p. 264 | SENSIBLE by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1880

SENSIBLE.

By Editor

We do not greatly admire Dewitt Talmage, but he certainly said a good thing in speaking of the Sunday railroad accident in Scotland:—

“Some unwise and morbid people may say, ‘So much for Sabbath-breaking;’ for there are people who are very generous in the distribution of God's judgments, and if a party sailing out on the Sabbath day get drowned, these critics immediately annex the disaster to the infraction of holy hours. Now, I believe in a strict observance of the holy Sabbath, but I think that the Lord's thunderbolts are too heavy for us to handle! And the sooner that kind of morbid moralization is driven out of our Sabbath-school libraries the better.

“Who knows on what errand of necessity or mercy those passengers got on the train that day! The argument that such men make goes too far, according to their own argument; because among the multitudes of rail-trains on both continents, on all continents, that Sabbath day they all reached their destination except one; and because of every one thousand passengers on that Lord's Day, on the different continents nine hundred and ninety-nine got safely home. Ergo, Sabbath traveling is commendable.”

Judgment and judgment decisions are in the hands of God. It is as presumptuous as it is unwise to affect to make these decisions in advance. “Judge nothing before the time.” It is well to remember that the Scriptures teach that God knows how “to reserve the unrighteous to the day of judgment to be punished.” Men are too ready to solace themselves with the mishaps of others.