A SECULAR PAPER ON SUNDAY.
FROM an editorial in the Birmingham (Ala.) "Ledger" of February 2 we take the following excerpt. After referring to two measures which the Legislature had passed, it refers to a Sunday bill before that body, and thus states its convictions concerning Sunday. Now comes the question of whether the business of the roads will be stopped on Sunday. That would be bad for the State. The argument that Sunday is the Sabbath established by God, when He rested on the seventh day, will not hold. He "blessed the seventh day and hallowed it." He did not bless the first day of the week, nor did He hallow it. Again, on Sinai He said, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work." He did not say that of the first day of the week, nor is there a word in the Bible to justify any change from the seventh day to the first day of the week. Not one single divine word to justify the change. So there is no sin in failing to keep Sunday as the Sabbath. The change was made in the early days of the Christian church, but so far as we know it was not by divine command. We Christians keep Sunday as the Sabbath, but we are not all the people of the world. We have established it as a day of rest and it is observed. We do not have any divine order or sanction for the change. The Bible has been searched many times, but there is no word about it. The only passage that can be found that even bears on the point is one that says, "On the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God has prospered him." That is taken to mean a recognized change to the first day, but it is not so stated. That is the moral status of the Sunday law.