The Sunday Spirit Reviving.
By Editor
REVIEW AND HERALD: Inclosed please find clipping from the Grand Rapids Evening Press, which may prove of some interest to the readers of your paper. Mrs. W. I. Bruce. From the clipping forwarded, it appears that the Sunday spirit is reviving in various parts of our land, where it has heretofore made its presence offensively and dangerously prominent. It says:— An organization of clergymen has been formed in Atlanta, Ga., for the purpose of enforcing the Georgia Sunday law, under which a person may be fined one thousand dollars and made to serve a year in the chain gang for working on Sunday. Everything except churches, hotels, and restaurants, is to close on Sunday, in Omaha in future. The Labor Secretariat, an organization formed by trades unions, is watching butchers, bakers, barbers, and others, in New York, for violations of Sunday laws. In Philadelphia warrants were issued against thirty-eight barbers for plying their avocations on Sunday, and eighteen others were under bonds at the time, on the same charge. In London, England, an agitation is in progress against Sunday concerts. The Sunday closing law is now a fixed and probably permanent feature in Bangor, Me. In other places, not in this country only, but in Europe, the spirit seems to be rapidly growing that the way to secure the observance of Sunday as a day of rest and worship, is to enforce Sunday laws upon the people, and force them to pay deference to it, independent of, and perhaps in opposition to, their own convictions in the matter. So much for the statement of the fact. Now what about the philosophy and the spirit of such a course of action. We call it the Sunday spirit reviving, not the Sabbath spirit, which is a very different thing. There can be no Sabbath spirit, which is a holy, elevating spirit (Isa. 58: 13, 14), in anything which is not the Sabbath; and Sunday is not the Sabbath. It is not “the Lord’s day” of Rev. 1: 10. It is in no sense a holy or sacred day, above any other working day. Matt. 15: 9. But even if it were the Sabbath, no one thus observing it would or could, attempt thus to enforce it. This is our answer to those who cry out, “Oh, if the law was only in favor of the seventh day, you would be just as much in favor of the law as we are in favor of the Sunday law, and would be just as glad to have it enforced upon the people.” We reply, Not by any means. Every one who has been enlightened upon the Sabbath, and has the spirit of the Sabbath in his heart, knows and feels that the Sabbath is not to be enforced upon any one. He is too well instructed in the principles of religious liberty not to know that Sabbath obedience, or any other kind of obedience, rendered to the Lord, must be voluntary, not compulsory. If by any strange vicissitude a law of the State should be promulgated for the observance of the seventh day, although we observe the seventh day, believing it to be the right day to keep, still we should oppose such a law as strenuously as we now oppose all Sunday laws. Why, it may be asked, since such a law would apparently be in your favor? We answer, In our favor, or not in our favor, makes no difference; for the least step toward enforcing religious duties by law, is wholly wrong in principle, and should not be tolerated. To attempt to force any one’s conscience, or control his actions in spiritual things, is not from above, but from beneath; it is an act of the papacy, pure and simple. Against all such action, the Third Angel’s Message is a warning in trumpet tones from heaven: “If any man worship the Beast,” etc.