“The Survival of the Fittest.”
LAWS for the protection of human rights are necessary; but class institutions, among which are all religious days and dogmas, must depend for their existence and promotion on their intrinsic worth and the loyalty, devotion, and zeal of their adherents. If these institutions are worthy to live, if they are of benefit to mankind, if there is back of them real intrinsic value, if they are founded in truth, their worth will be recognized; and they will be perpetuated in the hearts and lives of their constant and multiplying constituency. But if these institutions can not thus be maintained, they deserve to die. Above all classes, Christians should recognize the fact and indorse this sentiment. Jesus Christ declared: “Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” Matt. 15:13. A practical and vital question before the world to-day is the Sunday question, and the demand that the day shall be protected by legislation. Men may bolster up the Sunday by tradition and false teaching; they may put behind it all the combined power of civil government the world over; but if it is not of God, it will surely perish, and will include in its destruction all those who have to the end identified themselves with it. But if it be of God, let its religious friends look to God with the calm faith of an Elijah. The Rock, and all builded upon it, will endure. All the storms of infidelity and opposition may beat and break upon it, but the waves and winds will prove to be but harmless spray, which will whiten, harden, and polish its immovable strength. We leave these queries with those of our readers who hold to the Sunday institution: Is not the appeal to civil law a tacit confession that they know that the Sunday is not of Christ, that it is not of God’s planting? Or, if they believe the Sunday to be of God, does not their appeal to civil law show that they have lost faith in the “all power” of the Gospel?