SUNDAY DESECRATION by E. Lanphear

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 5, 1879

SUNDAY DESECRATION.

By E. Lanphear

Many very zealous men are at present worrying about the desecration of the Sunday and Sunday laws in and about New York. The New York Sabbath Committee, so called, are making inquiry as to what shall or can be done in order to save Sunday desecration, and there is now and then an editor that speaks out about this wonderful violation of the law of God; while most of them continue to issue their Sunday dailies. The editor of the Daily Witness claims to issue that paper upon a strictly moral basis, and attempts to reprove other editors for Sunday labor; while he claims that they do no business upon Sunday, save making up religious reports, etc., and quotes the fourth commandment to sustain his position. What wonderful mistakes men make in their zeal to accomplish good in the world. Are they honest and conscientious as they pretend? Can their consciences be void of offense toward God and man while they thus press the observance of Sunday as a Sabbath by quotations from the decalogue? Certainly the fourth commandment refers to no other day but the seventh day as the Sabbath. Is it because they are so blind that they will not see? Is their zeal according to knowledge? How can they expect to reform men where there is no transgression of the law of God. God's word plainly teaches that “where no law is, there is no transgression;” and certainly there is no law of God for a Sunday Sabbath, neither is there an example of Christ or of the apostles ever observing it as a Sabbath, nor of their ever applying the word Sabbath to the first day of the week. Are they not “blind leaders of the blind”? “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life.”

E. LANPHEAR.

Plainfield, N. J.