Arguments for Sunday Observance Examined
By John Nevins Andrews
the inspired apostles,” when he admits that there is no command for it, he has nothing at all left but what he calls the example of the apostles, upon which to base his conclusion. And upon this we would remind him of his own words that “the average mind is more readily moved by a direct command than by an inference drawn from the example of even inspired men.” P. 242. He has reached his conclusion, then, by an inference drawn from the example of the apostles. But how does he know and how can he show that his inference is just? Oh, by studying the history of an age of “corrupt practices and perversions of Christian doctrine,” he learns “that the most of them regarded themselves at liberty not to keep the seventh-day Sabbath,” and that they “could hardly have made a mistake concerning the import of their [the apostles’] words and actions.” And so having landed himself and his whole Sunday-sabbath scheme squarely upon Catholic ground in the midst of an age of “corrupt practices” and perversions of Christian doctrine, his great one-thousand-dollar task is completed; his grand one-thousand-dollar prize is won, and there we leave him to enjoy it. We have now examined the reasons for keeping Sunday, which have been given in a five-hundred-dollar prize-essay, and in a one-thousand-dollar prize-essay. We have been asked which is the better one of the essays. We can only reply that there is no “better” about it—each is worse than the other. Yet we are not prepared to say that the trustees of Dartmouth College, and the American Sunday-school Union have done a wholly bad work in paying the prizes by which these essays were put before the world. We are certainly justified in supposing that these essays furnish the very best argument for Sunday-keeping that can be made in the United States; and we think it well that the utter groundlessness of the Sunday institution either in Scripture or reason, should be made to appear, as it is in these essays, even though it be at an expense of $1,500. Yet, it does seem a pity to pay so much good money, for so many bad arguments in support of a worthless institution. The commandment of God reads the same to us that it does to these prize essayists and to everybody else. It says to all: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. . . . The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” and for our part we hope we shall never reach the point where we shall regard ourselves at liberty not to keep the commandment of God, for to keep the seventh-day Sabbath is the commandment of God. He who regards himself at liberty not to keep it, regards himself at liberty to commit sin. J.