One of the great questions in the religious world to-day is the Sabbath question. It is rapidly becoming a perplexing and overshadowing question in politics. At this very writing there are five bills before the Congress of the United States directly bearing upon this question.
The Christian world is divided upon the Sabbath. Nominally, the great majority of them observe with more or less regard the first day of the week. Fully one-half of them, perhaps more, really believe that the seventh day is the Sabbath. Various motives hold them back from its observance. This very condition was set forth by the prophet eight hundred years before Christ. Visioning the last days he exclaims: "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision." Joel 3:14.
On pages five and six of this issue is set before us the Sabbath question. The origin of first-day observance is clearly given. It is not the true Sabbath; it is the false. It is not the rightful claimant to our hearts' service; it is a usurper. It is not the genuine; it is a counterfeit. Which will we choose?
We can understand how thousands revere the Sunday. It has come down to them thru a beloved church and ancestry. They say: "Father and mother observed it; grandfather and grandmother loved it. Good ministers, mighty men of God, taught it and kept it. Why should not we?"
So the business man feels over a counterfeit note of large denomination which has come into his hands. It is common to find English bank-notes indorsed all over the back by the names of firms and persons thru whose hands the note has passed. Such a note is, to the ordinary man, more acceptable than one crisp and new. He knows this firm, he has heard of that person; and all indorsing it have accepted it as good; surely it must be. Yet it is barely possible that it is a counterfeit after all. The last man tests it in every way possible, but it is proved false, and he, if honest, accepts the evidence and enters its amount as so much loss.
Even so the Sunday comes to us well-worn and often indorsed by reliable Christian souls, who believed it to be of God. We do not wish to lose it, and it is well to examine the evidence in its favor, if there is any. But the only evidence of worth to the genuine Christian is the word of God, and there it has no standing. At the Bank of Heaven it will not pass current, whatever its indorsements; for no number of indorsements, no human legislation, will make true that which is false, or turn a counterfeit into the divinely genuine. Between this counterfeit and the genuine the world is divided.
"What shall we do?"—Do as God says. Do as Jesus Christ did—keep all God's commandments. When you yield your counterfeit, you do not meet with loss: God gives you something better. You may meet with ridicule, you may be ostracized, persecuted, slain, by those who love the counterfeit; but you will suffer in glorious company; you will have the peace of God. You can see in His clearer light how the errors of the past were suffered of Him, and how He blessed despite the errors the loyal hearts who held the spirit of the true, tho outwardly observing the counterfeit; but you will also see that the mistakes, errors, sins, darkness, of no one else excuse you. Ask not the question, "Lord, what can I get rid of doing and still be saved?" "How can I evade the cross and obtain the crown?" but like the sinner of old, "Lord, what wilt THOU have ME to DO?" and you will hear again: "Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man;" "for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments." May we, dear reader, be able to say, "His commandments are not grievous."