THE WRATH TO COME by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 13, 1876

THE WRATH TO COME.

By Uriah Smith

The cloud is plainly discernible from which the bolt of public odium is to descend upon S. D. Adventists. The fatal weakness about the Sunday movement is that it lacks entirely all divine sanction and authority. This fact S. D. Adventists, in their efforts to turn men to the observance of the Sabbath of the Bible, the seventh day, are bound to present in its strongest light. But this will be construed as aiding most effectively those who are opposing the Sunday movement on secular grounds; and these are the worst classes of society, rum-sellers, infidels, spiritualists, &c.

Now it matters not that our standard of temperance is higher than that of any other class, it matters not that we abhor infidel and spiritualistic views and movements with all the intensity possible to human nature, and that we have no sympathy with the popular anti-Sunday movements of the present day, considering their associations and the manner and object in and for which they are carried on; the fact that we oppose Sunday, though on different ground, and that we ruthlessly uncover its one vulnerable point before all the world, will be sufficient, as we divine the future, to cause the friends of Sunday to rank us indiscriminately with the intemperate and irreligious, and visit upon us the odium which these classes justly deserve.

But this cannot affect our duty or lead us to any different course of action. It is simply the misfortune of the Sunday movement, that it has upon its hands a work similar to that of making brick without clay, or an ocean without water. It is to make that appear divine, about which there is no divinity, and set forth that as a Christian institution about which there is no Christianity. As it always has been in such cases in times past, having committed themselves to their course of action, they will be too proud to back down when the weakness of their cause is discovered. Then prejudice and passion will take the place of scriptural evidence, and human laws be invoked to make up the lack of divine sanction. U. S.