MR. RADER ON THE SABBATH QUESTION.
By Editor
At the recent "Sabbath Association" in Oakland, Mr. Rader, pastor of a Congregational Church in San Francisco, and a prominent leader in the Endeavor movement for "Christian Citizenship," said among other things in his stirring address the following (we quote from the San Francisco Chronicle):— "The community which lacks sufficient public sentiment to close saloons on Sunday is not politically Christian. Something is radically wrong when full churches and full saloons exist side by side in one city. The open church and the open saloon make a social paradox. The closed saloon and the open church is the ideal condition." If Mr. Rader and others who are pressing the "Christian Citizenship" propaganda would read the Book of Christianity, the Bible, they would there learn that there is no such condition as "politically Christian." Christianity is a matter not of politics, or of expediency, or of worldliness; it is a matter of life and principle. They would learn also that throughout all the earth things are "radically wrong;" for "the whole world lieth in the wicked one." The saloon is in harmony with many in this world of lost sinners, and they prefer the saloon to any other place. Because of that very thing, the church is here; she is here to save the lost, not by political methods, but to win them by the love and grace of Jesus Christ. The thing "radically wrong" is sin, and only the Gospel received by faith can cure that. The paradox will exist as long as God's people are faithful and sin is present. Mr. Rader further says that— "The ground of our opposition is not the influence of Sunday closing upon workingmen, nor the historical Sabbath, sustained by proof texts from Scripture, nor upon the fact that in this State we have no civic sabbath. The open saloon on Sunday is a disgrace, whether labor is profited or not. The economy of the problem is subordinate to the righteousness of it. The open saloon is a menace to sabbath sanctity, whether the Seventh-day Adventists are right or wrong. No hair-splitting definitions of the Sabbath materially affect the broader basal principle underlying the whole question." But if the Seventh-day Adventists are right, there is no sanctity to Sunday, save the false garb with which ecclesiasticism has clothed it. If Seventh-day Adventists are wrong, and Sunday is holy, no saloon can make it otherwise. In its own intrinsic worth it will stand apart from "the arm of flesh." In fact, it will stand of itself. But Sunday is not of God. It has no holiness in itself, no support in the Scriptures; and it is because of this very thing that the law of the Sabbath, the divine garment woven in the loom of heaven for the seventh day, is stolen to cover the nakedness of "the wild solar holiday of all pagan times," and to endeavor to make it appear that underlying it is a "basal principle" of Sabbath obligation. The men who do this may be honestly deceived, but Satan is not. What this Sunday-sabbath question is likely to come to is stated by Mr. Rader:— "Approached on any side a discussion of sabbath [Sunday] desecration opens up every living topic agitating the public mind. It is a hornet's nest, which, once disturbed, brings out every phase of the secular spirit and every form of materialism. It follows, therefore, that the matter of sabbath observance is logically interwoven with the whole problem of the liquor traffic. Temperance men must not fight each other before this institution. Had Sherman's men engaged in personal strife before Savannah, and had they contended for personal opinions, Savannah never would have been presented to President Lincoln as a Christmas present. Firemen, meeting on a hot and trembling wall, representing different companies, must not fight each other, but, animated by a single purpose, fight the raging flames. Our temperance work is sadly divided in the United States. Men are quarreling before Savannah and Richmond; men are fighting on the broken walls, amid smoke and flame and perishing souls." It may be well to again repeat what we have said so often, that there is no Sunday "desecration," because there is no Sunday sacredness. That which is not sacred can not be desecrated. It may seem sacred to one, but that gives it no intrinsic sacredness, or sacredness of any kind apart from himself, unless it is true that his wish and will should be supreme