HANDLING THE WORD DECEITFULLY.
By Editor
On Sunday, January 13, a large number of the ministers of Oakland, including the Catholic, preached upon the subject of the Sabbath, according to previous agreement. The object was to stir up the people to the importance of legislation to protect Sunday. At the close of the services in most of the churches, the petitions for a State Sunday law, which were gotten up by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, were circulated. But the point which we wish decided is what to call the position that was taken by some of the preachers. For example, one of them who took for his text Ps. 122:1, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord," remarked upon it as follows:— "The man who was touched with this emotion was a statesman, a warrior, a king, a poet, a man of great intellect, and one of exquisite genius. He was a man who was busily occupied on week-days, and so might well have felt that he had excuse for non-attendance in the Lord's house on Sundays, but he no more wanted to be released from the obligation than a healthy boy wishes to be excused from a Thanksgiving dinner, or than a lover desires to be excused from visiting his sweetheart. He might have made many of the pleas that are daily made use of by the man of the present. He had nothing more important to do—no task to write letters or no papers to read; no headache which he had not on Saturday nor would have on Monday was offered as an excuse; no fear of the dampness or the dust, or the heat or cold, which on a week-day would not deter him from attending to his business or pleasure, possessed him." Another preacher told about the giving of the manna, and its miraculous preservation over the Sabbath, when it would spoil on other days. Said he, "That which the people gathered on Saturday kept fresh and good until Monday morning." Now shall we call this ignorance of the Scriptures, or a deliberate design to deceive people who might be unfamiliar with them? Did not the first speaker know that David never kept a Sunday in his life? Does he not know that David, like all the Jews, kept the seventh day of the week, commonly called Saturday? Did not the other know that it was the seventh day of the week that the Israelites kept in the wilderness, and upon which no manna fell, and that they gathered it on Sunday the same as on the following week-days? Did he not know that it is the seventh day of the week that James referred to when he said, "For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day"? Acts 15:21. We are verily persuaded that both these preachers knew all these things. What causes us to believe that there is no minister who does not positively believe that it was the seventh day of the week—Saturday—which was kept by Moses and David, is the fact that they never fail to refer to it as the "Jewish Sabbath." This is sufficient evidence. We do not refer to this from any desire to direct the attention of people to the short-comings of ministers, although when the command is given to "cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins" (Isa. 58:1), we do not know why an exception should be made in the sins of ministers. Indeed, we think such deception as the above ought to be promptly exposed, since an error on the part of a teacher is necessarily followed by greater evil consequences than one by a learner. That such a course as the above should be taken, shows the utter absence of any foundation for Sunday observance, and should put people on their guard against that which they seek by such means to secure. It shows that when they would show the people how to keep Sunday, they are forced to go back to examples of Sabbath-keeping. That would be allowable, if there were any command transferring the weekly rest from the seventh to the first day of the week; but when they claim that Sabbath-keeping is Sunday-keeping, they give their whole case away. If this is not prophesying falsely, and handling the word of God deceitfully, we do not know when there ever was such a thing. The men who are working for a Sunday law try to secure the co-operation, or at least the assent, of seventh-day keepers by telling them that they do not want to oppress anybody; that no person shall be molested who conscientiously observes the Sabbath-day. They may be sincere, but the methods which they take to show the necessity for a Sunday law are not very assuring. W.