The Sabbath Commandment and Sunday Laws
By Editor
We wish to keep this one point before our readers continually, because there is continual effort to blind them to the facts: The Sabbath commandment is just as sacred regarding the day as the proportion of time. Divine wisdom was manifest in giving the proportion of time—one seventh. Divine wisdom is not less manifest in setting apart the very day on which that time shall fall, in order to avoid confusion and continually to bring before His creatures the badge of His Creatorship. Yet before us is a report of a sermon from Neh. 13:19, preached by Dr. Charles Edward Locke, of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, not long ago, in favor of Sunday and a Sunday rest law; and he quotes in support of that text in Nehemiah, which pertains only to the seventh day, the Sabbath commandment of Ex. 20:8-11, which also pertains only to the seventh day. No one can keep a Sabbath day holy which God has not made holy, for He only can impart holiness; and no one can keep the day holy which He has made holy unless he himself is a holy man, unless God dwells in him. Therefore the utter futility of a Sabbath law in order that men shall keep sacred the Sabbath day. He declares that three things are necessary to the Sunday law—agitation, education, organization. Let the agitation go on; we will do our part to bring to men’s minds the true source of the Sabbath. Let the education go on; it will help men to see that the only standard book of education there is on the Sabbath question is the Bible, and that declares for the seventh-day Sabbath. But as to organization, any organization whatsoever that stands for compulsory Sabbath observance is contrary to God’s Word, and to every element of Christianity. California is unique in this, that it has no Sunday law, no Sabbath law made by man. Let California stand there. She represents in that very thing the truest idea of what government ought to be, according to the Author of Christianity. Just as soon as she breaks over and admits religious legislation, in that very thing she helps to pave the path back to the Dark Ages.