LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
A COMPENDIUM 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SABBATH 
 
 RELIGIOUS KND CIVIL LIBERTY. 
 
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 BY REV. R. G. ARMSTRONG, B.D., 
 
 A Member of the Northzvest Texas Conference. 
 
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 Printed for the Author. 
 
 Publishing House Methodist Episcopae Church, South. 
 
 Barbee & Smith, Agents, Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 1892, 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 When the third chapter of this " Compendium " was written, 
 the thought had not occurred to the author to publish it. It 
 was prepared for, and delivered as a lecture at the Georgetown 
 Chautauqua, July 3, 1890. It was received with great favor by 
 the audience, not a few of whom requested its publication in 
 tract form. The matter of publishing it was taken under con- 
 sideration, and after much delay and hesitation we have de- 
 termined upon giving it to the public. The first chapter was 
 also delivered as a lecture at the Georgetown Chautauqua, July 
 9, 1891. In preparing these two chapters for publication, we 
 have made some changes and added a little matter, which we 
 trust will make them the more appreciated. We have written 
 the second chapter expressly for this book. The subjects dis- 
 cussed in this "Compendium " are living issues that directly in- 
 volve our civil liberty, and the material, as well as the spiritual 
 prosperity of this commonwealth. It is devoutly hoped that 
 the attention of all professing Christians who may chance to 
 read this book will be so fixed upon the great questions here 
 so briefly discussed, that a. quickened zeal may follow. Chris- 
 tians cannot be too careful in respect to the sanctity of the 
 Lord's day. The language applied to political coxcombs and 
 demagogues, while it is somewhat nervous, is deemed condign. 
 W r e send this little volume out upon its mission with earnest 
 prayer to God thati t may resul t in much good. 
 
 * SSSSImiiSSmimmmmmm^^^ Author. 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 A Plea for the Sabbath. Page 
 
 Institution of the Sabbath— One-seventh Part of the Time 
 Sacred to God— Discoveries Among the Debris of Cities 
 of the Long Ago— The Fourth Commandment— Man's 
 Happiness Depends upon the Sabbath— The Sabbath and 
 the Saviour— Demanded by Nature— Chateaubriand— A 
 Chief Justice— Tyndail— Cox— Robertson— Farre— Xie- 
 me ver— Not to Be a Day of Dissipation— Everything Needs 
 Rest— Civil Government Must Conform to the Demands 
 of Nature — Desecration of the Sabbath Increases Crime 
 — Curtis — Crafts — Blackstone — Sabbath Laws Necessary 
 — Cook — Hopkins — Washington — Tucker — Spencer and 
 Mill vs. the Sabbath — Continental Sabbath for the Chris- 
 tian — Sabbath Laws Have Always Existed — Constantine 
 — Theodosius — Stonewall Jackson and Others — -The 
 " Columbian Exposition " — Dangers That Threaten the 
 Sabbath: Avarice, Sabbath Mails, Railroads, and Sabbath 
 Papers — Ministers Must Keep the Sabbath — Losing the 
 Sabbath — Whisky Traffic and Politicians vs. the Sabbath 
 — Texas Senate and Lieutenant Governor Pendleton 
 — Maetze Bill — Jefferson and Blackstone — The Old Scotch 
 Woman ancLthe Sabbath — The Ministry Must Be Firm — 
 The Appeal — The Sabbath Must Be Preserved 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Sabbath Changed from the Seventh to the First Day 
 by Divine Authority. 
 
 Sabbath Defined — Design of the Lord — The Jews and the 
 Sabbath — Seventh-day Baptists and Adventists — Institu- 
 tion of the Sabbath — One Day to Be Observed as a Day of 
 Rest — The Jews Lost the Sabbath — Commemorative 
 Events — Religion Is Practical — Chronology vs. Sabbata- 
 
 (3) 
 
4 Contents. 
 
 Page 
 rians— Nature vs. Sabbatarians— Change from Seventh to 
 the First Day— Change Proved by the Resurrection of 
 Christ— Change Made by Divine Authority, Not by 
 Constantine— Testimony of the Fathers— Admissions 
 —The Name of the Day— The Fact Established— Cog- 
 nate Character of the Institution— Positive Proof of the 
 Change — Pentecost— The Apostles — St. John — The 
 Psalmist— The Day Honored of God— Objections to the 
 Sabbatarian Theory— Crafts' Seven Points— Recapitula- 
 tion 52 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Inception, Progress, and Perfection of Religious 
 and Civil Liberty. 
 
 The Creation of Man— Man's Fall— The Inception of Lib- 
 erty—Tribal Government — Aryans— Cleithenes — Man u — 
 Zoroaster — Progress and Prophecies — Christianity Is Cos- 
 mic — Paganism and Rome — Roman Laws — Constantine 
 and the Cross — Julian — Bacon — The Wesleys — Roman 
 Catholicism — Wyclif — Huss — Ridley — Franklin — Luth- 
 er — Melanchthon — Zwingli — Calvin — Knox — Progress Is 
 God's Order — Toleration — Erasmus — Inquisition — Wil- 
 liam of Orange — Cromwell — Hampden — Milton — Euripi- 
 des — Hume — Macaulay — Roberson — McCrie and Pilgrim 
 Fathers — Roger Williams — The Wesleys and Liberty — 
 American Liberty — Ministers Defended against Coke, 
 Mills, and Others — Catholics' Threaten Evil — Whisky 
 Traffic and Politicians — Bacon and Peacham — Hannibal 
 Hamilcar and Personal Liberty — Blackstone and Phillips 
 on Law and Liberty — Avarice — Conclusion 89 
 
 Appendix , 120 
 
A GOMPEftDIU/A OF THE SABBATH 
 
 AXD 
 
 RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE SABBATH. 
 
 The title of this treatise takes us back through 
 the vista of the ages to the morning of time, when 
 God finished the work of creation. It is a signifi- 
 cant fact that man, the chief and last work of the 
 Creature, who bears the impress of God, was 
 created on the sixth day, and began his earthly ca- 
 reer by observing with the Creator a day of rest. 
 The seventh day God blessed and sanctified, indi- 
 cating to us that one day in seven should be given 
 to worship and devoted especially to man's inter- 
 ests. Whether these seven days are considered as 
 literal days of twenty-four hours, or as periods of 
 time extending throughout the ages, does not 
 effect the fact for which we shall plead in this 
 treatise. We maintain that God set apart one- 
 seventh part of time from all secular purposes not 
 only as a period of rest for mind and body, but 
 also as a period for worship and moral develop- 
 ment. This is a part of the divine economy for 
 regulating and controlling the generations of men 
 
 (3) 
 
6 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 
 
 throughout the eons of time. This brings us to 
 consider 
 
 I. The Sabbath as an Institution to Be 
 Perpetuated Throughout All Time. 
 
 1. That the Sabbath was observed from the first 
 as a rest day there can be no doubt. 
 
 Although there is no specific mention of this 
 day from the creation until the giving of the law 
 at Sinai, yet there can be no doubt but that it was 
 observed. All the facts indicate this to us. Much 
 has come to us of late by the extensive research of 
 the learned among the exhumed debris of the Ori- 
 ential cities. These witnesses have been locked 
 up in the bosom of the earth for long ages, and 
 now they come to testify to the truth of Revela- 
 tion by proving the common origin of all men. 
 Before there was a Jew upon the earth, as appears 
 from these records, the seventh day was observed 
 as a day of sacred rest among the most ancient 
 and widely separated nations of the globe. The 
 conclusion follows that these all had a common 
 origin, and learned from the same great Teacher. 
 The clay tablets found among the ruins of Baby- 
 lon, the. cuneiform inscriptions on the alabaster 
 slabs of Nineveh, the deciphered records on the 
 tombs of Egypt, as well as the Imperial Almanacs 
 of China, to say nothing of the utterances in the 
 poems of Hesiod and Homer, all with one consent 
 bear testimony to the existence among the Gentile 
 nations of a day of sacred rest in the earliest 
 
A Plea j- or the Sabbath. 
 
 ages, and to this rest as occurring one day in 
 seven. So " truth has sprung out of the earth." 
 All this seems to find its solution in the declaration 
 of Revelation: "And God blessed the seventh 
 day and sanctified it." The following historic 
 evidence is sufficient to establish this point, 
 George Smith, noted in Assyrian researches, 
 says: " I discovered among other things a curious 
 religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every 
 month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh 
 days, or Sabbaths are marked out as days on 
 which no work should be undertaken." The fifth 
 of these tablets is known as the creation tablet, 
 two lines of which H. T. Talbot, F.R.S., trans- 
 lates: 
 
 " On the seventh day he appoints a holy day, 
 And to cease from all labors he commanded." 
 
