RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IN RARATONGA.
INTOLERANCE and oppression always go with error, with men who either do not know the theory even of the truth, or, knowing its form, reject its spirit. This has ever been marked as regards the Sabbath question. The Pharisees of old had "the form of knowledge and truth in the law" respecting the Sabbath, but they did not have the spirit of the law. The law was to them a thing without, not a living principle within. Hence they persecuted Jesus because He did not keep the Sabbath in their way. The Sunday institution, having its origin in sun-worship, has always had connected with it a spirit of intolerance. Good men observed it, and have been good men, accepted of God, in spite of error. Having the rest of Christ in the heart, they were charitably disposed toward all. Erroneous, unwise zeal makes persecutors of even these. And as the Sabbath question is agitated more and more, as the Spirit of God stirs up hearts to investigation or duty, there will be increased religious legislation and persecution. Just now Raratonga and surroundings are in the throes of a religious revolution. When discovered and evangelized the natives were taught to keep the seventh day, believing it to be the first. Recently, as the truth of the question has been laid before the people, they have learned that they were observers of the true Sabbath, the Sabbath observed by Jesus Christ. At this point came in the spirit of traditional Sunday intolerance. The missionaries and other mistaken men secured a law requiring a change of day, demanding that the people of the islands shall put their week one day ahead, and worship on Sunday instead of the Sabbath. The nations, those who are really Christians, do not take kindly to the idea, and an oppressive, intolerant spirit has been aroused on the part of the Sunday advocates, even to the extent of giving orders that a new meeting-house used by the non-Sunday-keeping natives be burned. While we regret the strife, we are glad of the agitation. It is said that the natives have done more hard, independent thinking during the last few months than for years. This is good. Nor is this all due by any means to the work of seventh-day missionaries, because the excitement, the unrest, the opposition to unreasonable and oppressive laws, are manifest in entirely new districts where seventh-day people have done nothing. Why will not the representatives of the L. M. S. put themselves on the side of the truth as it is in Jesus? The society's native paper argues that the Lord is not particular as regards any one day; He requires only a seventh part of time. Then why not leave the natives free to choose which seventh? Let the friends of the truth pray for the cause in Raratonga.