THE SUNDAY LAW | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 8, 1874

THE SUNDAY LAW.

C. H. RICHARDS of Madison, Wis., having spoken in behalf of the enforcement of Sunday observance by law, Zina Gilbert, Seventh-day Baptist of Utica, Wis., makes the following candid and able reply, which we copy from the Madison, Wis., State Journal:—

Editors of the State Journal:

GENTLEMEN:—There having appeared in your weekly issue of September 23, an abstract of two discourses delivered by Rev. C. H. RICHARDS, on the Sunday question, and editorially commended to public favor, we accordingly have given the document a careful reading, and while we find many thoughts and suggestions that are highly commendable and worthy of consideration we also find other points and statements that we regard as especially open to criticism, and we believe many of these are in direct and open conflict with the true teachings of the Bible and proceeding from the very high source: they do, we think, if left unchallenged to work out their legitimate consequences, will be likely to do much harm to the cause of truth and religious freedom in our land. And as it is evident that the object sought by the delivery and publication of these discourses was to coerce, in the name of Christianity, an unwilling conformity to what we most firmly believe to be an unscriptural practice, and as the columns of the State Journal have been open to the publication of these discourses, and editorially commended to public favor, it can be no more than justice and truth, and a decent respect to those who are sought to be coerced to keep a day that is nowhere in the Bible recognized as the Sabbath, that we be allowed a fair hearing through the same medium that has given publicity to these discourses.

Let it be distinctly understood, however, that in what has here been said, we by no means design to assail the personal character or the Christian integrity of the author of these discourses, whose acquaintance we have neither had the honor nor the pleasure of making; but who, we rejoice to learn, is in good repute as a very fair-minded, talented, Christian gentleman. It is the errors he has pressed upon public attention in these discourses, and these alone, that we assail. Let it be further understood that, in thus pressing our claim to be heard through the columns of the State Journal, it is not that we would offensively intrude our unpopular views upon the unwilling attention of other people. But the facts are these: The question of enforcing the Sunday laws has again become revived; and further, it is most firmly believed by many, who are well qualified to judge, that there is no question within the whole range of Bible theology that is less understood, and about which theories so diverse, multitudinous, and conflicting are entertained by the people at large, as in regard to this Sabbath question. The question is indeed so confused and so little understood that hardly two men who keep the first day of the week can be found whose theories at all agree in regard to it. For these reasons it cannot be doubted that the best interests of this Sabbath reform movement demand that a thorough investigation and discussion of this whole question be had through all the channels of communication in the land, with a view to unify and harmonize public opinion on the basis of Bible truth. We therefore hope and expect that the columns of both the daily and weekly issue of the State Journal will be open for the insertion of this brief article.

The first point in these discourses, to which we desire to call attention, is this: After wading through several paragraphs, in which the author makes the effort to produce the impression that the fourth commandment of the decalogue, as a positive enactment, is not now obligatory, while its interior meaning is still in force—this explicit statement occurs: “It is true that they who refer to the fourth commandment, as retaining its statutory force still, and who base the obligation of Sabbath observance on this as positive law are mistaken. Their error has done much to confuse and embitter this controversy.”

We here remark that in this extract the author gives unmistakable evidence that he claims that the fourth commandment is not binding, as positive law, upon the subjects of Christ’s kingdom; and he also here attempts to fasten the blame for the great confusion and difficulty in which this question is now involved upon those men who strictly adhere both to the letter and spirit of this commandment! And right here we take issue with him. And we charge back the blame for all this trouble upon those who discard the letter of the commandment, while they claim to retain its spirit; a thing that cannot be done! And we also claim that in taking this position, the gentleman has placed himself in direct conflict with the teachings of Christ, as found in Matt. 5:17-19, which is a part of his adorable sermon on the mount; and which, so to speak, was his inaugural address; in which he defined and laid down the great fundamental and immutable principles, in statutory form, which were to govern all the subjects of the kingdom he was then and there setting up in this world. The text reads thus: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven.”