 He says: " This tablet is important because it 
 affirms clearly that the origin of the Sabbath was 
 coeval with creation." The Babylonians observed 
 the Sabbath with considerable strictness. Some 
 so-called Christians would do well to note that on 
 that day the king was not allowed to take a drive 
 in his chariot; various meats were forbidden to 
 be eaten. There were also many other minor 
 prohibitions. Prof. Sayce's testimony coincides 
 with the above, and he further says, " Mr. Bos- 
 caman has pointed out to me the very name of 
 the Sabbath under the Acadian form Sabhattu" 
 According to Porphyry, the Phoenicians conse- 
 crated the seventh day as holy. The Saracens 
 
8 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 kept the Sabbath before Mohammed's time on 
 Friday. Homer, who wrote 900 B.C., says: 
 "Then came the Sabbath, the sacred day." 
 Hesiod, Linus,* and Callimachus all allude to the 
 Sabbath. Dr. Legge says: " There is a passage 
 in the Chinese classics which was ancient in the 
 days of Confucius, 500 years before Christ, which 
 reads as follows : ' Seven days complete a revolu- 
 tion.' And another, 6 on the seventh day all the 
 passages [7. e.> public roads and canals] are 
 closed." The Board of Rites publishes an Im- 
 perial Almanac of China, in which is found a par- 
 ticular character occurring thoughout the year on 
 every seventh day, and that day is our Christian 
 Sabbath. 9 ' According to their dictionaries, this 
 character means "secret." "How it first got 
 there, or what it indicates in that position, no one 
 can tell. It has been there from time immemo- 
 rial." Rev. W. W. Atterbury, who is thoroughly 
 versed in Sabbath literature, says: "From time 
 whereof the memory of man, and history and 
 mythology, run not to the contrary, the division of 
 time into the week of seven days has been almost 
 the universal law. It prevailed among peoples 
 far removed from each other, and remote from, as 
 well as near to, the Asiatic center, whence the na- 
 tions of men radiated — among Persians, Chaldeans, 
 Egyptians, Hindoos, the ancient Chinese on the 
 farthermost East, and the Scandinavians on the 
 Northwest. In most of these instances it is cer- 
 
 * Of this Linus nothing is known. 
 
A Plea J 'or the Sabbath. 
 
 tain that the week revolved upon a day of rest; 
 and as religious rest days, dies feriati, are found 
 all through history marking the divisions of the 
 year, it is altogether probable that, wherever 
 the divisions by weeks existed, it was marked 
 originally by the observance of rest days." The 
 evidence before us justifies the conclusion that in 
 olden times, as well as now, the people w r ere ac- 
 customed to the Sabbath. This evidence tends 
 not only to strengthen the claims of the Christian 
 Sabbath, but also to establish the unity of the race, 
 and thereby the one Divine source of all men. 
 
 2. The manner in which the fourth command- 
 ment vjas given at Sinai is further evidence that 
 the Sabbath was in use and had been observed. 
 
 The scene at Sinai w T as sublimely grand. 
 The mountain trembled at the presence of its 
 Maker; hoarse thunder crashed through the air, 
 peal on peal rent the heavens as if the cliffs of 
 granite were being shattered to pieces, its echoes 
 dying solemnly away among the denies; livid 
 lightnings lit up the sky with aw T ful brilliancy, and 
 then followed the commanding voice of God in 
 solemn awe, as he spake the words, "Remember 
 the Sabbath day to keep it holy," a thing that 
 had been known as a duty, but neglected and for- 
 gotten by the Jews; and now under the most im- 
 posing environments he wrote the words on a table 
 of stone. " Six days shalt thou labor, and do all 
 thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of 
 the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any 
 
io The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 work." It is enjoined upon men to work six days 
 and rest one. All is made determinate, so as to 
 admit of no doubt in the ages to come. The lan- 
 guage of the Bible is such as to indicate the cosmic 
 character of the Sabbath, and God's purpose to 
 perpetuate it throughout all time; for the happi- 
 ness of men, as is clearly stated in God's Word, is 
 made to depend upon obedience in keeping the 
 commandments, and the Sabbath is particularly 
 specified among these commandments. There- 
 fore in the prophecy of Isaiah (lvi. 2-7) we 
 have the following statements: " Blessed is the 
 man that doth this, . . . that keepeth the 
 Sabbath from polluting it. Also the 
 
 sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the 
 Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of 
 the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keep- 
 eth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold 
 of my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy 
 mountain, and make them joyful in my house of 
 prayer: . . . for mine house shall be called a 
 house of prayer for all people." These state- 
 ments, with others to the same effect, are conclu- 
 sive that God has ever designed that all men every- 
 where shall keep the Sabbath holy. And that by 
 strict adherence to His laws, all men in every 
 place, and throughout all time, shall be blessed. 
 Let it be remembered that the Sabbath law stands 
 as a part of a code which has become the basis of 
 all common law. Judge Craft has said: " What- 
 ever may be the origin of the Decalogue, whether 
 
A Pica for the Sabbath. n 
 
 human or divine, the highest compliment has been 
 paid to it that every one of its commandments (ex- 
 cept those which provide for the duty of man to 
 worship God) has been reenacted as civil law; and 
 when you say, ' Thou shalt not kill ' or ' Thou shalt 
 not steal,' it is only a reenacting the law of Moses 
 — as much so as the Sunday law." Disguise 
 this fact as you may, the very conception of true 
 jurisprudence is derived from the law of Moses, 
 
 3. Our S avion?' did not abrogate the law of the 
 Sabbath, but expurgated it from the appendages 
 of tradition, and by precept and example put to it 
 His seal, as an institution from God to man, not 
 for yews only, but for Gentiles also, to be obse?'ved 
 in every period of the world's history. 
 
 There can be found nowhere in the Word of 
 Truth a single squinting toward repeal. The apos- 
 tles of our Lord — on Divine authority, no doubt — 
 observed the first day in lieu of the seventh day. 
 
 This we learn in the New Testament. The 
 change from the seventh day to the first was 
 doubtless based upon the significant fact that the 
 seventh day had its connection with adumbrations 
 in the former dispensation, which had been ful- 
 filled in Christ who slept in the tomb on the Sab- 
 bath, that had marked the former dispensation as 
 the holy day of rest, and now upon the first day 
 he broke the bars of death and arose a conqueror 
 from the grave. This was the signal of the final 
 conquest of virtue and truth. From henceforth 
 the Christian world is to celebrate their redemp- 
 
12 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 tion, and exult in the sweet prelibation of an eter- 
 nal Sabbath made possible to them by the con- 
 quest of their Lord over death, hell, and the grave. 
 
 The question of the change of the days is argued 
 in the following chapter. 
 
 4. Nature demands the septenary arrangement 
 of time. 
 
 The physical structure of man and beasts of 
 burden is such that one day in seven is demanded 
 to restore wasted energies and expended forces. 
 This law of our being is as eternal as nature itself. 
 He who set apart one day in seven for rest made 
 man to conform to this law: 'so it is an essential 
 sanitary law, as necessary to man as sleep and 
 food. The penalties of this law do not follow r its 
 violation as speedily as do the penalties of depri- 
 vation of sleep or abstinence from food, but as 
 certainly. The consensus of statesmen, econo- 
 mists, philanthropists, journalists, workingmen's 
 representatives, and even Sunday society advo- 
 cates is in favor of one day's rest in seven. The 
 beauty and harmony of God's works are seen in 
 their versatility, adaptation, and corresponding 
 adjustment. In the word of God we have the 
 divine precept: " Six days shalt thou work, but 
 on the seventh thou shalt do no work." In exact 
 agreement is the law of our being. 
 
 Chateaubriand, speaking of this question, says: 
 " We now know by experience that the fifth day 
 is too near, the tenth day too remote, to rest. 
 Terror, which affected everything in France, was 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 13 
 
 never able to compel the peasant to fulfill the 
 decade, because there was want of power in human 
 strength to do it, and also, as has been observed, 
 in the strength of animals." A member of the 
 College of Justice, of Edinburgh, refers to this at- 
 tempt of France to set aside God's law in the fol- 
 lowing words: " It proved a complete failure. It 
 was not that the people wished more rest, but it 
 was manifest that they required more ; and the Leg- 
 islature thereupon repealed its former enactment 
 and reverted to the measure of time appointed by 
 the Creator, who knew better the physical frame 
 of his creatures than the French Legislature 
 thought he did." Let us add to these statements 
 the testimony of Prof. Tyndall: "Most of those 
 who object to the Judaic observance of the Sab- 
 bath recognize not only the wisdom but the ne- 
 cessity of some such institution. . . . There 
 is nothing that I should oppose more strenuously 
 than the conversion of the seventh day of the week 
 into a common working-day." Mr. Cox, a stren- 
 uous anti-sabhatarian, says: "I know of no man 
 who desires the abolition of the weekly day of 
 rest — an institution so plainly adapted to the 
 bodily, intellectual, and emotional wants of hu- 
 man nature." 
 
