The American Sentinel 10
May 2, 1895
“A Problem for the Tennessee Legislature” American Sentinel 10, 18, p. 137.
THE action of the Governor of Tennessee in pardoning the imprisoned Adventists presents to the legislators of that State a problem worthy of their careful attention. AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.1
This pardon was granted unconditionally upon recommendation of the trial-judge, not only without any promise upon the part of the convicts that they would obey the law in the future, but in the face of explicit statements from them that they could not obey the law. AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.2
Nor was this all: several of the pardoned men were already under bonds to stand trial upon new indictments for violations of the same law under which they were imprisoned. Under these circumstances the pardon can be viewed in no other light than an arraignment of the law as unjust: and the question arises, What will the Legislature of Tennessee, now in session, do about it? AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.3
The American principle of government is, “that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.... That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men.” Will the Legislature of Tennessee see to it that the Seventh-day Adventists of that State are permitted to exercise the rights to which both judge and governor have in effect officially declared that they are entitled; if not under the laws of the State, certainly under that higher law to which all just governments are amenable, namely, the law of inalienable rights? AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.4
The State of Tennessee may, in the pride of her authority, refuse the plea of Justice and continue the persecution; but might does not make right. “What other nations call religious toleration we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade these rights, but justice still confirms them.” 1 It has been admitted by members of the Legislature of Tennessee that the Sunday law does infringe natural rights; that it does trench upon the religious liberty of the individual; but it is claimed that there is a “practical difficulty” in the way of repeal. But what is the “practical difficulty”! It is simply the intolerance of the people, the indifference of the law-makers and the groundless assumption that religion cannot survive without special protection by the State. AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.5
But such a “practical difficulty” is entirely aside from the constitution of Tennessee. That instrument recognizes no religion and makes no provision for the fostering of any religious cult or creed; it recognizes no other power than that of persuasion for enforcing religious observances. Let the Sunday keepers of Tennessee recommend their religion by deeds of benevolence, by lives of virtue and by deeds of piety, and they will accomplish vastly more for Christianity than could possibly be accomplished by the use of the entire police power of the State. In the language of another: “Let them combine their efforts to instruct the ignorant, to relieve the widow and the orphans, to promulgate to the world the gospel of their Saviour, recommending its precepts by their habitual example: government will find its legitimate object in protecting them. It cannot oppose them, and they will not need its aid. Their moral influence will then do infinitely more to advance the true interests of religion, than any measure which they may call on Congress to enact. The petitioners [for the discontinuance of Sunday mails] do not complain of any infringement upon their own rights. They enjoy all that Christians ought to ask at the hands of any government—protection from all molestation in the exercise of their religious sentiments.” 2 AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.6
The rights asserted by the Tennessee Adventists are the natural, inherent, inalienable rights with which every man is endowed by his Creator. They may be trampled upon by the State, they may be denied by the Legislative, the Judicial, and the Executive branches of the Government of the State of Tennessee or of all the States or of the United States, but they do not thereby cease to be rights, and they will one day be recognized as such; possibly never at the bar of any earthly tribunal, but in the words of Elder Colcord before the Circuit Court of Rhea County: “There is a time coming when there will be a change, and God and not man will be the Judge—and in that court questions will be decided, not by the statute books of Tennessee, but by the law of God.” AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.7
“One Day in Seven But No Day in Particular” American Sentinel 10, 18, pp. 137, 138.
