'To Destruction by Express.'
By C. P. Bollman
Such is the title of an article in a recent number of Messiah's Herald, which speaks as follows concerning Sunday railway traffic:— "Sunday travel has increased almost incredibly within the last fifteen years. Each year sees still greater increase. This increase is illegal, but it defies the Sunday laws, and goes on as though they did not exist. The public is willing to pay for Sunday trains; the roads are willing to furnish them. Commercial interests demand Sunday freighting; the roads claim that they must accommodate commercial interests. Indeed, Sunday business and travel have ceased to even raise the question as to whether there be any law. "Places of amusement vie with each other in offering inducements to pleasure-seekers. The law looks on, if it be not too dead to open its eyes; but it does nothing more. It can do nothing more. The officers who are sworn to execute the laws prefer that they should remain unexecuted; their friends prefer this; almost everybody prefers it. Many religious teachers are glad to have Sunday trains, that they may the better reach distant appointments. From the standpoint of all those who believe Sunday ought to be observed sacredly, all this means rapid destruction. "These facts show, not that Sunday will be overthrown, but that it is overthrown. They who, years ago, talked about the danger of the American Sunday becoming Europeanized, now are forced to agree that it is Europeanized. Sabbathlessness means godlessness. Holidayism means the destruction of public worship, the annihilation of public religious teaching; it means the gradual abolition of religion in the family; it means a steady increase in the agencies which lure men to evil. "In the earlier centuries the church made love with the world, yielded to its blandishments, sought its favor, and reaped, as the result, centuries of darkness and degradation reaching almost to ruin. God's ancient people were taught the same thing again and again. God's modern people will be no exception. If the prophet who failed to carry God's message to the world in wickedness, found God's hand resting heavily upon him, the prophet of this century, neglecting his duty, will feel the same hand. He who daubeth with untempered mortar, shall find the wall he seeks to rear burying him; and the wall will not cease to tumble though he cry piteously. God demands that the watchmen on the walls of Zion in the United States should make an effort to stem the tide of ruin. Brethren, silence and indifference and cowardice are all criminal. We leave each man to settle the account with God. He must settle it quick, for Sabbathism is going to destruction by express." This is but a sample of the many impassioned appeals that the religious journals of our country are constantly making in behalf of the Sunday sabbath. And yet the men who write such articles know full well that Sunday is not the Sabbath by divine appointment. They are wont to forge from the law of God thunderbolts which they hurl at all who desecrate the Sunday, and yet they are well aware that that law says nothing whatever of Sunday as a sacred day. The law of God, the penalty of which they so freely invoke upon those who do not keep the first day of the week, says: "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work;" and yet every man of them violates that commandment by making the seventh day a common working day. Moreover, they have by both precept and example taught the people to despise the divine Sabbath law, and now they piously (?) sigh and cry for the abominations that are done in the land! Why is it that the Sabbath is not regarded? why is it that the law of God is trampled under foot? Very largely because those to whom the people look for instruction in the things of God have made his law void through their traditions; because they are told that God does not mean just what he says; because the plain truths of his word have been toned down and "accommodated" until they have no longer any power to move those that are at ease in Zion, to say nothing of the multitudes who make no profession of serving God. It is indeed true that "in the earlier centuries the church made love with the world, yielded to its blandishments, sought its favors, and reaped the result;" and part of that harvest was the Sunday unsupported by any divine law. Sunday has not and never had any place in the law of God, other than as one of the six working days; it belongs to the world, and what right has any man or any set of men to demand that it be invested with the blessing and sanctity which by divine right belong only to the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord? God worked upon the first day of the week and gave it to man as a common working day, and how can it be expected that people will reverence a day which God has not sanctified, when they are taught to despise one that he has blessed? It is one thing to turn men away from the true Sabbath, but it is quite another thing to inspire within them feelings of true reverence for a base counterfeit. In the words of the Herald: "If the prophet who failed to carry God's message to the world in wickedness, found God's hand resting heavily upon him, the prophet of this century, neglecting his duty, will feel the same hand. He who daubeth with untempered mortar, shall find the wall he seeks to rear burying him; and the wall will not cease to tumble though he cry piteously." The figure which the Herald uses is borrowed from the thirteenth chapter of Ezekiel, but it does not apply to those who do not demand the strict observance of Sunday. The burden of the prophet's message is to those who have not made up the gap in the law of God, "for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord." In that day these words will come home with crushing force to those who have made void the law of God by their traditions:— "Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying divination, whereas ye say, The Lord saith it; albeit I have not spoken? Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord God." Eze. 13: 7, 8. But again the Lord says:— "Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar, say unto them which daub it with untempered mortar, that it shall fall; there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it. Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it? Therefore thus saith the Lord God; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great hailstones in my fury to consume it. So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall, and ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that have daubed it with untempered mortar, and will say unto you, The wall is no more, neither they that daubed it." Eze. 13: 10-15. The wrath of God is indeed about to fall, not only upon this country but upon the world, but not because the people have not kept Sunday. The destruction will come because God's law has been despised and his Sabbath trampled upon. The wall (the changed law of God) which one (the Papacy) built up has been most industriously daubed with the untempered mortar of false doctrine, but the Lord declares that it shall fall; but from the reference made to the great hailstones we fear that it will be swept away only by the last of the seven last plagues, when there shall fall "upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent." Rev. 16: 21. Truly "the refuge of lies shall be swept away," but when the wall is no more neither shall they be that daubed it.