 " Eternal as the constitution of man is the neces- 
 sity for the existence of a day of rest," is the ut- 
 terance of F. W. Robertson. I cannot leave this 
 point without giving the testimony of some of the 
 most renowned physicians of the world. In 1832 
 
14 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 the British House of Commons investigated the 
 effects of laboring seven days in a week compared 
 with laboring six and resting one. A great many- 
 witnesses were examined, among them the cele- 
 brated physician, J. R. Farre, M.D., of London. 
 We extract the following from his statement: "I 
 have practiced as a physician between thirty and 
 forty years, . . . part of my life as the phy- 
 sician of a public medical institution. ... I 
 have been in the habit, during a great many years, 
 of considering the uses of the Sabbath and ob- 
 serving its abuses. The abuses are chiefly mani- 
 fested in labor and dissipation. Its use, medically 
 speaking, is that of a day of rest. ... I view 
 it as a day of compensation for the inadequate 
 restorative power of the body under continued 
 labor and excitement." After speaking of the 
 restoration of the circulation by the rest of sleep, 
 he further adds: " But although the night appar- 
 ently equalizes the circulation, yet it does not 
 sufficiently restore its balance for the attainment 
 of a long life. Hence, one day in seven is thrown 
 in as a day of compensation to perfect, by its re- 
 pose, the animal system." To this add the testi- 
 mony of Dr. Paul Niemeyer, Professor of Hy- 
 giene in the University of Leipsic: " If the au- 
 thor does not deceive himself, he has exhibited for 
 the first time the medical reasons which demon- 
 strate the necessity of the Sunday rest in a manner 
 as certain as other reasons demonstrate the neces- 
 sity of disinfection in case of an epidemic, or vac- 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 
 
 cination in case of smallpox." Drs. Muzze)^, 
 Strong, Haegler, and thousands of others testify 
 as to the necessity of the seventh-day rest. In 
 1853 six hundred and forty-one medical men of 
 London, in a petition to Parliament against the 
 opening of the Crystal Palace on the Sabbath for 
 profit, said: " Your petitioners . . . are con- 
 vinced that a seventh day of rest, instituted by 
 God and coeval with the existence of man, is es- 
 sential to the bodily health and mental vigor of 
 man in every station of life." The evidence of 
 physicians, statesmen, and political economists is of 
 such importance to this weighty subject, that we 
 shall intrude farther upon the reader's time to con- 
 sider this additional testimony: " The Medical 
 Committee of Campagna recently ordered its 
 Secretary, Dr. Arzillo, to draw up answers on the 
 subject (the effect of observing or not observing 
 the Sabbath rest on health). The following are his 
 statements in answer to the questions propounded : 
 ' Those who observe the Sabbath are free from 
 disease, preserve longest their capacity for work, 
 live longest, and die ordinarily of old age, or of 
 those maladies to which old age is subject. Those 
 who only partially observe the Sabbath take ill 
 more frequently, and more quickly exhaust the 
 vital forces. They are carried away with the 
 diseases of the respiratory organs, of the nervous 
 system, and of the heart. Those who spend the 
 Sabbath in cultivating their vices have a short, 
 miserable life, and are liable to a whole train of 
 
i6 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 maladies.' " Wilberforce declared that he could 
 never have sustained the labor and stretch of mind 
 required in his early political life if it had not 
 been for the rest of the Sabbath; and that he 
 could name several of his cotemporaries in the 
 vortex of political cares whose minds had actually 
 given way under the stress of intellectual labor, so 
 as to bring on premature death, or the still more 
 dreadful catastrophe of insanity or suicide, who, 
 humanly speaking, might have been preserved in 
 health if they would have conscientiously observed 
 the Sabbath. It is understood that the reference 
 was to Pitt and Channing, who shortened their 
 days, and to Whitebread, Castlereagh, and 
 Romilly, who lost their reason by incessant work. 
 Experience, observation, and history all teach us 
 the same lesson ; that the Sabbath law is an essen- 
 tial law of our being, and cannot be infracted with 
 impunity. The most fatal consequences follow its 
 violation; the penalty is paid with emaciated and 
 diseased bodies, and premature death. Nor will 
 the result be different if the day be spent in pleasure. 
 Dr. Farre says, in speaking to this point: " I think 
 that devoting to pleasure the day of repose, w T hich 
 should be given to the rest of the body, and to that 
 change of thought and exercise of the mind which 
 constitutes the real source of invigoration amidst 
 the multitudes congregated for purposes of pleas- 
 ure, actually defeats the primary object of the 
 Sabbath, as adapted to the higher nature of man." 
 But why linger at this point? The case is clearly 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 17 
 
 made out by the strongest testimony. The fact is 
 that every thing needs rest. Even a locomotive 
 engine must have rest and needs to be repaired. A 
 lady once sent for a physician, who proceeded to a 
 diagnosis of his patient, He said to her: " Madam, 
 you are overworked; you need rest." "O do 
 not tell me that, doctor; look at my tongue." 
 He replied, "Well, that needs rest too." We 
 may justly conclude that everything needs rest, 
 and must have rest, whether it be metallic machin- 
 ery or physical and mental structure. This is the 
 law of nature, it is the law of God, and this law is 
 imperative. 
 
 5. Civil government must conform to the de- 
 mands of nature and the law of God. 
 
 Man is a complex being, made up of various ele- 
 ments and natures, all of which harmonize and 
 blend in one concrete body. His animal, moral, 
 and spiritual nature have one common interest. 
 Whatever subserves the demands of the one does 
 no violence to the other. The same is time of his 
 civil interest. Whatever is necessary for each in- 
 dividual composing the commonwealth is necessary 
 to the commonwealth as a whole. There is no 
 conflict here. We have seen that God commands 
 men as spiritual beings — his subjects — to observe 
 the Sabbath. We have seen also that man's phys- 
 ical structure requires him to observe the Sabbath 
 as a day of rest. We shall now proceed to notice 
 that 
 
 (1) Mail's moral and civil interests demand a 
 2 
 
1 8 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 day of rest. This precludes the idea of a conti- 
 nental Sunday — a day of pleasure and dissipation. 
 A day of profanation totally defeats the end aimed 
 at in the institution of the Sabbath. It produces 
 the most baneful and deplorable results to society. 
 Laborers who spend their Sabbaths in dissipation 
 return on Monday — if indeed they return — to their 
 work jaded and looking wan. Crime is increased 
 by this profanation, society demoralized by cor- 
 rupt youth, inebriated husbands, blasted virtue, re- 
 vengeful lovers, and crushed innocence. The 
 light goes out of many homes, while jails and pen- 
 itentiaries are peopled; and the assassin's dagger 
 gleams with blood, and the suicidal demon gloats 
 in his conquest. The following lines are true, if 
 trite and homely: 
 
 "A Sabbath well spent 
 
 Brings a week of content, 
 And health for the toils of to-morrow-; 
 
 But a Sabbath profaned, 
 
 Whate'er may be gained, 
 Is the certain forerunner of sorrow." 
 
 Speaking on this subject, Prof. Curtis quotes re- 
 liable German authors who say of their continental 
 Sabbath — that is no Sabbath at all, that the large 
 proportion of criminal and disgraceful acts are com- 
 mitted on Sunday, such as immorality and drunken- 
 ness. Rev. W. F. Crafts has said : " Many a maid- 
 en has lost her virtue and many a youth has seized 
 the murderous knife on that day." "It is a signifi- 
 cant commentary on the moral influence of the con- 
 tinental Sunday as compared with the British, that 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 
 
 while the percentage of illegitimate births in Lon- 
 don, a few years since, was only 4 per cent. ; in Par- 
 is, 34 per cent.; in Brussels, 34 per cent. ; in Mona- 
 co, 34 per cent. ; in Vienna, 54 per cent. ; in Rome, 
 72 per cent. 5 ' " It appears in evidence," says the 
 Sabbath Committee of the English House of Com- 
 mons in 1832, " that in each trade, in proportion to 
 its disregard of the Lord's day, is the immorality of 
 those engaged in it." "A corruption of morals 
 usually follows a profanation of the Sabbath," 
 says Blackstone. Before closing the evidence 
 we will add the testimony of that renowned jurist, 
 Judge Hale. He said that of those who were con- 
 victed of capital crimes while he was upon the 
 bench, he found very few who would not confess 
 on inquiry that they began their career of wicked- 
 ness by neglect of the Sabbath. This statement 
 of this profound lawyer has been verified through- 
 out the ages. The Royal Commission of England 
 states in its report: " Sunday labor is generally 
 looked upon as a degradation, and it appears in 
 evidence that in each trade, in proportion of its 
 disregard of the Lord's day, is the immorality of 
 those engaged in it." Mr. Panther, who had 
 charge of some canal boatmen in England, says of 
 his employers: " They have found that by depriv- 
 ing the men of the Sabbath day they have become 
 demoralized, entirely so." And thus the evidence 
 runs. How few do we find religious among rail- 
 road men, cab drivers, post office employees, and 
 others who are deprived of the Sabbath rest! 
 
20 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 A criminal under sentence of death for murder, 
 a few days before his execution, drew on the walls 
 of his prison the significant picture of a gallows 
 and four steps leading to it. He wrote on the first 
 step, " Disobedience to parents;" on the second, 
 " Sabbath breaking;" on the third, " Gambling 
 and drunkenness;" and on the fourth, "Murder." 
 Such men as Herbert Spencer, who would detract 
 from religion and magnify the innate virtue of man, 
 reject all this evidence, contravene personal ob- 
 servation, and also contradict the word of God. 
 Hear him: "The child of Puritanic parents, 
 brought up in the belief that Sabbath breaking 
 brings after it all kinds of transgressions, and hav- 
 ing had pointed out, in the village or small town 
 that formed his world, various instances of this 
 connection, is somewhat perplexed in after years, 
 when acquaintance with more of his countrymen 
 has shown him exemplary lives joined with non- 
 observance of the Sunday." Exemplary from 
 what standpoint? Not from a Biblical nor moral 
 standpoint. Then only from a skeptical stand- 
 point. 
 
