CONVERT THE CHURCH by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 1, 1894

CONVERT THE CHURCH.

By Editor

If Christians would live up to their profession, there would be no need of their seeking the civil arm to enforce the observance of their institutions. Are Sunday laws demanded to help Sunday people to keep Sunday? At least they seem to be among the most notorious of Sunday breakers. The Christian Advocate, of New York, in its issue of November 30, in speaking of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railway, says that "it stands almost, if not absolutely, alone of all the great roads in its regard for the holy Sabbath [Sunday]. One of the conductors informed us that he had been employed twenty-eight years, and had never had to work on the sabbath." It is said to be a very prosperous road, although it has resisted all appeals to run Sunday, the "strongest persuaders" to Sunday breaking being Methodists. Says the Advocate:—

The late William E. Dodge, long connected with the road, informed us, before we became so well acquainted with it as now, that some of the strongest persuaders for sabbath trains were the representatives of certain Methodist camp meeting associations, who did all they could to break down the practice of the road; and he said that it gave him a great deal of pleasure to be able to say to them, "The Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad runs no trains on Sunday."

Would it not be well for the Methodist churches to themselves observe Sunday before they seek to compel others to do so? And if one railway can keep Sunday without law, why cannot others, especially when most of the stockholders and patrons are "Christians" of this "Christian nation"?