SUNDAY IN TROUBLE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 14, 1877

SUNDAY IN TROUBLE.

It appears from the following article that some people begin to “see men as trees walking,” in reference to the difficulties which beset the practical application of the Sunday theory. The observer of the Bible Sabbath on Bible grounds listens with immense satisfaction as he hears Sunday-keepers exclaiming, “We need either a better theory of the Sabbath or more consistency,” and hears them confessing that they have an “immense contract” on their hands in trying to make their theory and actions agree. The article is from The Independent, of June 7, 1877, and will explain itself:—

“The General Assembly may have settled the Sewickley case; but it has not settled the Sunday question. And no more difficult question to settle could have come before it. Mr. Nevin, an elder of the church in Sewickley, Pa., was the chief proprietor of a Sunday paper in Pittsburgh, Pa. No complaint was made against its character; but it carried on its face the date of Sunday. It was probably neither edited nor printed on Sunday; but it was called a Sunday paper, and was distributed on Sunday by newsboys, just as The Messenger, or The Sunday-school Times, or The Wellspring, or The Missionary Record is distributed Sunday in church by the deacons or the librarian. There was much less Sunday work done on it than is done on an ordinary Monday newspaper. Complaint was made to the Allegheny Presbytery against the Sewickley church for harboring a desecrator of the Sabbath, and the Presbytery required the Sewickley session to discipline the offender. The church refused, and appealed to the Synod of Erie. The Synod sustained the Presbytery. The church then appealed to the Assembly.”

“It was a somewhat difficult case to decide without saying more than it was desirable to say. If publishing a Sunday paper is wrong now, was it wrong during the war? Then everybody got a Sunday paper who could. If wrong, is it wrong to publish a Monday paper, which requires much more Sunday work? Yet how many church-members feel religious scruples about buying a newspaper Monday morning? Is it wrong also to own stock in a daily paper which issues a Sunday edition? Is it a disciplinary offense to own stock in such a paper? Take the case of Deacon Bross, which was in the minds of the Assembly. He owns a large but not a controlling interest in the Chicago Tribune. He votes, perhaps, in the meetings of the stockholders against issuing a paper on Sunday and Monday; but he keeps his stock and accepts the profit on it. Shall he be disciplined? Is it an offense to own stock in a railroad which runs a Sunday train? Shall a man be disciplined who rides to church in a horse-car which makes a profit from Sunday travel? Shall a man be held to be a heathen who supplies a milk-route on the Sabbath? And are they all sinners who run to the street with their pails when the milkman disturbs the Sabbath stillness with what is not the church-going bell?”

“The Sewickley church thought these were delicate questions all involved in the case which it was required to act upon; and it decided that these questions could best be settled by each church as they came up. But the Assembly was implacable, and by a large majority it voted that ‘any voluntary and responsible participation in the publication and sale of a Sunday newspaper is inconsistent alike with the decree of the law of God and with membership in the Presbyterian Church.’ It further declared that, if the session of the Sewickley church should disobey the instructions of the Presbytery of Allegheny, it should be put ‘under discipline for contumacy.’”

“As Judge Morehead, of Pennsylvania, told the Assembly, it has ‘taken an immense contract on its hands.’ In its deliverance the word ‘responsible’ was inserted in the committee’s report, to protect Dea. Bross and others like him, who own less than a controlling interest in companies which make a profit on the Sabbath day. But the distinction is one not fit to be made. If the Assembly thinks it its duty to require the Sewickley church to expel Elder Nevin, it should equally require the First church of Chicago to discipline Dea. Bross. And even so the man who buys a paper which has a Sunday issue is ‘responsible’ for supporting that paper, and the General Assembly itself was ‘responsible’ for making an arrangement with a paper which appears seven days in a week for publishing the official report of its proceedings, part of which were issued in the Sunday Tribune. We need either a better theory of the Sabbath or more consistency.”