 (2) The civil government should be made to 
 subserve the interest of its subject as a whole. 
 Now if to protect the Sabbath from profanation 
 by law tends to promote the prosperity of the com- 
 monwealth and the security of her citizens, then 
 should such a law be enacted and enforced. As 
 the Sabbath is necessary to each individual, so it 
 must be to the body politic. 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 21 
 
 We do not contend for laws that will compel 
 men to go to Church, but we do plead for laws 
 that will allow men to be religious. Destroy the 
 Christian Sabbath and you will deprive millions of 
 men of the means of grace. Destroy the Chris- 
 tian Sabbath and you sap the foundation of this 
 government, you remove the only safeguard to 
 our liberties, and create a pandemonium on earth. 
 Joseph Cook says: " There can be no diffusion of 
 conscientiousness adequate to protect society from 
 danger, under universal suffrage, unless a day is set 
 apart for the periodical moral and religious instruc- 
 tion of the masses. Sunday laws are justified in 
 a republic by the right of self-preservation." 
 These are not idle words, but are corroborated by 
 the utterances of the great and good of earth. 
 From some of these we shall now hear. Hallam 
 has said: "A holiday Sabbath is the ally of despot- 
 ism." Hear President Mark Hopkins, of Williams 
 College: "A religious observance of the Sabbath, 
 or the religious Sabbath, would secure the perma- 
 nence of free institutions. Without the Sabbath 
 religiously observed, the permanence of free insti- 
 tutions cannot be secured. The civil government, 
 as based on the religious Sabbath, is an institution 
 to which society has a natural right, precisely as it 
 has to property." The " Father of His Country," 
 George Washington, in his address to the nation, 
 used the following words: " We ought to be per- 
 suaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can 
 never be expected on a nation that disregards the 
 
22 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 eternal rules of order and right that Heaven itself 
 has ordained." In consonance with this convic- 
 tion, we have his army order issued in August, 
 1776: " That the troops may have an opportunity 
 of attending public w T orship, as well as to take 
 some rest, . . . the general excuses them from 
 fatigue duties on Sunday. . . . We can have 
 little hope of the blessings of Heaven on our arms 
 if we insult it by impiety and folly. Reason and 
 experience both forbid us to expect that national 
 morality can prevail in exclusion of religious prin- 
 ciple." To this agrees Chief Justice McLean, of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, who has 
 said: "Where there is no Christian Sabbath there 
 is no Christian morality, and without this free in- 
 stitutions cannot long be sustained." Hon. J. R. 
 Tucker, of Virginia, uttered this language: "Ah! 
 my friends, break down the fence of Christianity, 
 and liberty and law and civilization will perish 
 with it." 
 
 We maintain that civil law must comply with the 
 demands of our physical, moral, and spiritual con- 
 stitution and the requirements of the divine law. 
 This is not optional with legislators, but a funda- 
 mental requirement. To oppose this demand is to 
 betray the sacred trust committed to the legislative 
 bodies. To oppose Sunday laws is an infringe- 
 ment upon humanity, and upon personal liberty, 
 and an affront to God. This government is pred- 
 icated upon the doctrine of the supremacy of God, 
 who is acknowledged to be the highest authorit}^ 
 
A Pica f 07' the Sabbath, 23 
 
 It had its origin in the thought and purpose of re- 
 ligious liberty. The Bible and the name of God 
 are used in administering the oath of office. Wit- 
 nesses are qualified in the name of God. The 
 President annually proclaims a day of national 
 thanksgiving. In the face of these facts to enact 
 laws antagonistic to any of God's express com- 
 mandments is inexcusable effrontery. It remains 
 for such men as Herbert Spencer to ridicule the 
 Sabbath, and the astute philosopher, J. S. Mill, to 
 maintain that " all legislation in respect to Sunday 
 is an illegitimate interference with rightful liberty 
 of the individual/' The animus of his teaching 
 may be inferred, while the glaring inconsistency 
 of this author is so apparent. For be it remem- 
 bered in the same treatise he says that it is " al- 
 most a self-evident axiom that the State should 
 require and compel the education, up to a certain 
 point, of every human being who is born its citi- 
 zen." 
 
 Now we hold that if legislation for the protec- 
 tion of the moral interest of society be an infringe- 
 ment upon the liberty of the individual, so legisla- 
 tion for the mental culture, and for the protection 
 of the natural rights of society is also an infringe- 
 ment upon personal liberty. The anti-sabbatarians 
 and anti-prohibitionists have a wonderful way of 
 disposing of the question of civil rights and per- 
 sonal freedom. They remind me of the old Hard- 
 shell Baptist minister, who in advocating final per- 
 severance of the saints found himself confronted 
 
24 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 
 
 by the text, " If they shall fall away, etc./' pro- 
 ceeded to construct his own grammar by which he 
 solved the difficulty. "But, my brethren, they 
 can't fall away, for the word ' if ' is a verb in the 
 impossible mood and everlasting tense ; so you see 
 they can't fall away." 
 
 So it is with all the kith and kin who fight against 
 all laws that squint of morality. They seem to for- 
 get the true principles of personal liberty. The law 
 holds that a man may exercise all the rights of liber- 
 ty and property which are not inconsistent with 
 the exercise of the rights of others. Every law that 
 protects rights is an interference with the freedom 
 of those who would override these rights. A strict 
 Sabbath law is needed not to compel men to be 
 religious, or to attend Church, but to protect the 
 poor against the rich and pleasure seeking; to 
 give every man one day of rest in seven, and allow 
 him the privilege of attending Church, if he de- 
 sire it. 
 
 What means this effort to substitute the conti- 
 nental Sabbath for the Christian, but to rob one- 
 third of the people of this government of personal 
 liberty? It means to deprive employees, clerks, 
 and laborers of family associations, of Sabbath 
 rest and Church privileges. It is too bad as it is: 
 there are at our very doors hundreds of men that 
 cannot keep the Sabbath and retain their places 
 as employees. They are compelled to work on 
 Sunday or surrender their places to others. They 
 tell us that " each man's freedom would still be 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 25 
 
 secured to him. Those who wished to spend the 
 Sabbath as a day of religion would still be at lib- 
 erty to do so." But this we know to be untrue. 
 One man in business, who has no respect for the 
 Sabbath, would force others to desecrate the day 
 to prevent loss of trade. This we observe as the 
 matter now stands. The anti-sabbatarians pro- 
 ceed on the hypothesis that man is a mere animal, 
 created for money making and pleasure. Their 
 conception of manhood is debased and perverted. 
 They are unmindful of the fact that moral develop- 
 ment and spiritual culture are the end of human 
 existence and the object of man's creation. De- 
 stroy the Sabbath, and the possibility of religion 
 w r ith thousands would likewise be destroyed. 
 There would be, as on the Continent, empty 
 churches, neglect of spiritual interest, forgetful- 
 ness of God, atheism, and anarchy. 
 
 The world has been used to Sabbath laws from 
 time immemorial, as we have already seen. Con- 
 stantine, Theodosius, Honorius, Leo I., Charle- 
 magne, all issued their Sunday edicts. Alfred the 
 Great took the Decalogue as the foundation of his 
 civil code. Canute, Edward III., Richard II., 
 Henry VI., and many others had their Sabbath 
 laws. So we may justly conclude that Sabbath 
 laws have in all ages had the highest sanction. To 
 the illustrious names already quoted I wish to add 
 the testimony of Daniel Webster: " The longer I 
 live the more highly do I estimate the importance of 
 the proper observance of the Christian Sabbath." 
 
26 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 And now Mr. Gladstone, who says: "Believing 
 in the authority of the Lord's day as a religious 
 institution, I must, as a matter of course, desire 
 the recognition of that authority by others. . . . 
 I have experienced both its mental and its physical 
 benefits, . . . and for the interest of the work- 
 Ingmen of this country . . . there is nothing 
 I more earnestly desire than that they should more 
 and more highly appreciate the Christian day of 
 rest." DeTocqueviile said to an American when 
 our American Sabbath was stricter than now: 
 " France must have your Sabbath or she is ruined." 
 In view of the impending crisis now upon us (I 
 mean the opening of the " World's Columbian Ex- 
 position " on the Sabbath), I will add to the illus- 
 trious names already given in support of the Sab- 
 bath that of the renowned Lieut. Gen. T. J. 
 Jackson ("Stonewall"), than whom no man had 
 a higher appreciation of the Christian Sabbath. 
 It was on the ioth of December, 1862, that he 
 wrote to his friend, Hon. Mr. Boteler, the follow- 
 ing: '- I have read with great interest the ' Con- 
 gressional Report' of the committee, recommend- 
 ing the repeal of the law requiring the mails to be 
 carried on the Sabbath, and I hope that you will 
 feel it a duty, as well as a pleasure, to urge its re- 
 peal. I do not see how a nation that thus, arrays 
 itself, by such a law, against God's holy day can 
 expect to escape his wrath. The punishment of 
 national sins must be confined to this world, as 
 there are no nationalities beyond the grave. For 
 
A Pica for the Sabbath. 27 
 
 fifteen years I have refused to mail letters on Sun- 
 day, or to take them out of the office on that day, 
 except since I came into the field, and so far from 
 having to regret my course, it has been a source of 
 true enjoyment. I have never sustained loss in 
 observing what God enjoins; and I am well satis- 
 fied that the law should be repealed at the earliest 
 practicable moment. My rule is to let the Sabbath 
 mails remain unopened.' 9 On January 17, 1863, 
 he wrote to his wife: "I derive an additional 
 pleasure in reading a letter, resulting from a con- 
 viction that it has not been traveling on the Sab- 
 bath. How delightful will be our heavenly home, 
 where everything is sanctified! ' These are the 
 utterances of a general that never lost a battle, a 
 man who trusted the Lord for success in all the af- 
 fairs of life, and succeeded where other men 
 failed. Is there anything in these statements? As 
 well may we ask is there anything in the state- 
 ment: "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin 
 is a reproach to any people." (Prov. xiv. 34.) 
 We may as well ask is there anything in this dec- 
 laration: " Blessed is the man that doeth this, and 
 the son of man that layeth, hold on it; that keepeth 
 the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his 
 hand from doing any evil." 
 
