DOUBLY MISTAKEN by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 24, 1900

DOUBLY MISTAKEN.

By Editor

THE Fruits and Leaves of the Tree of Life, a wonderfully long name for a little paper, has the following:—

"The W. C. T. U. National Convention was held last October in Seattle, Wash. We learn they were sorely lobbied and pressed by legalists, till actually they gave up work for our legal sabbath, and lost their Sunday department. O dear sisters, shall your brothers now fight this battle alone? Can it be possible that you do not understand that there is no law from Maine to California, South or North, that prohibits any man from keeping sabbath on Saturday, on Monday, or on any other day? And that Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:13, etc., indicate a Christian right, plainly, for any nation to make a legal sabbath day, and, farther, it binds us for conscience' sake to observe the law? We need not question you more. Certainly a little reflection is enough."

But our little contemporary is doubly mistaken. (1) The W. C. T. U. were not sorely lobbied and pressed to give up work for Sunday; and (2) they did not give up their Sunday department. There was presented a resolution to change the constitution, which will virtually abolish the legal Sunday department, but action will not take place on this till the next annual convention. If the Fruits and Leaves had read the report in the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, it would have learned just what was done, with the fullest report of the discussion. Fruits and Leaves is a Holiness paper. Is holiness promoted by civil law? Is legalism necessary to it? What does it mean by "legalists" anyway—those who believe in each person being left free to obey God's law, or those who wish to compel others to obey some law which the compellers may think to be God's law? Once more. No man or men can keep God's Sabbath in any other place than where the Lord Himself placed it. Think of this.