A QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE.
By Charles P. Bollman
W. E. Worthen, a correspondent of the Christian Oracle, in a recent communication to that paper writes thus of something previously published from another contributor to its columns:— “He says that if the Blair bill should pass and a strict Sunday law be passed, Adventists could obey the law without any violation of their religious principles. True; but if you forbid them doing any manual labor on that day, you rob them of one-sixth of their power to earn a living for their families—or at $2.00 per day it would amount to $104 annually; without their consent; is that American liberty? Suppose you rest on Sunday and we pass a law to prohibit you from working Mondays; how would that suit you? Brethren, we don’t want a Sunday law unless it has a proviso that those who conscientiously keep the Sabbath shall not be prohibited from performing their usual occupation on Sunday. The Constitution is good enough as it is.” We are not prepared to admit that Sunday laws are proper under any circumstances, but we like the tone of what Mr. Worthen says; it shows that he has a fine sense of justice, of which the writer to whom he replies is quite incapable. It is, however, an error to suppose that Adventists could habitually abstain from work on Sunday “without any violation of their religious principles.” Adventists deny in toto the right of the civil Government to interfere in matters of religion; and the observance of a weekly day of rest is purely a matter of religion. With Adventists it is an act of homage to God, an acknowledgment of him as the Creator of all things; it is, in fact, a part of their worship to God, and for them to pay the same homage to the State would be idolatry. It may be urged that the mere fact of abstaining from labor is not Sabbath-keeping, and that it cannot be worship; therefore forbearing to labor on Sunday in obedience to civil law would not be idolatry; but a little consideration will show anyone that this is a mistake. Bowing before an object is not necessarily worship, and yet Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego refused to prostrate themselves before the great image which the king of Babylon had set up. They were required to utter no prayer, they might even while bowing before the image have prayed to the true God, but they refused to pay any homage whatever to the idol, and that they did right is manifest from the fact that they were miraculously delivered from the furnace into which they were cast by command of the king. However they might have felt about it themselves, their act, had they bowed, would have been in the eyes of the people an acknowledgment of the claims made for the image, namely, that it was a proper object of worship, and they could not yield and maintain their integrity as worshipers of the only true God. It is even so with Sabbatarians; they hold that the seventh day is the only true Sabbath, and to keep two Sabbaths would be simply to contradict their own teachings. God only has the right to require the observance of a weekly day of rest, and to observe such a day at the behest of any other power is to put that power on an equality with the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Adventists can do nothing of the kind without violating their religious principles.