The Statesman and Civil Sabbath Law
The Christian Statesman denounces most bitterly a "Saturday Sabbath" contemporary because that contemporary said that for government to compel men to obey the law of the Sabbath, God's law of love, would compel men to be hypocrites, because love cannot be compelled. And the Statesman, with its wonderful National Reform logic, thus replies in part:— "According to this deliverance, society may not attempt to compel lawless men to respect the rights of life or property, as that would be making hypocrites, since the law of God commands, 'Thou shalt not kill.'" The trouble with the Statesman and all its class is that, desiring to put itself in the place of God, it can see no difference between God's laws and the laws of man which happen to read the same way. "The law [of God] is spiritual;" it therefore cannot be enforced by civil government. The civil law guarding property and life must necessarily exist whether the government were religious or otherwise, or whether men ever heard of the Decalogue or not. CHRIST AND THE SABBATH: Or Christ in the Old Testament and the Sabbath in the New, by Elder James White. Paper covers, fifty-six pages, sent post-paid for ten cents. Address, PACIFIC PRESS, Oakland, Cal.