Our Work and Workers by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 38.

Our Work and Workers

By Editor

Our Work and Workers' department is much fuller than usual this week, while we have but little in our Mission Fields. But the matter in the former is of a character which will really do for both, and we are sure will be of interest to all. We have the quasi-promise that our correspondent in New South Wales will present to the readers of the SIGNS in several articles a description of the Australian field. Our readers will be glad to learn through Brother Chapman of the interest in the Tahitian group and surrounding islands; and the description of the life of the Lapps, by one of their own number, will be of interest. Then there are the Field Notes, besides.

Among the distinctive characteristics of the Prohibition party claimed by the Rev. B. W. Williams in the July American Journal of Politics, is that of the maintenance by the State "of the weekly rest day." Of course this is equivalent to a statement that Prohibitionists demand the passage and enforcement of Sunday laws. He says: "The Prohibition party alone declares for the preservation of such a day." And it is for that very reason, for the reason that such declaration is a declaration for a union of Church and State and all the consequent evils of religious intolerance and persecution, that every true lover of liberty should refuse to have aught to do with such a party.

Sabbatarians, Sundarians, Saturdarians, et al.—Some persons whom we esteem have criticised the use in the SIGNS of the term "Sundarians" as applied to the Sunday-law people, and we are asked: "Is it good policy to adopt the slurs of the opposition?" We have not adopted the term "Sundarians" as a slur. It is a word properly formed and properly applied, and is no more a term of reproach than "Sunday-keepers." The term "Sabbatarians" as applied to Sunday-keepers, is erroneous. They are not Sabbatarians, and only those are Sabbatarians who observe the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day. To the proper use of this term we have no objection. The term "Saturdarians" as applied to seventh-day keepers is erroneous and falsely applied; for those who properly observe the seventh-day Sabbath do not keep Saturday; for Saturday begins at midnight Friday night, and ends the following midnight, but the biblical Sabbath begins at sunset the evening of the sixth day, Friday eve, and closes the following sunset, so that the world's Saturday and the Bible seventh day are not identical. Therefore to call the observers of the Sabbath by "Saturdarians" is to use a term falsely. But Sunday-keepers say that they believe in Sunday laws; most of their laws read "Sunday;" they call their services Sunday services, and their schools on that day Sunday schools; and declare that they are working for Sunday laws, for "the American Sunday." Why then should "Sundarians" be considered an improper term or a "slur?" We never knew a Sunday observer to object to it. Why is it not as good as "Sunday-keepers," or "Sunday-law people?" It is certainly much more convenient, shorter, and more easily written. Is it not right and proper? Is it not then perfectly proper, and perfectly right; and is not right the best "policy"?

The Baptist Ensign of Minneapolis is quoted by the Literary Digest as saying, after referring to the different views of Christ's coming:—

It should be added that side by side with the expectation of Christ's coming this year the Seventh-day Adventists are planning for the extension of their peculiar views among the heathen! Further comment might spoil the force of that statement.

Now the Ensign knew, if it knew anything about that people and their views of prophecy at all, that Seventh-day Adventists were not, are not, expecting Christ's coming this year in the sense conveyed by the above words and what goes before. And if they do not know this, they had no right thus to speak. The language seems to imply a desire on the part of the writer to be witty at the expense of truth, else why the implied untruth? Better things could once be expected from a Baptist source. If we are wrong in our interpretation, we stand ready to apologize.