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VAIN WORSHIP

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 17, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 38.

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VAIN WORSHIP.

By H. A. St. John

ELDER H. A. ST. JOHN.
(St. Helena, Cal.)
“But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Matt. 15:9. Thus spoke the Lord Jesus, the greatest teacher of divinity the world has ever known. Then there is such a thing as the vain worship of the true God. And one prominent and constant way in which it is done is to break one, yea, even one of the least, of God’s commandments, and teach men so. It is to make void a commandment of God by a tradition. A tradition is an old thing of human origin. Rolling years add nothing to its authority. Error, however venerable, is not sanctified by age. A lie does not become a truth by age, no more than does a liar become truthful by the mere fact of age. The oldest liar is a liar still; and the oldest lie is a lie still. We do well ever to remember that no lie is of the truth, and no truth is of a lie; that error is from beneath, while truth is from above: that true worship is to teach and obey the commandments of God. “They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
The Emperor Constantine in his Sunday law of March 7, 321 A. D., called the first day of the week, or Sunday, “the venerable day of the sun.” It was an old, a venerable day, even then. As named by another, it was “the Wild Solar Holiday of all heathen times.” It has great antiquity, great age, but was never anything more than the sun’s day, dedicated to the worship of the sun, the first form of vain worship; and it had no higher authority than sun worship.
It is just as destitute of divine authority today. It is a tradition, pure and simple, of great antiquity, highly exalted, and generally venerated and observed at the present time. It is a tradition, the more dangerous because its whole tendency is to make void a commandment of God.
Dear reader, if this tradition has a place in your creed, teaching, or practice, I beseech you, in the light of God’s infinite, immutable, and eternal law, answer the Saviour’s weighty question, “Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?” Matt. 15:3.