THE SUNDAY LAW by B. L. Aldrich

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 7, 1881

THE SUNDAY LAW.

By B. L. Aldrich

BY PROFESSOR B. L. ALDRICH.

THERE seems to be in human nature possibilities of evil far beyond the measurement of the most Calvinistic doctrine of depravity. Notwithstanding the apparent progress of charity and the improvement of civilization, the law that certain periods of time will bring about the maturation of oppressive ideas, even when the world is condemning the cruel old days of persecution, is again to obtain recognition. History repeats itself by returning to the stake and fagot as well as by turning its plowshares and pruning-hooks into swords. Religion, as it has been abused by men, has had its periodical and local fits of tyranny in all the ages, and often those who have but just escaped from the ordeal of tribulation are the most earnest in seeking to oppress others.

As we are now at the beginning of a reign of religious tyranny, big with portents, we are not astonished to see that those who are most zealously enlisting in the army that is to make war with the remnant of the church belong to the class who in the inquisition days were the staple victims. The graves of the persecuted Baptist dead are hardly molded, and the ankles that ached in the stocks hardly rested, before we hear representatives of the old victim church declare that the penalties for working on Sunday must be made severe.

We see them, mirabile dictu! uniting with the children of the Papacy to bear their part in provoking the wrath that shall be poured out on all those that worship the image. No manifestation could more positively show the hollowness of the general Christian profession of obedience to the Gospel—the meek, love-winning Gospel—than this Sunday-law movement. It can excuse itself by the Gospel no way, for the New Testament in no place teaches that the first day of the week is the Sabbath, but on the contrary teaches that the seventh day is, and if Christianity, as laid down by Christ, teaches anything, it is that men are not to be coerced into church conformity nor forced to abide by any rule of faith.

Baptists are accustomed to call the first day of the week the "Lord's Day." But on what authority? Certainly not on any authority of God's word. Now therefore, before they proceed to advocate a law to compel all men to refrain from work on Sunday, it would be a wise counsel for them to stop and consider by a careful examination of Scripture whether Sunday is God's holy Sabbath, or one of the days established by the Romans.

Sunday is just about as much the Sabbath as sprinkling is baptism. When I was a Baptist I supposed I was separate from all the traditional errors of Papacy, but I found that in keeping the first day of the week and breaking the seventh I was disobeying God and exercising allegiance to the Pope. It is, therefore, strange and true that Baptists, who professedly reject tradition and appeal to the Bible, should at last show a fatal weakness of adhering to a heathen day under direction of the Pope, and abetting the disgraceful cause of persecuting all who faithfully cling to the Gospel of Christ.

When did Jesus tell his disciples that they must lay their hand upon the arm of civil government in order to enforce Sunday as a day of rest or any other religious peculiarity? How does it become the business of the church to be enacting rest-days for the nation? Does it come properly within its sphere of duty to regulate the order of work and rest, to prescribe sanitary laws in society, and to say when its wheels of industry must run and when they shall stand still? Is the ecclesiastical power once more going to reach after the control of the State to disfranchise and proscribe and to threaten with effect our free people, feeling for their heartstrings by grasping the wrists of legislators?

No laws can ever be passed to prevent recreation on Sunday, as unbelievers will oppose that, and most church members themselves do not attach any sanctity to that day; but legislation is intended to affect those who conscientiously regard the commandment, "Six days shalt thou labor," as binding as "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord," and will violate the

law of man when it viciously conflicts with the law of God.

It is interesting to watch the signs of the Lord's coming, and, in the fulfillment of the prophecy of setting up the image, to follow up the details of the first approaches towards the consummation of that Protestant effigy, which is the product of caressing many years, the falsehoods of the papal church. We have long asked what would be the outcome of so much error in the doctrines and ordinances. The question will soon be answered, for prophecy has provided a great provocation for the swift and terrible return of an avenging Lord. The image must be set up, but woe to the sculptors and woe to the idolaters that cast themselves down before it.