince and the American officials.

Naturally and inevitably there has

arisen a demand among the common people—especially among those of the baser sort—for equal “rights and privileges;” and Sunday games and concerts and plays and saloons are widely clamoring for an “open Sunday,” and taking it despite all laws to the contrary. And good men are asking, with bated breath, Where is it all to end?

It may well be that disregard of the “English sabbath” by England’s king is a “deadly blow” to that institution, and that disregard of the “American sabbath” by leading and influential American citizens is likewise a severe blow to this institution, since both depend upon the laws and customs in their respective countries for their support. But the point which the good men who are looking on with bated breath ought to see, is that the true Sabbath cannot be affected by such influences, since it is neither English nor American, but is declared upon divine authority to be the “Sabbath of the Lord.” As such it rests wholly on the example and word of Jehovah, and therefore has a foundation which can never fail. No one need worry over the question of what is to become of the “Sabbath of the Lord”—the seventh day. The Lord is abundantly able to take care of all that is his own. Heaven and earth and all terrestrial things—the “English” and “American” sabbaths included—are to pass away; but the law of God is unchangeable, and the Sabbath of that law will stand with it. We wish these good men would see that the thing for them to do is to cut loose from a sabbath that depends on human laws and the example of kings and rich men for its maintenance, and lay hold on the Sabbath of the Lord, the observance of which is the sign of allegiance to the God who made heaven and earth. But the remedy which they propose is this:—

In the name of this Christian nation and of Christendom, which owe all that is best to the sabbath and the Christian institutions it embodies, and whose very life depends upon the continuance of these institutions, it is high time for every pulpit in Christendom to call a halt in this shameless degradation of God’s day.

And they are ready to go further than this, and call upon this “Christian nation” (whose unchristian character they deplore) to save the “American sabbath” by a resort to civil law. In their zeal to effect the fancied salvation of an institution, they will attack and oppress their fellow beings, and subject them to the treatment of criminals; but the truth is that the Christian’s business in this world is never the salvation of institutions, but the salvation of men. The Jews killed Christ to save the temple, but Christ was greater than the temple; and the human soul is greater than any institution that can be set up or destroyed by man.

L. A. S.