Sunday in Europe | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 22, 1872

Sunday in Europe.

[THE following statements which we find in the Christian Statesman of Oct. 12, 1872, shows the work that is going forward in the old country relative to Sunday observance. It is a part of the same general movement which is agitating this country. Wherever Sabbath-keeping is undertaken, it will have this movement to meet.]

The Sabbath Observance Committee of the Irish Presbyterian Assembly, reported, at the meeting in June last, that more attention has been given and a greater interest excited in favor of the Christian Sabbath, than in any former year. “The Lord’s Day Observance Society” in London is eminently entitled to the gratitude of all who love the Sabbath, for the watchful care they have exercised, and the noble efforts which they made to resist all encroachments, and to remove existing forms of Sabbath-breaking. These things they have done, and continue to do, by personal effort and example, by means of public lectures, and by an extensive circulation of tracts. This noble society has exercised a most beneficial influence in the great center of the United Kingdom, and has again and again employed its mighty influence in resisting those parliamentary measures which were prejudicial to Sabbath observance, and has uniformly promoted all measures calculated to secure its proper observance as a day of holy rest.

“The different countries on the Continent of Europe have long and largely entertained very erroneous views regarding the Sabbath, and by their principles and example have done much to mold and influence for evil the people of these countries. But it is gratifying and encouraging to know that a reaction has set in, and that in different places on the Continent a better state of things has lately been apparent.

“After a long, painful, and often a discouraging struggle, in Switzerland, and notwithstanding the cold indifference with which the Swiss people regarded the Sabbath, and the opposition which they often gave to its rightful claims, yet, by the blessing of God, and the efforts of a few godly men, ‘the new Federal Constitution’ has been brought to adopt the following resolution: ‘The Confederation recognize the first day of the week, as a day of holy rest.’ This result bears testimony to the faith and patience, the earnestness and prayerfulness, of the friends of the Sabbath in that country, and more especially the societies in Geneva, Basle, and the church of the Valleys, who have contended for the maintenance, perpetuity, and observance of the Lord’s day.”