We may here remark, that there can be no shade of doubt that the commandments mentioned in verse 19, which are enforced upon all men, under the terrible penalty of being called the least in the kingdom of Heaven, are the several precepts of the decalogue, including the fourth with all the others. This being the case, and this language being that of the King of Zion, while laying down in statutory form the great and immutable principles that were to govern all of his subjects, there can be no such thing as misunderstanding its import. For no combination of words drawn from the whole vocabulary of human language can express a thought more clear and plain than is here expressed; that each and every precept of the decalogue—not excepting the fourth—was incorporated with, and formed a component part of, the great system of immutable rules and laws that was to govern all the subjects of his kingdom. This, being the fact, demonstrates to positive certainty that the position put forth by the author of these discourses that the fourth commandment in its statutory form is not obligatory upon us, is in positive and absolute antagonism to the teachings of the great Redeemer of men, as found in Matt. 5:17-19.

Having thus firmly established this fact by the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, from whose authority there can be no appeal, and shown the fourth commandment in its statutory form to be absolutely obligatory upon all, we are now prepared to introduce another authority in corroboration of what we have already educed, that is of no less importance than that of the author of these discourses himself! And we quote as follows:—

“If we turn to the Bible, we are struck with the probable great antiquity of this observance. We find time marked by weeks, as far back as human records run, and there are strong indications that from the very dawn of human life, good men marked off the weeks by some such signal-day as we observe. It seems probable that the Jews kept a Sabbath long before this law was given them. If it was God’s will that the Sabbath should be kept for centuries before the Jewish nation was born, it affords strong presumption that he wants it kept always. The position of the fourth commandment in the decalogue indicates the same thing. All the other commandments are the expression of great, universal moral principles, always and everywhere obligatory. The fact that the Sabbath law is joined with them, is a strong indication that it is no ceremonial observance, no mere national peculiarity, but that its interior meaning and obligation are for all men.”

We may justly claim that notwithstanding all the gentleman has said, both before and after, to the contrary, we now have his frank admission that evidence is to be found in the word of God that the Sabbath was known and observed as far back as the history of man extends. We also have his frank admission that the fact that the Sabbath law has its position in a code where all the other commands are the expression of great universal moral principles, always and everywhere obligatory, indicates that this institution is no ceremonial observance, or national peculiarity, but that its interior meaning and obligation are for all men. Now these admissions are most indisputable truths. And if the interior meaning and obligation of the Sabbath law are for all men, then the exterior meaning and obligation of the command, as expressed in legal form, must also be. This is so from the fact that its interior meaning and obligation cannot be enforced, after the external enactment is ignored. An attempt to enforce the interior meaning and obligation of a law, after the external letter, in its statutory form had been abolished, would be like an attempt to make a tub hold water with the bottom taken entirely out; the idea is simply preposterous, and the effort here made by our author to produce the impression that the fourth commandment in its statutory form is abolished, while its interior meaning and obligation remain in force, places the divine Creator in the ridiculous light of a human legislative body, repealing a law they intend shall remain in full force and virtue, and obligatory upon all!

Now, if all good men, like our author, who has been misled by the force of circumstances, and too great outside popular pressure upon their mental organism, while their religious views were in a formative state, to accept as gospel truth such unscriptural, illogical and absurd vagaries as this idea of abolishing the outward letter of a law, and yet retain its interior meaning and obligation, could but be induced to look these absurdities square in the face, and thus see how supremely ridiculous such things may appear, when tested by the light of Bible truth; and sound logic—nothing more could be needed to lead them to renounce the error and accept the truth. But as we were saying, we now have not only the positive testimony of the Saviour of men, that the Sabbath law is universally obligatory, but also the frank admission of our author, substantially to the same effect. Hence we may regard it as settled by generous compromise, that the fourth commandment, in its exterior legal form, is still obligatory on all men. Again we quote:—

“When we say, then, that the State ought to have a law obliging men to abstain from their usual occupations one day each week, and arresting, so far as possible, all the various industries of the country, it is not that Christians may enforce their religious day on the whole nation. In itself Sunday is no more sacred than any other day. . . . Again, if the fourth commandment is binding on us as positive law, we are bound to keep it as it reads. God is not guilty of the absurdity of some modern lawyers who hold that government may pass laws to ornament the statute book, but not to be executed. We must keep the seventh day instead of the first. If this is still positive law, the Jews and Seventh-day Baptists are the only ones that keep it properly.”

