A Vain Purpose

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Sep 13, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 37.

A Vain Purpose.—The editor of the Charleston, S. C., News says: "We have small patience with those who, while professing to enforce observance of a sacred command, do no more than seek to regulate the manner and degree of violations of it."

The whole principle of enforced Sunday observance is exposed to view in that one critical sentence. Assuming Sunday to be the Sabbath of the Lord, the Sunday law, as shown by its exceptions, always presumes to declare who may violate it, and in what ways, and to what extent. All of which is on the principle of indulgence, which is a purely Roman invention; and this shows that the whole Sunday institution and the civil laws sought to uphold it are of Roman origin. As a Roman institution, Rome may be allowed to regulate its observance or its violation for those who accept it as such—and for them alone. But she has no right to regulate or to enforce its observance upon others. Nor has any civil government the right to regulate its observance or enforce it upon any one on behalf of Rome, or at the behest of any of her imitators. For men to set up a human institution in place of God's law, or to grant men exemption from the observance of God's law, is nothing short of blasphemy; it is assuming the prerogative of God.