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A GOOD PRECEDENT

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 42.

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A GOOD PRECEDENT.

By William Nelson Glenn

A CONTRIBUTOR to the Pacific Christian says:—
"I am in favor of a civil Sunday law. It should be both state and national. . . . "When God gave a law for the government of a nation—the Israelites—he enacted such a law, a good precedent surely. I would not ask for a Sunday law upon religious grounds. I would demand it upon the rights of the people. Neither Jesus nor Paul asked for legislation in behalf of the church. She needs no human legislation. Leaving Christianity out of the question, it still remains true that the highest good of the people demands one day out of seven for rest and home."
It is remarkable how people are "deceiving and being deceived" by that threadbare paradox, a "civil Sunday law," when the arguments in support of the idea invariably fall back upon a religious premise. When and where did God ever give a law for a civil rest day? He never gave but the one law for a weekly rest day, and he made that a holy day, to be observed religiously. He never ordained a Sabbath day for any other purpose, and he never ordained any other weekly Sabbath than the seventh day. If man needed a civil rest day every week, it is strange that it took the Lord so long to find it out.
"Neither Jesus nor Paul asked for legislation in behalf of the church." Nor did they ask for any other sort of legislation. They never asked for a "civil Sunday law," or any other kind of Sunday law. They never asked for a civil rest day, yet it is reasonable to suppose that man's physical requirements were the same then as to-day, and the "rights of the people" were the same then as to-day. Moreover it is reasonable to infer that Jesus and Paul were as wise with reference to the "highest good of the people" as any one in our day, and were as true to the best interests of the people. In the examples and teaching of Jesus and Paul we have "a good precedent surely." W. N. G.