Now, if the Rev. Mr. Richards is what he professes to be, an honest and true Christian man, and ready to conform to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, wherever that authority is plainly expressed—what can there be to hinder him from abandoning this anti-Christian, pagan Sunday, that is no more sacred than any other day, and accept the Sabbath law as it reads, and keep the seventh day? If he and all of his co-laborers in this movement to enforce the observance of Sunday on other people, would do this—preaching and enforcing the obligation to keep the Sabbath on the naked authority of God’s immutable law, as expressed in the fourth commandment of the decalogue, and recognized by the Lord Jesus Christ as a necessary and component part of the written law of his kingdom—our word for it, they would make more real progress in the direction of true Sabbath reform, in one year, than in a whole century expended in efforts to enforce upon an unwilling people, by civil legislation, the observance of a day that every attentive student of the word of God well knows is not the true Sabbath of the Bible. Whether the gentleman shall follow the course suggested above or not, the all-important question in the case seems to be this:—

Can there be any possible way by which he can justify himself in these efforts to

enforce upon an unwilling community the observance of Sunday, a day he acknowledges to be no more sacred than any other day, when, in doing this, he gives sanction to the desecration, to secular purposes, of a day rendered supremely sacred by the consecrating act of the infinite Jehovah, by which he set it apart to a religious use, at the very beginning of man’s existence, as seen in Gen. 2:2, 3, and also enjoins its observance in the sacred decalogue, a code in which all the other precepts are the expression of great universal moral principles, always and everywhere obligatory, and which code has been expressly recognized and enforced by the divine Redeemer, the King of kings, and Lord of lords as an essential part of the great system of rules and laws that are to govern all the subjects of his kingdom?

Again we ask: Can the gentleman justify himself as before the judgment-seat of Christ, in laboring to enforce upon an unwilling people the religious observance of a weekly day he acknowledges to be no more sacred than any other day, when doing this necessarily involves the desecration to secular purposes of a day rendered sublimely sacred as the seventh day has been, and its observance made universally obligatory, as shown above? If there is any way by which the gentleman can justify himself in doing this, and if he will show us through the columns of the State Journal, or any other medium, how this can be done, the opportunity to learn so important and intricate a lesson as this must be, will be embraced by us with the greatest pleasure. But, on the other hand, if there is no way by which he can do this, then in the name of the great Redeemer, the Judge of all the earth, we most solemnly protest against any further attempt to enforce the Sunday laws on an unwilling people, by that gentleman, or any of his co-laborers in this dangerous work!

The next question that forces itself upon our consideration is this: In case that it is so positively certain that the Bible requires the seventh and last day of the week to be kept, instead of the first—as is here claimed that it does—how is it that so large a percentage of the Protestant church who claim to take the Bible as their only rule of faith and practice, and among whom there are so many good and pious Christian people, keep the Sunday, instead of the Bible Sabbath? And we solve this problem in this way: We declare that the fact is patent that in the mighty contest for the ascendancy in the church, at the time of the great apostasy, between the converts to the Christian faith from Judaism, and those from paganism; the latter, by their great numerical advantages over the former, were enabled to inaugurate as the successful rival of God’s true Sabbath, their favorite weekly festival, called by Constantine in his famous edict, “The venerable day of the Sun.” And, aided by the “rack” and the “fagot,” the papal authorities were enabled to keep the Sunday festival in the ascendancy over the Bible Sabbath, down to the time of the Reformation. And amid the multiplicity of papal errors to be corrected by the great German reformers, this Sunday innovation was overlooked. And hence this error was allowed to come into the Protestant church; and through the instrumentality of superstition, intolerance, and bigotry, those exercising censorship over the pulpit and the public press, have succeeded in suppressing from public view almost everything written or spoken in the interest of God’s true Sabbath. Hence the great want of a correct understanding in regard to this Sabbath question. To such an extent indeed is this lack of understanding that comparatively few of those who keep the Sunday have ever had their attention called to the fact that they were not observing the true seventh day, as required by the fourth commandment. And when they are reminded of the fact that they are not, men of ordinary minds find it extremely difficult, if, indeed, possible, to conceive the thought that they, themselves, can, by any possibility, be wrong in a practice they and their ancestors had been accustomed to follow since time out of mind.

