Religious Conventions and the Sabbath
The Christian Statesman suggests a series of religious conventions around the world in the year 1900 A.D. First, a World's Convention of Christian Reforms at New York or Pittsburg during the closing week of the nineteenth century and the opening week of the twentieth; a World's Missionary Conference at Bombay in the latter part of the winter; Evangelical Alliance at Jerusalem in the early spring; a World's Sunday School Convention a month later at Cairo, Egypt; a World's Y. M. C. A. Convention in Rome in early summer; a World's Endeavor Convention in London in the latter part of summer, Epworth League and other societies joining. In the first of these conventions, at New York or Pittsburg, "Christians of all creeds," says the Statesman, "could unite without embarrassment." In order for this to be, a change would have to take place; for at the present time nothing so embarrasses a National Reform Convention as the presence of one or more earnest Sabbath-keeping Christians. Would the Sabbath keepers at that time be all perverted to Sunday by the coercive methods of National Reformers, such as the chain-gang, etc.? Or would the Sabbath keepers be all killed off? Or would they in that day, as they are now declared to be, be counted as infidels? We know that the Statesman does not anticipate any such good thing as that the great mass of Sunday keepers will turn from the pa-papal day to the Sabbath of the Lord, for it proposes to hold a Sunday school convention. Or will it be at that time that Christ the Lord will be reigning with his saints in the New Jerusalem? We do not know; but this we do know, that as long as the present situation of things exists, just as long as the professed church of Christ walks contrary to the teachings of Christ and his word, just so long the truth of God will embarrass them.