p. 646 | SUNDAY AND TEMPERANCE by W. N. Glenn

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 21, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 41.

SUNDAY AND TEMPERANCE.

By W. N. Glenn

BY W. N. GLENN.

At a recent temperance meeting in this city a minister made the assertion that temperance and Sunday observance were so intimately connected as to be practically inseparable. The sentiment was seconded by a leading member of the W. C. T. U., and apparently indorsed by the majority of the audience. This was all in support of a pretext for demanding the Sunday closing of the San Francisco Midwinter Fair as a temperance measure.

It would seem that a second thought is all that is necessary to dispel such a vagary from an unprejudiced mind, and a mere reminder of well-known facts will certainly convince reasonable people of the fallacy of the assumption of such Sunday enthusiasm. It is a fact that the most ultra temperance people known to history have not been believers in Sunday sacredness at all, and the same is true to-day.

The prophet Jeremiah was sent by the Lord to rebuke the people of Judah and Jerusalem for their utter neglect of his commandments, and in contrast with their action he cites the steadfast example of the Rechabites: "The words of Jonadab the son of Rechab, that he commanded his sons not to drink wine, are performed; for unto this day they drink none, but obey their father's commandment; notwithstanding I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye hearkened not unto me." Jer. 35:14.

This shows that there was a people in that remote age who persistently abstained from intoxicating liquors without any reference to Sunday observance. But let us follow these Rechabites down to more modern times. From McClintock & Strong's "Ecclesiastical Cyclopædia" we learn that Benjamin of Tudela, in the twelfth century, mentions that near El Jubar he found Jews who were called Rechabites. They were said to number 100,000, followed farming and stock raising, and abstained from wine and flesh. A later traveler, Dr. Wolff, gives a more detailed report. In 1829 he was told by the Jews of Jerusalem and Yemen that he would find the Rechabites of Jeremiah 35 living near Mecca. When he came near Senaa he found a tribe, called Beni-Khaibr, who identified themselves with the sons of Jonadab. He conversed with one of them, named Musa, and reports his conversation as follows:—

I asked him, "Whose descendants are you?" Musa answered, "Come, and I will show you," and read from an Arabic Bible the words of Jer. 35:5-11. He then went on: "Come, and you will find us 60,000 in number. You see the words of the prophet have been fulfilled: Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand before Me forever."

In a later journal (1839) Dr. Wolff mentions a second interview with Musa, and describes them as "keeping strictly to the old rule." Later still is a paper on "Recent Notices of the Rechabites," by Signor Pierotti, read at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association in 1862. He met a tribe calling themselves by that name near the Dead Sea. They had a Hebrew Bible, and told the same story as had been told to Dr. Wolff some thirty years before.

But the "Ecclesiastical Cyclopædia" adds to these testimonies that abstinence from intoxicating liquors "ceases to be remarkable in Arabia, where no one drinks wine, and where, among the strongholds of Islam, it could probably not be obtained without danger and difficulty."

Furthermore, it is a well-known fact, emphasized and held up to conspicuous observation by temperance advocates and statisticians, that the inhabitants of heathen countries are not nearly so much addicted to strong drink as those of the so-called Christian countries, under whose influence and teaching alone is the Sunday promulgated as the Sabbath of the Lord. And it is also well known that in heathen countries the crime of drunkenness is constantly being increased by contact with the traders and speculators from those "Christian" and Sunday-observing countries that enforce the intoxicating beverages upon the people, sometimes at the point of the bayonet. All history, past and current, stands as an emphatic denial of the assumption that Sunday observance is in any degree connected with abstinence from intoxicating liquors. The Arab, the Hindu, the Chinese, the African, the Pacific islanders, and the aborigines of North and South America, associating Sunday observance with the results of their connection with Christianity, might more appropriately assume that it was the cause of their stumbling into the gutter. Sunday observance as a temperance measure has made rather a sorry record. The most effective temperance movements in history have not been intimately connected with Sunday observance.

But those temperance people whose temperance efforts are evidently mere stepping-stones to Sunday laws might learn right in their own midst that "temperance in all things" has no connection whatever with Sunday observance. There is a people, represented in this city by several hundred—perhaps a thousand in all—who are practically the most ultra temperance people in the country, yet they do not observe Sunday at all. Many of them have been Sunday observers in the past, and were as conscientious and consistent in so doing as any others, yet many of them testify that it was not until they had changed their belief in this respect and assumed their present religious attitude that they really learned what true temperance is. They can point to many staunch Sunday observers who would fain enforce such observance by law, but are themselves not only users of intoxicating liquors but actually engaged in the traffic.

Oakland, Cal.