 Yes, open this " World's Exposition," these pla- 
 ces of public resort, let this national profanation of 
 God's Sabbath continue, and what maywe expect? 
 Let God answer in his word: " But if ye will not 
 hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath day, and 
 
28 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates 
 of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day; then will I kin- 
 dle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour 
 the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be 
 quenched." (Jer. xvii. 27.) Now substitute 
 "America" for "Jerusalem," and you have the 
 answer to the question. Take notice that the 
 Jews did profane the Sabbath, and that this pro- 
 phetic threat was fulfilled to the extent of its scope. 
 Did ever people suffer as did the Jews when the 
 conquering cohorts of Rome, led by the intrepid 
 Titus, leveled her walls and drenched her streets 
 with blood? And what security have we as a na- 
 tion against famine, internal feuds, war, and pesti- 
 lence if we forfeit our claim to Divine protection by 
 open and wanton transgression of God's law? To 
 whom can we look for national prosperity and 
 peace but to God? And how can we pray unto 
 him as a nation while such grievous sins are com- 
 mitted against him under the sanction of our laws? 
 
 Does not France furnish us a modern example 
 of Divine retribution upon a corrupt nation? Al- 
 ready we have the premonitions of the coming 
 tempest in broils, riots, strikes, and audacious en- 
 croachments of anarchists. These are but the 
 shimmerings of the pent-up fires of revenge, ani- 
 mosity, envy, and disaffection that rankle in the 
 bosom of men. 
 
 But what plea is set up by those who would thus 
 desecrate the holy Sabbath? We have heard none 
 but "to benefit the poor." " To benefit the poor," 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 29 
 
 alas ! How can a thing that degrades a man ben- 
 efit him? How can a man by sinning against na- 
 ture, against God, and against himself be profited 
 thereby ? Echo answers : ' ' How ? ' ' Behind this 
 pretext lies the true motive, which is to rob the 
 poor, by tempting them to spend their hard-earned 
 pennies in side shows, buying wooden nutmegs, 
 and quaffing intoxicating beverages. This pretext 
 is the same as that paraded by Judas Iscariot: 
 " Why was not this ointment sold for three hun- 
 dred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, 
 not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a 
 thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put there- 
 in.'' But it is known to these pretending friends 
 of the poor, who would contravene God's iaw T in 
 expressions of affection ( ?) for the poor, that the 
 opening of the gates of the " Exposition " and ev- 
 ery other thing of the kind look more to the in- 
 dulgence of the wealthier and pleasure-loving than 
 to the accommodation of the horny-handed sons of 
 toil. Such a plea is opposed to common sense and 
 experience. It does not stand to reason, and it is 
 an insult to the Christian sentiment of this common- 
 wealth, and in contempt of God. It grows out of 
 that hateful sin of avarice that is eating like a can- 
 ker at the very vitals of this government. 
 
 II. Dangers That Threaten the Sabbath. 
 
 1. First of all zve would name avarice, the ene- 
 my of all good. 
 
 She is forging her chains to bind her victims in 
 
30 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 perpetual bondage. Dante's description of this 
 dread sin is suggestive: 
 
 "A she wolf was at his heels, who in her leanness seemed 
 Full of all wants, and many a land hath made 
 Disconsolate ere now. That never sated is her 
 Eavenous will. Still after food more craving than before." 
 
 Not content with six days of toil, it would rob God 
 of his day. This great sin is back of at least 
 three-fourths of all Sabbath desecration. 
 
 2. The government by her Sunday mail trans- 
 portation and delivery is educating the -people to 
 profane the Sabbath, besides forcing 150,000 em- 
 ployees to desecrate this day. 
 
 In 1810 Congress authorized the delivery of 
 mail on the Sabbath. Twenty-one States protested 
 against this profanation. The petitioners main- 
 tained that this measure was an infringement upon 
 state rights, and therefore unconstitutional. . As the 
 case now stands the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
 Constitution provides that " No State shall make or 
 enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges 
 or immunities of citizens of the United States." 
 The First Amendment sets forth the following limi- 
 tation: " Congress shall make no law respecting 
 and establishing religion or prohibiting the free 
 exercise thereof." Let us now read from the pos- 
 tal law: " It shall be the duty of postmasters at all 
 reasonable hours, on every day of the week, to de- 
 liver on demand, any letter and ... to the per- 
 son entitled to, or authorized to receive the same." 
 You see the contradiction herein involved: the 
 
A Plea f 07' the Sabbath. 31 
 
 Constitution provides for the religious freedom of 
 ail the citizens of this commonwealth. But the pos- 
 tal law says that the postmasters and employees 
 shall not have religious freedom. Place beside 
 this postal law the law of God, which says that 
 no work shall be done on the Sabbath. To obey 
 the postal law is to disobey God. To disobey 
 God is to sin, and to continue in willful disobedi- 
 ence is to continue in willful sin. This being true, 
 how can these 150,000 postmasters and employees 
 be Christians ? What right has the legislative and 
 executive power of this government to deprive 150,- 
 000 persons of Sabbath privileges — yea, of heav- 
 en itself? But you say: " These persons are free, 
 so that they need not accept these positions." 
 This is true, and it is also true that if the govern- 
 ment did not demand of these persons labor upon 
 the Sabbath they would not work, therefore the 
 government is first in the transgression, and stands 
 condemned before God. 
 How true this couplet: 
 
 " Seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
 "We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 
 
 We have become familiar with this sin, and go 
 on tolerating it. Yes, professed Christians con- 
 tinue to accept these positions under the plea of 
 necessity. " The ox is in the ditch," they say. 
 Alas! that poor old ox has been in the ditch for 
 about nineteen hundred years. How did he get 
 in there? Confess the truth: you drove him in. 
 Then let him stay there and die. Better, infinitely 
 
32 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty . 
 
 better, for you that the old ox (?) die than that 
 you by living in known sin send your soul into 
 eternal death. We have heard the changes wrung 
 upon the word " necessity " until we are sick of it. 
 This word is as much abused as the words "liberty" 
 and "freedom." "It is a matter of necessity, a 
 question of meat and bread, for me to serve as 
 postmaster," says one. Says another: "lam 
 compelled to do this work for the railroad, the 
 gas company, the street car company, or ' I will be 
 fired out.' " Well, infinitely better to be fired out 
 of your position now, than to be fired in through- 
 out eternity. No man is compelled to disobey 
 God. Prophets, apostles, and martyrs died rather 
 than to disobey him. This martyr's spirit is nec- 
 essary now to check this downward stride to ruin. 
 
 But so long as men calling themselves Chris- 
 tians, and dressed in the livery of heaven, go first 
 to the post office, get their mail, read the "current 
 news, and business letters, then go to the house of 
 God, take their seat with sanctimonious air, take 
 the sacrament and zvvpe their mouths complacently, 
 and then say " Works of necessity must go on upon 
 God's day," we may not hope for a change for 
 the better. Or worse still, these same ensamples 
 of light take pleasure rides, transact business, and 
 do almost anything on the Sabbath except go to 
 the class meeting, or some of them even to 
 Church. 
 
 3. The running of railroad trains on the Sab- 
 bath is a gigantic evil. 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 33 
 
 It is a public nuisance, depriving according to the 
 best statistics not less than 250,000 persons of their 
 Sabbath. Many of the number are members of 
 the different Churches. They groan for a respite 
 from labor on the Lord's day, that they may wor- 
 ship God according to the dictates of their own 
 conscience. Many of these are unsaved men, who 
 are not likely ever to be saved, for the reason they 
 are kept by their ungenerous employers from the 
 purview of gospel privileges. These 250,000 men 
 appeal to the Christian sentiment of this land for 
 relief. There is no necessity for Sunday trains. 
 Railroad magnates themselves, among whom we 
 mention B. H. Young and Hon. W. D. Dodge, 
 state that as much or even more can be made by 
 running six days in the week. But these railroad 
 men, who own a controlling interest, think they 
 make money by running seven days in the week. 
 So they take it in hand to make money; to make 
 money at the price of human comfort, at the price 
 of virtue, at the price of souls. This business, 
 more than any other, leads to the profanation of 
 the Sabbath, because it touches society at so many 
 points. 
 
 Stop all trains and you give 250,000 men a day 
 of rest, time with their families, and the chances of 
 salvation. You stop the Sunday mail business 
 and thereby give 150,000 more men the immuni- 
 ties of the Sabbath. You stop the demoralizing 
 and debasing Sunday excursions, Sunday travel, 
 and the annoyance to the public of the rush and 
 3 
 
34 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 clanking of running trains, the whistle of locomo- 
 tives, the rustling of the irrepressible porters and 
 cab drivers. 
 
