2828.— Temperance and the Sabbath.
By Editor
Is not the temperance question as important to discuss as the Sabbath question?
F. F. F. The temperance question is always important; so also is the Sabbath question; but a man may be truly a temperance man and not be a Sabbath-keeper or a Christian. No man can truly be a Sabbath-keeper without being a temperance man. The latter reform always goes with the former. Why? Because the Sabbath is a memorial of God's creative power and loving Fatherhood. Had man always observed the Sabbath, He never would have been an idolater; nor would he ever have yielded himself to the abominable lusts that have carried away so many millions of the race. The Sabbath commandment is, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." That implies the remembrance of it outside of the Sabbath day itself. Every day of the week was numbered with respect to the Sabbath. It was "One Day to the Sabbath," "Second Day to the Sabbath," "Third Day to the Sabbath," and so on, until the Sabbath itself came. Remembering that commandment in the letter and spirit of it, man could never forget God, nor his obligation to God. Having yielded himself to God he could never give himself up to the sins of gluttony or drunkenness. Every power of his being would be laid upon the altar of God. He could no more prostitute his mental and spiritual powers to the lust of appetite than he could yield himself to bow to the altars of Baal. Consequently whereever true Sabbath reform has obtained through the ages, there is connected with it true temperance. Furthermore, it is God's time now for a Sabbath reform. Thus has every age ended. The patriarchal age ended with Sabbath reform, and connected with that was the true temperance question. As God led Israel out of Egypt, that temperance reform took hold of not simply wine and strong drink, but upon diet as well. There was true Sabbath reform in the closing of the Jewish age, when our Lord Jesus Christ showed what the Sabbath meant and should mean; and there was also true dietetic and temperance reform during which time was given that wonderfully comprehensive rule, "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." We are nearing the close of the Christian age. Our Lord is about to come. One of the mighty reforms which will sweep this earth, antagonizing all pure legal reforms which seek to embody in dead statute-law the living principles of the Gospel, is reform upon the Sabbath, the closing of the breach that has been made in God's law; and inseparably connected with that is true temperance reform; a reform message which takes in the whole man, spirit, and soul, and body. The Sabbath question is not the mere question of the day of twenty-four hours. There is connected with it the very question of divine authority and full allegiance to God in worship, and all that is highest and best in the life of the Christian.