p. 489 | CONTINENTAL SUNDAY by M. C. W.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 31.

CONTINENTAL SUNDAY.

By M. C. W.

MUCH is said by National Reformers, and others who are eager for strict Sunday laws, about "the Continental Sunday." English churches are fearful that their Sunday will become "Continental" in character, and American religionists are fearful that "the American Sunday" will become "Continental" in character. And we ask, Why not? The original Sunday, so far as being a church day, is "Continental." It originated in the apostate church, which based her injunctions on expediency and the Sunday law made by the pagan Constantine in 321 A. D., who made his law in honor of the sun. Sunday is a child of pagan birth, adopted and brought up by the pago-papal church. It attained its full typical growth in the halcyon days of its foster-mother, in the Dark Ages. But during that period Sunday permitted all sorts of pleasure, sports, and games, and even in the churchyards in "Merrie England," markets were held in the afternoon. All these things were preceded by attendance at church or mass in the morning, in order it may be supposed, to sanctify the sports of the afternoon. All these things were permitted in the faithful down to the time of Charles I. in England.

But the friends of the now aged child of the sun think that he ought to be reformed in his old age. There is no reason to hope that he will of himself reform; for the bad blood of his antecedents, his long association with immorality, the theft of the sacred habiliments of the Sabbath of Jehovah,—the commands of God,—the falsehoods still maintained, that they are his, though these falsehoods are transparent to all right-minded people, render all hopes of his reform futile. Therefore he must be compelled to become a saint in his old age, and the people must be compelled to respect his saintship. But all this will not change his character. Man may clothe him in the gaudy garments of human glory, and place underneath him the basis of human law, but in a little from this he will be covered with eternal and universal infamy, and his end will be destruction. M. C. W.