THE following question and answer appeared in the Christian Statesman of March 30:— AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.1
Q. 32.—A.F.B., Evergreen, Ala. “If you can refer us to anything in the Bible for Sunday, as strong as the Sabbath commandment is for Saturday, I would be pleased to see it. ‘The seventh day (Saturday) is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.’ Why not keep it? It is a perpetual sign between God and his people. If you do not keep it you have no perpetual sign between you and your God.” AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.2
Ans.—The fourth commandment is “strong” for neither Saturday nor Sunday. It is strong for “the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” The institution for rest and worship of one day in seven or the seventh day is that for which the fourth commandment has its place in the Decalogue. A mere day cannot be a sign between God and his people. The institution of the Sabbath, a day religiously kept and honored as a day of rest and worship, is such a sign. And this is to be a perpetual sign. The obligation to keep the Sabbath is a perpetual obligation of immutable moral law. This immutable moral law does not change with the variations of solar days north or south of the equator, or east and west of any given meridian, or during the journeyings of the sun from topic to tropic or the journeyings of humanity from arctic to Antarctic seas or in either easterly or westerly direction round the world. The law of the Sabbath as embodied in the fourth commandment and in man’s nature is immutable law for man because it is universally and perpetually the same for all men in every part of the world. AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.3
Such juggling with Scripture is pitiful, and it illustrates to what lengths men will go to defend a cherished dogma. AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.4
With a hope of converting even the editor of the Christian Statesman from the error of his way, we will show the inconsistency of this attempted answer; and to do this we will begin with the scripture record of the origin of the Sabbath, as found in Genesis 2:1-3:— AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.5
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. AMS May 2, 1895, page 137.6
Now we ask in all candor, does this scripture teach that God rested on a particular day, or does it teach that he rested on an “institution” which is one day in seven but no day in particular? AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.1
The scripture says, “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested,” etc. Does this scripture teach that God sanctified and blessed a particular day or that he sanctified and blessed one day in seven but no day in particular? AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.2
The above illustrates the absurdity of the Statesman’s answer. But the Statesman, while making use of this jugglery against the seventh-day Sabbath, does not dare apply it to first-day observance. The Statesman speaks of the first day as a sanctified, holy day. But where did it get its holiness? The only biblical account of the hallowing of a Sabbath day, the Statesman insists does not apply to any particular day. For what reason, then, does the Statesman apply it to the first day of the week? Did an all-wise God not know which day to hallow and therefore hallowed no day in particular, and then left it for finite men like the editor of the Statesman to decide which day of the seven was the proper day upon which to place this holiness? AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.3
And did God, after handing to man his holiness to be placed on a particular day which he was not able to decide upon himself,—did he then commission men like the editor of the Christian Statesman to enforce this man-hallowed day on all other men under penalty of sin against God, and consequent final ruin: and in case a man should refuse to accept men like the editor of the Christian Statesman as vicegerent of God on earth, has God authorized them to use the heavy hand of civil law to compel him to honor the man-hallowed day? AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.4
We doubt not that at this point the Statesman will attempt to parry this fatal logic by asserting that although the holiness of the Sabbath institution is not necessarily associated with any particular day of the seven, and can therefore be shifted from one day to the other, nevertheless God himself, the Lord Jesus, or his inspired apostles must do the shifting and not man. However, this diplomatic dodge will avail nothing unless it can be shown from the Scriptures that they did so shift the holiness once placed on the seventh day, to the first day. But this no mortal man can do. AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.5
The Christian Statesman calls the first day of the week “the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” but while it is recorded that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” it is nowhere stated in the Scriptures that the Sabbath of the Lord has been transferred from the seventh day to the first day. The Statesman will contend that the Lord’s blessing and sanctification was temporarily attached to the seventh day of the week, but is now attached to the first day of the week; but no man can find a scripture record of the transfer of this blessing and sanctification to the first day of the week. AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.6
