"HIM ONLY SHALT THOU SERVE."
By W.
A BROTHER writing from Nebraska wishes to know if, in case a law were made compelling everybody to keep Sunday, it would be wrong for one who has kept the Sabbath day according to the commandment, to rest upon Sunday also. He asks if the fourth commandment obliges us to work six days in the week, as well as to rest on the Sabbath. This is a question that is frequently asked, and may very easily be answered. In the first place, the fourth commandment does not oblige us to work six entire days of every week. The idea of the commandment is, that we shall do all of our work in the six days which are given for that purpose, and that the seventh must be kept sacred. In the six days we may work; in the seventh day we may not work. This is God's order; and no earthly power has any right to command us to rest on any of the six days which God has given us for labor, any more than it has to command us to work on the day which God has made sacred to himself. Yet while the statement that in the seventh day we shall not work, prohibits us from doing any secular work on that day, the statement that in the six days we shall do all our own work, does not compel us to work every minute of those six days. Must we then conclude that it would be all right for us to rest upon the first day if we were commanded by the Government to do so, provided we had previously rested upon the Sabbath? By no means. We could not in that way keep the Sabbath "according to the commandment;" for the commandment recognizes no authority to appoint rest days but Jehovah himself. The granting to us of six days in which to work, is sufficient proof that no earthly power has any right to appoint a rest day. Now if we, in compliance with the command of any earthly power, do rest upon any of the six working days, we recognize that power as of equal authority with God; and that would nullify our keeping of the seventh day, by showing that we did not do it as an act of worship to the only God. In short, our act would show a divided allegiance, fear, and not love, being at the bottom of it. It would show that we kept the seventh day for the same reason that we kept the first, namely, to escape the penalty pronounced upon the violators. Such service God cannot accept. Sunday as a religious institution is a child of the Papacy—the badge of authority of that power. Whoever having the fourth commandment before him, and understanding and acknowledging its claims, should keep the first day in deference to the command of any earthly power, would be, in the plainest manner possible, showing deference to the Papacy, and would be far more culpable than the one who should keep the day supposing it to be the true Sabbath. The fact that he had previously rested on the seventh day, would only make his culpability the greater, by showing that he was deliberately, on account of slavish fear, placing the decrees of men on a level with the commandment of God. Such a time-serving policy, while it might secure the person freedom from molestation for a time, would be found to be most disastrous in the end; for "he that findeth his life shall lose it."