They read the Sabbath law, and there learn that Jehovah, after creating the world in six days, rested on the seventh; that he organized the weekly cycle on this basis; requiring men to imitate his example—doing up their secular business on the six first days of the cycle, and keeping Sabbath on the seventh. They see they are not doing this; but being unable to conceive the thought that they and their fathers could, by any possibility, be keeping the wrong day—look in every possible direction but the right one for a solution of the difficulty. Each man who dares think for himself, gets up a theory of his own; hence the multiplicity of theories extant on this question; and the leaders, as in the case of the author of these discourses, persist in urging the observance of the Sunday. Thus the fact is accounted for that so large a percentage of the Protestant church now keep the first day of the week, notwithstanding the Bible requires the seventh to be observed. And it now seems fully evident that all that is necessary to set this matter right, and bring the Protestant church into harmony with the teachings of Bible truth on this question, is for all who are interested in this Sabbath reform movement to encourage in every way they can a full, free, and dispassionate discussion of this whole question in all of its phases, always exercising the spirit and temper of the gospel of Christ; and do this through all the avenues of communication at their command; at the same time laying aside all prejudice, and fully resolving to embrace and reduce to practice the naked Bible truth, whenever that truth may be satisfactorily ascertained.

We have been watching with most profound interest, the recent movement for securing the Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, in which is involved the better observance of the weekly Sabbath. We have fondly hoped that this movement would furnish the occasion for bringing this Sabbath question to the surface, where it could receive that attention by the people at large that its great importance demands. If this shall be the case, the movement referred to may be justly regarded as a God-send, that every lover of Bible truth will have cause to be thankful for, so long as life remains. But, on the other hand, if bigotry and intolerance shall bear sway, as regards this particular question (which, by the way, when practically considered, is second to none in point of importance within the whole range of Bible theology, except that of salvation from sin, through the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ), and its free discussion in the pulpit, and through the public press, shall be suppressed for fear of disturbing the quiet of some good easy souls who are vainly supposing they are doing acceptable service to the divine Creator while ignorantly acting in direct opposition to his plain command; if, in this latter half of the nineteenth century, when all Christendom is stirred from center to circumference on the question of reforms in the church—if bigotry and intolerance is to be the rule as touching this question, then the inquiry may well be raised in regard to the direction to which Protestantism is tending; whether it be upwards, toward a more glorious harmony with the great Father of all, or downward to inevitable perdition and ruin.

What we have said thus far has been in mere protest against the enforcement of Sunday as a religious day, upon people who do not choose to accept it as such. To do this would clearly be an infringement of article one of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and also of section 18 of the Declaration of Rights in the organic law of our common-wealth, and hence a thing the Legislature has no right to do. The curtailment or prohibition of the liquor traffic is another and entirely different question to deal with. This is a matter that relates to the secular interests of the State, and to that alone. It has no religious feature whatever about it, and hence is entirely within the legitimate jurisdiction of the civil compact, and, of course, is a proper subject for civil legislation.

Now, if the friends of the temperance cause will divorce the Sunday question from that of the temperance, and agree upon and adopt some equitable measure—whether that measure shall be the Graham liquor law, a prohibitory law, or any other equitable measure that they can devise and be united on—they may rest assured that there is no class of citizens within the State who will co-operate more readily, or work more efficiently, to advance such a measure, than the little band of Sabbath-keepers who take God at his word, and his word as it reads, and keep the day he set apart for the Sabbath at the beginning, enforced its observance in the decalogue, recognized and enforced by the great Messiah at his coming, observed by him and his inspired apostles through their day, and never brought into disrepute until the pagan Sunday festival was made its successful rival in the church by the ‘man of sin,’ at the time of the great apostasy!

But while this little band may always be relied on to co-operate with all good people in every good work, they feel themselves compelled, by fidelity to God and to his truth, to stand up manfully against all encroachments upon God’s divinely appointed Sabbath, whenever and wherever opportunity to do so is offered them.

Now, Messrs. Editors, in view of the great probability that our Legislature, at its coming session, will be called upon to deal with this Sunday question, the present seems to be one peculiarly appropriate for a thorough discussion of this whole Sunday-Sabbath question; and if the columns of your excellent, and hitherto very liberally-conducted, journal, can be opened for this purpose, we have the fullest confidence that we can show to the entire satisfaction of every unprejudiced reader the immutability, full perpetuity, and universal applicability, of God’s holy Sabbath law, as found in the fourth commandment of the decalogue; and that this law still requires the seventh, and last, day of the week, instead of the first, to be kept as the Sabbath, and hence that the practice of keeping the Sunday is downright disobedience to God. In view of these considerations, it really seems to us that the peculiar attitude this question has now assumed before this commonwealth imperatively demands that this shall be done.