The Christian Statesman applies the term “Sabbath” to the first day of the week; but cannot find when the Lord of the disciples ever applied that term to any other than the seventh day. AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.7
The Christian Statesman asserts that although it was once sin to perform secular labor on the seventh day of the week, such labor can now be performed on that day without sin; but while teaching and practicing this, it is unable to produce a single scripture in support of its teaching and practice. AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.8
The Christian Statesman contends that at one time it was lawful to do secular work on the first day of the week, but that now it is a sin against God to perform such work on that day; and yet the Statesman cannot possibly find a single scripture to sustain this position. And what is more, it was this very lack of scriptural support for first day observance that led to the invention of the “one day in seven but no day in particular” theory. This theory was invented with a view to utilizing the fourth commandment in support of first-day observance. But centuries passed before the latter part of the sixteenth century did the Church seriously attempt to place the sacred robe of the fourth commandment on the pagan Sunday. AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.9
The utter absence of scriptural support for first-day holiness must drive every “one day in seven but no day in particular” advocate to the conclusion that all the sanctification and all the holiness placed on the first day of the week were placed there by man. For according to this position God did not intend to bless any particular day but only an institution which may be shifted from one day to another; but since neither God, the Lord Jesus, nor his inspired apostles ever shifted it from the seventh day on which it was first placed, to the first day, the holiness and sanctification claimed for Sunday are purely of human manufacture. AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.10
The Statesman hints at the close of its answer that the definite seventh day cannot be observed because of a difference of longitude and latitude. In all sincerity we ask, did not the Lord who created the world and who rested from his creative work on the seventh day, and then blessed and sanctified it “because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made;”—did not the Creator know the shape of the world which he had created? Or did he command the observance of the seventh day under the impression that it could be observed, and then several centuries later learn from the editor of the Christian Statesman and others that the world was so shaped that it was impossible to observe a particular day, and therefore the best that could be done under the circumstances would be to observe “one day in seven but no day in particular,” which must be understood to be the first day of the week and no other, always and everywhere, the world over, under penalty of fines and imprisonment in this life, and in the life to come everlasting torture in the flames of hell? AMS May 2, 1895, page 138.11
“Back Page” American Sentinel 10, 18, p. 144.
LET it not be forgotten that while Seventh-day Adventists are being prosecuted in Tennessee for Sunday work, iron furnaces, coke ovens, railroad trains and newspaper offices run as usual and are not interfered with. In Dayton, where eight Seventh-day Adventists were recently imprisoned, a large iron furnace is operated every Sunday, a Sunday paper is published, livery stables do business, trains are run, and nobody is disturbed, nobody is indicted; but an Adventist, three miles away in the hills, pulls fodder, and he is arrested and imprisoned for committing a nuisance! AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.1
IN our issue of March 14, we had occasion to denounce the persecution of Robert G. Ingersoll by certain clergymen of Hoboken, N. Y., who revived an old statute against blasphemy, and attempted thereby to prevent Mr. Ingersoll from delivering his lecture against the Bible. In this article we carelessly attributed a mercenary motive to Mr. Ingersoll. This was unjust, both to Mr. Ingersoll and the SENTINEL. The SENTINEL has no power, no occasion and no right to sit in judgment on the motives of any man. The SENTINEL is Christian, and Christ said: “If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.2
MORE than forty years ago the people who publish the AMERICAN SENTINEL published to the world a prediction based on Scripture, that the time would comes in the not distant future when the Sabbath question would be prominently before the country,—that it would be discussed in pulpit and press, and in legislative halls, and that the fruits of all this would be the enactment and enforcement of seventh-day observers. Much of this is now being fulfilled and more soon will be. Die Rundschau, a Lutheran paper, of wide circulation and influence, published in Chicago, introduces an editorial criticising the Sunday-law movement, with the following true statement of the present universal agitation of the question:— AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.3
In most States of the Union the Sunday question is once more a burning one. Not only the subject of discussion in the pulpit, in religious conventions, in the religious periodicals of the sects, in tracts and pamphlets, but also on the floors and in the committee chambers of legislatures. Almost everywhere there is a powerful movement afoot to effect the establishment or recognition of rigid Sunday laws. Thus there are, for example, before the New York Legislature alone, no less then six bills giving attention to this matter. General recognition of Sunday as a day of rest is sought, and the State is to effect the same by means of legislation and by forcing all to obey such legislation. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.4