 What right have the millionaires to make money 
 by robbing God and their employees of that God- 
 bequeathed boon: the Sabbath day? Why say to 
 the-poor man "Thou shalt not plow or hoe," and 
 yet allow corporations to carry on their business? 
 Does wealth bestow peculiar privileges upon its 
 possessors? Does wealth place a man above law 
 ecclesiastical and civil? Then why tolerate this 
 Sabbath desecration on the part of these railroad, 
 street car, and other corporations? Why allow 
 this wholesale robbery of God and man to be per- 
 petrated in the resplendent light of this gospel age, 
 in this land of the noble and the free ? • But 
 hush ! I stand with bated breath, but speak I must. 
 God's professed children countenance and abet 
 this business by traveling on these Sabbath dese- 
 crators under various pretexts and for various 
 purposes. 6 to go to Church, perhaps, or to visit, 
 or to attend to some business, or for some cause. 
 Are they not aware that, whatever the pretext may 
 be, when they travel on the railroad or street car 
 they sanction Sabbath desecration? It will avail 
 nothing to say "they will run anyway." Sup- 
 pose they do; that is no reason you should peipe- 
 trate a wrong against humanity, yourself, and your 
 God, because some one else does. As well to say 
 " I will steal because some one else does," or " I 
 will keep a saloon because some one else does." 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 35 
 
 When you travel by these public conveyances on 
 the Lord's day, you trample God's commandment 
 beneath unhallowed feet. The encouragement 
 given this illegitimate business by professed Chris- 
 tians augments the demand for the continuance of 
 this business. "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not 
 in the streets of Askelon; . . . lest the daughters 
 of the uncircumcised triumph;" but I must speak 
 it; candor demands it: even ministers of the gospel 
 become allies to the evil one, and abet this busi- 
 ness by traveling from place to place on the trains 
 on the Lord's day. "The beauty of Isreal is 
 slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty 
 fallen!' 5 Our hands are tied while these things 
 exist. These do the cause of God more harm 
 than all the infidels in the. land. Imagine a min- 
 ister getting off the train on Sunday, driven to the 
 church door by a coachman, entering the pulpit and 
 announcing his text, " Remember the Sabbath day 
 to keep it holy." Then to be consistent with him- 
 self he must take away from God's word by say- 
 ing, "except when it suits your convenience to 
 travel on Sunday." I pray God to deliver us 
 from such inconsistency. 
 
 4. No greater evil with less extenuation is being 
 fostered in our midst than the -publication and cir- 
 culation of Sunday newspapers. 
 
 I prefer to let the secular press speak out in the 
 meeting, and expose this crying sin, lest newspa- 
 per men raise the hue and cry of unjust dealing. 
 
 In the issue of the 15th of November, 1871, the 
 
36 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 New York Tribune said: "We are opposed to 
 anything which tends to increase the already too 
 great a tendency to break down the observance of 
 the Sabbath." I am sorry to say that that paper 
 has since fallen from grace. 
 
 The Pittsburg Commercial Gazette of March 31, 
 1882, said: " Those of our contemporaries who 
 publish Sunday papers do not take kindly to the 
 opinions expresed by the Sabbath day observers. 
 This was to be expected, as they prefer to quietly 
 but surely break down the observance of the Sab- 
 bath day. The truth is that Sunday papers have 
 no more right to publish than have merchants to 
 open their stores and do business on the Sabbath. 
 Sunday papers are published solely to make mon- 
 ey. Were they not profitable, there would not be 
 a single paper issued. The assertion, so often made 
 by the advocates of Sunday papers, that more Sun- 
 day work is done on a Monday morning paper 
 than is done on a Sunday paper is not true, and 
 they know it. This is only a pretext to throw dust 
 in the eyes of the religious people. There is no 
 one thing which the anti-Sabbath people rejoice so 
 much in as Sunday papers. They know that once 
 the daily press is conceded the right to publish on 
 Sunday, by the Sabbath day observers, that it will 
 be but a short time till the day will become one sole- 
 ly for recreation and pleasure. Grant to the news- 
 papers the right to publish s^ven days in the week, 
 and it will be but a few years, till the merchants 
 will claim the same privilege. And why not? ?J 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 37 
 
 This utterance was in the Chicago Daily News 
 of August 12, 1884: " The Sunday paper itself 
 has created the only demand there is for it." 
 
 The Sunday paper is made the vehicle for gos- 
 sip. Choice bits of scandalous stories, rapines, 
 murders, assassinations, and suicides fill its col- 
 umns — a vocabulary of putrid matter, enough to 
 contaminate any ordinary mind. All this finds its 
 way into Christian homes, and it is gulped down by 
 parents and children before starting to Church. 
 No wonder the preacher has an uphill pull preach- 
 ing to such auditors. No wonder they think the 
 sermon stale and long. Full of the news of Con- 
 gress, current prices, etc. No wonder our chil- 
 dren are going to ruin after reading such stuff. 
 
 But these are not the greatest objections to these 
 Sunday papers. They deprive about one hundred 
 thousand printers and attachees to printing offices, 
 not to speak of the newsboys, in part or wholly of 
 their Sabbath privileges. 
 
 5. Step by step we are losing our Christian Sab- 
 bath. 
 
 Of late years the Sunday baseball craze has 
 struck this nation — a perfect cyclone of demorali- 
 zation. Our young people are being drawQ into 
 this whirlpool of ruin by the hundreds. None can 
 estimate the damage to societ} 7 of this debasing 
 practice. And now, to cap the climax, fairs and 
 expositions must be opened under the pretext of 
 favoring the poor, but, forsooth, to make money. 
 Let the poor man know that these corporations are 
 
38 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 striking at the heart of the Sabbath. Once they 
 can get a continental Sabbath, then they will re- 
 quire seven days' labor for six days' pay. These 
 evils are depleting our Sunday schools and lessen- 
 ing the attendance at Church, steadily but surely 
 as a canker eating up our moral life. With these 
 evils we should class Sunday excursions and sa- 
 cred ( ?) concerts. Sacred, did you say? A mis- 
 nomer, surely. In fact, the devil's claptrap to 
 catch the unwary. 
 
 6. Of course the whisky venders, with infidels, 
 zv ill always be found in the crusade against the Sab- 
 bath. Break down the legal barriers to their Sab- 
 bath traffic and you at once open the very flood gates 
 of hell. Substitute the continental for the Christian 
 Sabbath, and these venders will reap a harvest of 
 wealth at the price of morality, virtue, and blood. 
 Here avarice plays upon appetite, and appeals 
 to the baser elements of- human nature, and de- 
 mands the extermination of the Christian Sab- 
 bath. Ah me! here is the dead line. You dare 
 not obliterate this day; if so, a reign of terror and 
 death will set in never before known in this fair 
 land. These men are law-breakers, any way, " to 
 the manner born." They are constantly violating 
 our Sunday laws as the case now stands. Am I 
 complaining? Be it so. The guest at the hotel 
 complained to the landlord about the towel. The 
 landlord indignantly said: "You are the three 
 hundredth man that has wiped on that towel, and 
 you are the first man that has complained." Am 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 39 
 
 I the first to complain of this dirty towel, these 
 sinks of hell? Nay. Let there go up a universal 
 complaint from even/ good citizen of this govern- 
 ment against all this Sabbath desecration, and es- 
 pecially against these cesspools of iniquity. 
 
 7. We are taking into the bosom of this republic 
 a viper that is sucking our lifeblood. I refer to 
 the vicious foreign element that is pouring in upon 
 us from all the ends of the earth: communists, 
 nihilists, anarchists, revolutionists, and I know not 
 what. 
 
 The very foundation of this government is trem- 
 bling. Influences are at work which, if not 
 checked, will speedily involve us in ruin. This 
 foreign and domestic infidelic element, consorting 
 with the whisky venders, and aided by cowering 
 and timeserving political tricksters, presents to us 
 no ordinary foe. The Philistines are upon^thee, 
 Samson ! Awake ! Arise ! Why sleepeth thou 
 in the lap of security? The enemies of our liber- 
 ties are at work. Evidences of their aggressive 
 spirit are on every hand. In 1882 the saloon 
 keepers of California, by cajoling or menacing the 
 Democratic party, succeeded in getting an anti- 
 Sabbath plank in their political platform, which re- 
 sulted in repealing the Sabbath law. California is 
 now the only State in the Union that has no Sab- 
 bath law. The Sabbath laws are more or less 
 strict in the different States. The rule has ever 
 been to allow works of necessity to be done. 
 Such was the Sabbath law in Texas until 187 1, 
 
40 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 when the law was so amended as to allow things of 
 mere convenience to be done. Again in 1883 an d 
 1887,* the Legislature amended the law so as to 
 allow greater desecration of the Sabbath. The 
 most startling thing that has occurred for many 
 years, if not to say during the history of the past, 
 occurred in the Senate of our own dear State, the 
 grandest in the galaxy of States, during the sitting 
 of the last Legislature. A bill was introduced f by 
 a foreigner to destroy at a stroke all of our Sabbath 
 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. When I began to look into 
 this subject I wrote to my esteemed friend, Hon. 
 E. J. Simkins, of Corsicana, who has served his 
 constituency in the State senate with distinguished 
 ability for two consecutive terms. I received 
 from him a lengthy answer, from which I now 
 quote: " I am glad to see the ministers of God 
 waking up on this important question, for you 
 have been asleep too long already. The spectacle 
 of a Texas Senate evenly dividing upon the Chris- 
 tian Sabbath, and the Lieutenant Governor of State 
 casting the deciding vote, against that day, is 
 enough to awaken thoughtful interest. The Bible 
 going out of our schools, and the country becom- 
 ing Germanized, or what is much the same thing 
 infidelized, and everything apparently drifting from 
 the old moorings ! ?? Ministers of God asleep! 
 and their flocks, too, ruminating quietly on the 
 verge of an awful moral volcano that is just ready 
 to break forth in an eruption that will overspread 
 this land with the lava of death ! 
 
 * Appendix C, p. 97. J f Appendix C, p. 100. 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 41 
 
 Will we continue to lie supinely till our chartered 
 rights are forever gone? Heaven forbid! For- 
 bid it, Almighty God ! There can be no doubt 
 that the enemies of God and man are encroaching 
 upon our religious freedom. 
 
