EXTRACTS AND COMMENTS by L. C. Rogers

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 17, 1879

EXTRACTS AND COMMENTS.

By L. C. Rogers

THAT the true friends of religious liberty may see what are the aims of the National Association, I append the following extracts; they are from a sermon by Rev. J. Blanchard, President of Wheaton College, Illinois, published in the Christian Statesman, and copied into the Cynosure of March 13, 1879, from which I copy. Dr. Blanchard and the Christian Statesman are authority in these matters:—

First extract: “There is a National Association now seeking to insert in the United States Constitution such a simple confession of Christ and the Christian religion as that ‘ours is a Christian and not a heathen government.’ This movement for a religious amendment has sprung up within a few years to antagonize the efforts of infidels, blasphemers, spirit worshipers, atheists, pagans, weak Christians, priests, and politicians to obliterate the Sabbath, etc.”

It is designed, undoubtedly, to include Seventh-day Baptists somewhere in the above list, perhaps under the heading of “weak Christians.”

Second extract: “If the atheist curses the Sabbath and its Author, are we to be denied not only all right to restrain such evil practices, but denied also even the poor privilege of saying they are not Americans, and pointing to the Constitution to show that they are not?”

Thus it is claimed that the Sunday Sabbath is an “American” institution, the disregard of which the National Association and its abettors are to “restrain” by civil enactments.

Third extract: “The United States undertook to drop the superstitions of Europe, and retain its Christianity. In the words of the historian Bancroft, ‘the austere principle was announced that not even a ceremony should be tolerated unless it was enjoined by the word of God.’ Blindly, it is true, and somewhat stumblingly, they sought to drop coercion and retain recognition of Christ.”

The above acknowledged undertaking of our forefathers is now to be “antagonized” by the National Association. And let these would-be reformers see how far they have wandered from the austere principle of the founders of this government in establishing, by national law, the American Sunday; for what support has it from the “word of God?” It is the want of this support that drives them to seek the support of the civil law. Thus the nineteenth century, and right here in free America, is about to take up the weapons of persecution, which a preceding century was compelled to lay down. Protestantism is about to fight “weak Christians” with the abandoned weapons of Catholicism. This is what Dr. Blanchard and his coadjutors call the “relation of civil government to Christ.” Does pure religion and undefiled demand these extreme and anti-republican measures? Does the welfare of the State demand it, either as a recognition of God or his Sabbath? Mr. Blanchard says, “our Constitution is atheistic in its terms, though Christian in its substance.” Will it be any better off, I ask, when it has set up a paper god? Why forsake the “substance” for the shadow? But will not this champion of the American Sunday be obliged to eat his own words? for he says, “Truth is not sectarian. The ten commandments, the Lord’s prayer, the sermon on the mount, these are not sectarian.” Let him adopt, then, the Sabbath of the fourth commandment; for this he will have a “thus saith the Lord,” and have no longer need of the American Sunday, or of civil penalties to aid and abet it.—L. C. Rogers, in Sabbath Recorder, July 3, 1879.