p. 338 | The Sabbath

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1875

The Sabbath.

THERE is one weapon which the enemy has employed to destroy Christianity and to drive it from the world, which has never been employed but with signal success. It is the attempt to corrupt the Christian Sabbath, to make it a day of festivity, to cause Christians to feel that its sacred and rigid obligation has ceased, to induce them on that day to mingle in scenes of pleasure or the exciting plans of ambition, to make them feel that they may pursue their journeys by land and water, by the steamboat and the railway, regardless of the command of God; and this has done, and will continue to do, what no argument, no sophistry, no imperial power, has been able to accomplish. The “Book of Sports” did more to destroy Christianity than all the ten persecutions of the Roman Emperors; and the views of the Second Charles and his court about the Lord’s day tended more to drive religion from the British nation than all the fires that were enkindled by Mary. Paris has no Sabbath and that fact has done more to banish Christianity than all the writings of Voltaire. Vienna has no Sabbath, and that fact does more to annihilate religion there than ever did the skepticism of Frederick. Turn the Sabbath into a day of sports and pastimes, of military reviews, and of pantomimes and theatrical exhibitions, and not an infidel anywhere would care a farthing about the tomes of Volney or Voltaire, the skepticism of Hume, the sneers of Gibbon, or the scurrility of Paine.—British American Presbyterian.