Such facts are indeed significant. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.5
REV. DR. SNYDER, of St. Louis, has this to say in the Globe-Democrat, of the seventh part of time theory which attempts to clothe the first day of the week with the authority of the fourth commandment:— AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.6
Rev. Mr. Kirtley preached recently on the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” and said: “The Sabbath institution that we have is the same institution given in Eden commanded through Moses, approved by Christ and observed by Christians.” It is a perpetual wonder to me that intelligent and well-informed people, like Mr. Kirtley, will continue to repeat that statement, year after year, and generation after generation. It is strikingly and singularly inaccurate. The Sabbath day of the old biblical dispensation is the seventh day of the week. Any Israelite would have been amazed to hear the suggestion that any man could observe the Sabbath on any other day. There is not a word or a hint in the Bible that observance of the Sabbath meant the observance of one seventh of the time! It is stated in the Bible that the miracle of the falling manna testified to the sacredness of the specific twenty-four hours between sunset on Friday till sunset on Saturday. To attempt to transfer all the sanctions of the Sabbath from the seventh day of the week to the first day is a monstrous perversion of the Scripture. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.7
There is not an advocate of the one day in seven theory but would ridicule such jugglery if he were the seventh son in his father’s family to whom for good reasons had been willed a larger portion of the father’s estate, and it was attempted to deprive him of the property on the ground that one son of the seven was all the will called for, and that it made no difference with which son the counting commenced. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.8
A TENNESSEE paper, in the defense of the prosecution of the Adventists under the Sunday law of that State, says: “We had just as well uphold the Mormons in their polygamous belief, as to sanction and support these Adventists in their belief relative to the proper day to keep holy.” AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.9
This is a confusion that the trouble is with the belief of the Adventists in relation to the day to be kept holy, and not with their practice of working on Sunday. It explains likewise why it is that others who work on Sunday are not prosecuted: it is because Sunday work by those who do not observe another day is not a protest against the substitution of Sunday for the Sabbath; while working on Sunday after having rested upon the seventh day is an emphatic protest against Sunday sacredness. It is the Sabbath rest coupled with the Sunday work that offends, and not the Sunday work itself. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.10
The reference in the quotation to Mormonism and Mormon polygamy is only for the purpose of exciting prejudice. Those who are troubled upon this question ought to send three cents to this office for “Religious Liberty and the Mormon Question,” a twenty-page tract, showing the difference between Sunday laws and laws prohibiting polygamy. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.11
PREIST ELLIOTT, of the “Paulist Fathers,” who has been lecturing to non-Catholics in Michigan and Ohio, closes a summing up of the results of his efforts with the following in the Catholic World for April:— AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.12
In the many non-Catholics missions which we have given, nearly all of them in public halls, we have learned many strange things, but the strangest of all is the ripeness of the harvest. The fruit is so ripe that it is falling from the trees and is being carried away by every passer by. Even the religious perplexities among our countrymen, their very divisions and sub-divisions spring from their eagerness for the truth. They want to be holy with the holiness of Christ, and that makes them enter and then makes them leave one and now another denomination. They are a religious people who are accessible to Catholic argument—would that all bishops, all provincials of communities, all priests and nuns, would write this fact on their hearts! Let it be posted up at every recruiting station of our Lord’s peaceful army that the American people can be drawn to listen to this church. Let is be announced in the seminaries, let it be placarded in the novitiates and colleges and scholasticates the world over: Behold, THE GREAT REPUBLIC: IT IS A WHITE FOR THE HARVEST. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.13
Priest Elliott manifests a commendable zeal, which, if exercised on the side of truth, would be a power for good. It is becoming more and more apparent that the American Republic is looked upon by the pope and the papacy as the ripest and most important harvest field of the world. And the great scheme of the papacy is to capture the bell sheep of liberty’s flock and thus make easy the scheme to corral all within the fold of the Vatican. It is a stupendous scheme and is succeeding. AMS May 2, 1895, page 144.14