 We have seen that the Sabbath law is the law of 
 God; that it is an essential law of our being; that 
 it is the basis of our moral and social fabric and 
 the fundamental law of our government; that 
 Sabbath laws have been enforced throughout the 
 ages; that in the opinions of the best men, wisest 
 jurors, statesmen, and philosophers the Sabbath is 
 essential to civil liberty. Now, in the face of all 
 these facts, what man laying claims to statesman- 
 ship would dare reach forth his leprous hand to 
 touch this ark of God? Who would have the 
 effrontery to legislate against God? Who would 
 dare to legislate against humanity, against himself? 
 But what do you think of a politician claiming to 
 be a Christian that would lend his influence and 
 cast his vote against the Christian Sabbath? Why, 
 only in the light of a traitor, as we do of Benedict 
 Arnold; as we do of Judas Iscariot, who sold his 
 Lord for thirty pieces of silver; as we do of 
 Balaam, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 
 as we do of Brutus, who betrayed the trust of 
 Caesar. We can think of him only as a traitor to 
 God, an apostate from the faith, a traducer of 
 purity, covered with the shame of -perfidy. A 
 statesman, you say ! Think of such a monstrosity, 
 as compared with Macaulay, Gladstone, DTsraeli, 
 
42 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Argyll, Bright, Broadhurst, and other 
 illustrious names across the water— men who had 
 depth of penetration sufficient to know the value 
 of the Christian Sabbath, soul capacity to appre- 
 ciate it, and the manhood to defend it. Think of 
 such a political pigmy compared with the illustri- 
 ous names of Washington, Webster, Lincoln, 
 Seward, McClellan, Garfield, Noah Davis, Justice 
 McLean, and Thomas Jefferson, who paid the fol- 
 lowing compliment to the Sabbath school: "The 
 Sunday schools present the only legitimate means 
 under the Constitution of avoiding the rock on 
 which the French Republic was wrecked." Let 
 the ringing words of the immortal Blackstone in 
 his commentaries confound such a driveler: 
 6i The profanation of the Lord's day ... is 
 a ninth offense against God and religion, punished 
 by municipal law of England. For besides the 
 notorious indecency and scandal of permitting any 
 secular business to be publicly transacted on that 
 day, in a country professing Christianity, and the 
 corruption of morals which usually follow its prof- 
 anation, the keeping one day in seven holy, as a 
 time of relaxation and ' refreshment as well as of 
 public worship, is of admirable service to a state, 
 considered merely as a civil institution." Did 
 you call the character that we are pursuing a states- 
 man? Nay, a demagogue, a time-server. I would 
 tear off the hypocritical tapestry thrown around 
 such and let the world see the real political cen- 
 taur beneath the f ^retentions covering. 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 43 
 
 I now take occasion to introduce to the reader 
 the author of this nefarious bill, Mr. Maetze,* 
 who is a Prussian by birth. Sometime during 
 the decade from 1840 to 1850 he w T as in the Ger- 
 man Reichstadt, or House of Parliament. As I 
 have his history, he had to flee his country on ac- 
 count of revolutionary proclivities. It remains for 
 this man, a foreigner t with little or nothing in 
 common with the good people of this country, to put 
 the knife to the throat of our liberties. This for- 
 eigner, a disturber of the peace of his native coun- 
 try, a revolutionist, here in our own South land, in 
 this great State of Texas, the land of the brave and 
 the home of the free, where our fathers with their 
 sweat and blood won on the gory battlefields of 
 the Alamo and San Jacinto our civil and religious 
 liberty, would break down at a stroke our safe- 
 guard. 
 
 He comes under a mask with effete w r eapons 
 and exploded arguments, and talks of the Sabbath 
 law being an infringement of civil rights and per- 
 sonal liberty. To patiently endure this would not 
 be a virtue, and curtly we would now inform Mr. 
 Maetze that if our laws don't suit him he can 
 retire. It he prefers the continental Sunday to 
 the Christian Sabbath, let him go back to Prussia. 
 These foreigners are here on their own motion; 
 and if our laws are not to their liking, let them go 
 back from whence they came. And the sooner 
 they go the better for us. I wouldn't be under- 
 
 * Has since died, f See Appendix A, page 93. 
 
44 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty* 
 
 stood as opposing good and law-abiding foreigners. 
 We bid them welcome to our liberties, to our Sab- 
 baths, and to our religion. But this rabble crowd 
 of which Mr. Maetze seems to be a leader, w r ho 
 would convert our country into a pandemonium — 
 this beer-guzzling and Sabbath-desecrating element 
 — we are more than willing to give tip. It is prop- 
 er to say that many of these foreigners rank w r ith 
 our best citizens. Thev become identified with 
 our institutions and laws at once, and support them 
 with fidelity of purpose. To all these we extend a 
 hearty welcome. Strange to say, twelve other 
 Senators* some of them the sons of Texas, reared 
 in this gospel land, the creatures of Christian insti- 
 tutions, who owe their all to the Sabbath teaching, 
 training, and influence, joined in this diabolical con- 
 spiracy against our liberties. We could have ex- 
 pected no more of some of these men. Their past 
 record shows them to be the allies of the saloon, the 
 enemies of temperance, sobriety, and morality. 
 
 There was a tie vote in the Senate upon this 
 great question, on which, disguise it as you may, 
 hung the future destiny of this great State. An 
 opportunity was now given to our Lieutenant Gov- 
 ernor, Mr. Pendleton, to hand his name down to 
 coming generations as a true man to the Sabbath, 
 to his profession as a Christian, to the poor of his 
 constituency, to morality and to God. But alas ! 
 we are forced to turn away with disappointment. 
 How unfortunate that casting, vote ! By it the 
 * See Appendix B, p. 95. 
 
A Plea J "or the Sabbath. 45 
 
 Lieutenant Governor did say that God was wrong 
 in commanding men to keep the entire Sabbath 
 day holy. He virtually said by his casting vote 
 against the Sabbath that he knew better than 
 God, that he is wiser. God says, "Keep the 
 day holy ; " the Lieutenant Governor says, " Keep 
 seven hours of the day holy. The balance of 
 the day you can sell, buy, work, play, dance, 
 hunt — do as you please. Let down the gap for 
 all manner of profanation," says Lieut. Gov. 
 Pendleton. Seventeen hours in the twenty-four. 
 What could have prompted such remarkable ac- 
 tion on the part of these men? There is not a 
 valid argument that could be made to support 
 this measure. It is too late in the day to resort to 
 the sophistic dodge of personal liberty. Nay, the 
 argument of personal liberty is on the other side 
 of this question, as wne have already seen. Then 
 what can they plead in extenuation of an act so 
 plainly at variance with every interest of this gov- 
 ernment? It will avail these men nothing to tell 
 an enlightened constituency that they are antisab- 
 batarians from principle. How can a man oppose 
 the moral, civil, and religious interest of his State 
 from principle? How can he oppress the poor by 
 putting them at the mercy of the rich from princi- 
 ple? How can he stand up and legislate against 
 God from principle ? Principle indeed ! Why, 
 such a plea does not stand to reason. It is simply 
 impossible for such an act to be based upon prin- 
 ciple. If these men were ignorant of the facts and 
 
46 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 principles demonstrated in this treatise, then they 
 are too stupid ever to be trusted again with our sa- 
 cred rights. But if they acted from -policy, if this 
 be a strategic^ political act to secure the votes of the 
 foreign and saloon element (and we believe this 
 to be true), then these men deserve nothing but 
 contempt. To-day we arraign them before the 
 bar of an enlightened constituency for having 
 sought by their votes to outrage religion, trample 
 upon morality, and sacrifice liberty. We believe 
 that we voice the sentiment of true American citi- 
 zens, and a law and order loving people, when 
 we say that these men should never again receive 
 the suffrage of the people of this State for any of- 
 fice whatever. They have proven themselves un- 
 safe legislators. 
 
 Our devotion to the Sabbath should be as 
 marked as that of the old Scotch woman that Mr. 
 Irving, the English actor, claims to have met near 
 Balmoral. In speaking of the queen, Mr. Irving 
 said: "The queen is a good woman." "I sup- 
 pose she is gude enough; but there are things I 
 canna bear." " What do you mean? " asked Mr. 
 Irving. "Well, I think there are things which 
 even the queen has no recht to do. For one thing, 
 she goes rowing on the lake on Soonday; and it's 
 not a Chreestian thing to do." " But you know, 
 the Bible tells us — " " I knaw," she interrupted, 
 angrily, " I've read the Bible since I was so high 3 
 an' I knaw ev'ry word in't. I knaw about Soon- 
 day fishing and a' the other things the gude Lord 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 47 
 
 did; but I wan you to knaw, too, that I don't 
 think any the more, e'en of him for a doin' it." 
 
