Dr. Cuyler on the Sabbath Question.
By Uriah Smith
On a recent Sunday, Dr. Cuyler preached on the subject, “Who Owns the Sabbath?” An abstract of his discourse was given in the N. Y. Witness of Jan. 9, 1875. His text was Deut. 5: 14: “But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” In the first part of his remarks he reasoned well if the following report be true:— “The Sabbath, he said, is the oldest of all our institutions,—older than civil governments, older than the family. It was ordained at the culmination of creation. If God out of eternity formed time, has he not a right to claim a portion of that time? He can, and shall, till time shall be no more. At Sinai this institution was secured by more direct enactment. Objectors say this was merely a local law, of only local and temporary force. What an absurdity! Was the prohibition of stealing of only local application—or of killing, or of adultery? Then the foundations of all society are resting on a basis of exploded ideas. If the decalogue applies to all people, and governs to all time, so does the fourth commandment. “People of lax ideas and laxer practice, are very ready to quote the Saviour’s saying: ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,’ and think that authorizes all manner of self-indulgence. In all his study, however, of the utterances of Christ he could find nothing which by any fair and honest interpretation could tend to lessen the sanctity of the first divine command. True, the Sabbath was intended for our benefit, for our rest, for our recreation—but the question is: ‘Which part of man do you propose to recreate? the animal, or the spiritual? the body, or the soul?’ We are commanded to keep the Sabbath day holy, but divine wisdom has so accommodated matters that in keeping the day holy we find our highest happiness and truest recreation.” Having thus spoken well for the institution, the early existence, of the Sabbath, and the high authority and universal claims of the Sabbath law, we suddenly become aware that it is Sunday he is pleading for, as if it was the most apparent matter of course that the fourth commandment enjoins Sunday-keeping! Then he pleads for the law of the land to enforce Sunday observance as follows:— “The renewed agitation of the question of Sunday observance at the present time has called forth some views from the pulpit to which he felt he must enter his most emphatic dissent. The point at issue is, whether the civil law should be invoked in protection of the Christian Sabbath. To this query we cannot make our ‘yes’ too loud or too emphatic. Civil government was ordained of God not to overthrow, but to maintain and enforce his fundamental enactments. Man has no right to steal his day, and civil rulers no right to abet the theft. Civil government is ordained to promote pure morals and the public welfare. The observance of the day of sacred rest and public worship is calculated to advance public morality, virtue, and sound conscience, among the people. Personal health demands that man and beast should have rest, and how can that rest be secured but by civil enactment? The law should lean toward the protection of the virtuous and orderly classes, and not toward the license of the loose, dissolute, and immoral. The Sabbath laws of the commonwealth are not despotic or ascetic. They simply give the well-disposed a quiet day for worship. They recognize the divine authority of the Sabbath, and aim to maintain the peculiar character of the day as sacred and not secular time. Satan and his allies chafe under this restraint, and strive to overthrow the institution.” U. S.