A French Sunday Movement in Europe.
By D. T. Bourdeau
A FRENCH Sunday movement has been set on foot in Switzerland, to secure in said country, in France, and in those parts of Europe where the French language is spoken, a more strict observance of Sunday as the Sabbath. The heart and center of this movement is Geneva, the renowned city of Calvin, the great French reformer of the 16th century. It has organized a society similar to that in the United States, so far as securing the great end in view is concerned, which publishes a quarterly advocating its principles, called, Le Bulletin dominical, Organe de la Fédération internationale pour l' Observation du Dimanche: The Dominical Bulletin, organ of the International Federation for the Observance of Sunday. Besides this quarterly, a weekly has just appeared at Vevey, Switzerland, entitled, Le Jour du Repos,—The Day of Rest. This newspaper appears on Monday to avoid being taken to its subscribers by facteurs on Sunday, in imitation of the example of La Chambre Haute, a religious monthly published in France. The editor of Le Jour du Repos speaks thus in his prospectus: "Here are the principal points which shall be treated in my journal: 1. The perpetual obligation to observe the fourth commandment; 2. The great importance of this commandment; 3. The necessity of adding sanctification to the cessation of all secular work; 4. The importance of the word of God, which is powerful to combat profanation (important on the religious side of the question); 5. Obedience to the law of God, even under the new covenant; 6. The necessity of works of charity on the Lord's day; 7. Temporal and spiritual blessings resulting from its observance; 8. The curse that rests on those who profane it; 9. The importance of Sunday in the work of missions among the heathen; 10. The good or evil that Christians can do by their example." It will be readily seen that this programme presents capital admissions in favor of the ancient Sabbath and against first-day observance; for the fourth commandment, which it so highly exalts, enjoins the observance of no other day than that on which God rested, and which he blessed and sanctified,—the seventh day, answering to the last day of creation week. Although this platform presents to us who keep the seventh-day Sabbath the handle of the sword of truth which must demolish the Sunday institution in the eyes of the honest, yet it will, in connection with the Bulletin Dominical,—which treats the subject more from a civil and legal standpoint, calling for legal enactments,—exert a powerful influence in favor of the Sunday movement on the uninformed, and those who prize the traditions and customs of men more than the truths of God's word. Le Jour du Repos resorts to the thread-bare stories of accidents and calamities on Sunday, which, though they would make every day the Sabbath in the eyes of every unbiased and reflecting mind (for accidents happen every day), will nevertheless exert the same influence in favor of Sunday-keeping that they did in the Dark507Ages; especially so as they are backed up by Satan's wonders that will sweep the masses. And the Sunday movement in the United States is doing much to ripen affairs in Europe. The crisis is forcing itself upon us with all its realities. We have no time to lose if we would make visible the Creator's great sign of royalty throughout the earth. May we be true to God in this last conflict between truth and error.