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DEMORALIZING THE SUNDAY

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 1, 1878

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 52, No. 6.

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DEMORALIZING THE SUNDAY.

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

It was lately objected to our preaching that it is calculated to demoralize the youth by freeing them from all sense of restraint in regard to keeping the Sunday! This led to the remark that that restraining influence does not exist. There being no Scripture evidence for keeping the Sunday, the ministers themselves basing it upon the fathers, church history, custom, the law of the land, &c., it does not convict the conscience, and therefore it is kept by the mass only nominally, not from any sense of its sacredness.
Besides this, it is the day on which immorality is most largely practiced. On Sunday more crimes are committed, and more liquor drank, than in all the rest of the week. On Sunday licentiousness runs riot. Where, then, is the danger of demoralizing the Sunday? It is time to present a duty in Sabbath-keeping which, based on the commandment of God, can reach the conscience, and lead to obedience to law, instead of resting it in feeble conformity to custom.
Lord Roseberry, in England, lately urged the opening on Sunday of public places of amusement and instruction, as museums, &c., and when it was argued that this would demoralize the public mind in regard to Sunday, he replied that it would not—that it could not be done. He described “the English Sunday” at the present time as “vacuity, varied with drink.” This answers very well to the American Sunday; in our western method of speech it might be described as “nothingness spiced with whiskey.”
Many Christian teachers feel the force of this unwelcome truth, but very few have the moral courage to break away from popular custom and assist in a Sabbath reform based on the exact requirement of God’s commandment. They are not willing to brave the opposition which they know they must receive from the worldly-minded and time-serving ministers and churches. “Here is the patience of the saints.” Truly have we need for patience in these times of peril—of formality among the “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” But only they who keep the word of God’s patience will be kept from that hour of temptation which will try them that dwell upon the earth.
J. H. Waggoner.