 Our devotion to God and principles should 
 cause us to lose sight of all favoritism and be the 
 ruling motive of life. No man should escape un- 
 censured who is guilty of flagrant acts of violence 
 to the best interests of his country, it matters not 
 who he may be, king, priest, or subject. Nor 
 should we be slow to stamp with condemnation all 
 acts that look to the degradation of our race. 
 Reformations have never been effected by any- 
 thing less than the intrepidity of a Paul, the au- 
 dacity of a Luther, the inexorableness of a Knox, 
 the zeal of a Whitefield, and the consecration of a 
 Wesley. A cow r ering and a time-serving spirit 
 among professing Christians is as fatal to reform 
 as among the professional politicians. Let Chris- 
 tians be free to speak against the acts of the dema- 
 gogues, who w^ink at crime and consort with the 
 evil by supporting the whisky traffic and Sabbath 
 desecration. Let them know that they w T ill be 
 held to account at the tribunal of Christian senti- 
 ment as well as at the ballot box. I would be un- 
 true to nature and guilty of ingratitude were I not 
 to mention with commendation, in this connection, 
 the name of our esteemed fellow-citizen, E. J. 
 Simkins, of Corsicana, Tex., who so promptly 
 met Mr. Maetze's prepared address in support of 
 his demoralization Sunday bill with a vigorous im- 
 promptu speech. Such men as he and the other 
 twelve who voted with him are the hope of the 
 
48 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 
 
 country in this day of degeneracy. True patriot- 
 ism still lives in the bosom of such men. 
 
 III. The Appeal. 
 
 Let us not be discouraged. There are from 
 20,000,000 to 25,000,000 of professing Christians 
 in these United States, who favor the Christian 
 Sabbath. Besides these there are, perhaps, 15,- 
 000,000 of philanthropic people outside of any 
 Church who stand with these Christians in senti- 
 ment. Back of these is the Lord of the heavens 
 and the earth, who is pledged to help those who 
 contend for the right. We are opposed only by 
 from 25,000, to 35,000, Seventh Day Baptists 
 and Adventists, who are in league with all sorts 
 from the most abandoned prostitutes to the time- 
 serving politicians, all of whom number from 20,- 
 000,000 to 25,000,000. All we need to succeed is 
 to become fully alive to the situation and our dut}r 
 respecting it. 
 
 Fellow-citizens of this grand republic, ye sons 
 and daughters of light, arise, and shake this slum- 
 ber from your eyes ! The issue is upon us ; contend 
 for home, country, and' for God! Let us write, 
 make speeches, deliver lectures, preach sermons, 
 and hold mass meetings, until a sentiment is 
 formed that will so fortify our holy Sabbath that 
 no intruder will dare approach to destroy it. Let 
 the women come to the front and begin to where- 
 as, and the men will begin to resolve. But we 
 must not stop at this ; we must organize law and 
 
A Plea for the Sabbath. 49 
 
 order leagues throughout the land, to see that our 
 present laws are enforced against this lawless ele- 
 ment, that is fast riding down all that is dear to 
 us. We must push the battle against Sunday 
 mails, trains, and newspapers, until we have con- 
 quered and given back the Sabbath to the half 
 million people who are being robbed of it by these 
 desecrators. 
 
 Our greatest danger lies not in political dema- 
 goguery, great as this is, but in Christian defec- 
 tion. We may not expect to arrest the tidal sweep 
 of Sabbath desecration until ministers and Church 
 members keep the day holy. As long as profess- 
 ing Christians ride on railroads and street cars 
 on the Sabbath, and get their mail, read secular 
 papers, visit, prepare sumptuous dinners, take 
 pleasure rides, and buy meat, milk, ice, and such 
 like on the Sabbath we are powerless as reform- 
 ers. In 1880 a general Sabbath convention at 
 Boston petitioned the Legislature of Massachusetts 
 for improvements in the Sabbath laws. The leg- 
 islative committee replied: " The trouble is with 
 you of the ministry and Churches. So long as 
 you buy Sunday papers, and use Sunday trains, 
 bakeries, markets, and barber shops, little can be 
 done for Sabbath observance." Whatever may 
 be the pretext under which these things are done, 
 the effect on society is the same. And because of 
 such a precedent, others go to greater lengths in 
 profaning the day. 
 
 I appeal to you my countrymen, to the philan- 
 4 
 
50 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 thropic, to consecrated womanhood, to all who 
 love law and order, virtue and God, rally to this 
 cause. 
 
 This time-honored institution must live. The 
 eternal laws of nature and morality demand it. 
 The eternal fitness of things demands it. The 
 sin-cursed generations of men, millions of whom 
 are now sunken into the depths of woe, plead 
 with you for this sacred day. 
 
 In dread apprehension of eternal damnation, the 
 dusky sons of toil, suspended over the vortex of 
 an awful hell, upon life's slender thread, call for 
 the respite from labor, the sacred influences of 
 home, and the immunities of the gospel which the 
 Christian Sabbath alone can bring them. The 
 ever blessed God, who hung out the heavens in 
 their beauty and decorated the earth with infinite 
 artistic skill, demands that this day be kept holy. 
 To commemorate our deliverance from the thral- 
 dom of sin and death, by the resurrection of our 
 Lord from the tomb, who conquered death in his 
 own dominion, and threw over the grave the cor- 
 uscation of eternal glory, let us preserve intact 
 the sanctity of this day: Upon this depends the 
 salvation of the nation, the glory of the Church 
 of Christ, and the happiness of men. Upon it 
 concenters our joy, and upon it culminates all our 
 hopes. 
 
 And finally viewing this day as a type of eternal 
 rest, where the good of all ages shall rejuvenate in 
 the blissful regions of a glorious immortality, I 
 
A Plea J "or the Sabbath. 51 
 
 submit this question, with the beautiful lines of 
 Christopher Wordsworth : 
 
 O day of rest and gladness; 
 
 O day of joy and light; 
 O balm of care and sadness, 
 
 Most beautiful, most bright. 
 On thee, the high and lowly, 
 
 Before the eternal throne, 
 Sing ' Holy, holy, holy,' 
 
 To the great three in one. 
 
 Thou art a cooling fountain 
 
 In life's dry, dreary sand; 
 From thee, like Pisgah's mountain, 
 
 We view our promised land; 
 A day of sweet reflection 
 
 Thou art a day of love ; 
 A day of resurrection 
 
 From earth to thinsrs above. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE SABBATH WAS CHANGED FROM THE SEV- 
 ENTH TO THE FIRST DAT BT JDIVINE 
 A UTHORITT. 
 
 6 'The word ' Sabbath' means to rest from la- 
 bor, to lie by, to keep holy day, to cease." (Ge- 
 senius.) "A season or day of rest; one day in 
 seven appointed for rest or worship, the observ- 
 ance of which was enjoined upon the Jews in the 
 decalogue, and has been continued by the Chris- 
 tian Church with a transfer of the day observed 
 from the last to the first day of the week; called 
 also the ' Lord's day,' in commemoration of the 
 resurrection of Christ upon that day." (Webster.) 
 These definitions contain the gist of the argument to 
 follow. God, having instituted the Sabbath at the 
 creation of the world, designed that it should be 
 perpetuated universally throughout all ages . There- 
 fore he made it possible for all men everywhere 
 to observe it. It received the sanction of God at 
 Sinai, and Christ also by his example and teaching 
 indorsed the Sabbath, 
 
 I. Does the Validity" and Design of This Day 
 
 Depend Upon a Specific Day, the Seventh 
 
 Day That God Blessed and Sanctified? 
 
 This question and many others were settled by 
 
 the apostles. It was hard for the Jews to break 
 
 away from the old forms of worship when they 
 
 (52) 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 5 3 
 
 embraced Christ as their Saviour; hence we find 
 that many of them still clung to the rites and ap- 
 pendages of the Mosaic economy. Among these 
 there arose teachers who gave the apostles no little 
 trouble, because they urged the Christians to ob- 
 serve the rite of circumcision and the seventh-day 
 Sabbath. The result was that at first many 
 of the Christians kept both the first and seventh 
 days, just as some do now. But the apostles ear- 
 nestly sought to correct this error. To this end 
 Paul wrote to the Colossians, saying: " Let no 
 man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or 
 in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of 
 the Sabbath days: which are a shadow of things 
 to come; but the body is of Christ." (Col. ii. 
 16, 17.) In commenting on these words, Mr. 
 Benson says: " The whole of the ceremonial law 
 being abrogated by Christ (Col. ii. 14), Christians 
 are under no obligations to observe any of the 
 Jewish holy days, not even the seventh-day Sab- 
 bath. Wherefore if any teacher made the observ- 
 ance of the seventh day a necessary duty, the Co- 
 lossians were to resist him. But though the 
 brethren in the first age paid no regard to the sev- 
 enth-day Sabbath, they set apart the first day of 
 the week for public worship.' 5 Eadie says on 
 this same passage: " Nor were they to hallow the 
 Sabbaths, for these had served their purpose, and 
 the Lord's day was to be a season of loftier joy, 
 as it commemorates a more august event than ei- 
 
 o 
 
 ther the creation of the universe or the exodus from 
 
54 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 
 
 Egypt. " Wordsworth says: " Sabbaton, the sev- 
 enth-day Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, which as 
 far as it was the seventh-day rest had been ful- 
 filled by Christ resting in the grave." As far as I 
 know, this is the accepted construction among 
 commentators upon this important passage. So 
 this question was settled in the apostolic age, and 
 left to rest thus, until the rise of the Seventh-day 
 Baptists, in 1678. They are but few in number, 
 amounting in 1880, including the German organi- 
 zations, to 9,609 communicants and 86 ministers. 
 The Seventh-day Adventists numbered at the same 
 time 15,570 communicants and 144 ministers. 
 These figures give an aggregate of 25,409 (exclu- 
 sive of the Jews) who are at war with the Chris- 
 tian Sabbath on religious grounds. What the 
 Seventh-day Adventists lack in numbers they 
 make up in activity and vehemence in the unre- 
 lenting war that they wage upon the Christian Sab- 
 bath. 
 
 We answer the above question negatively for the 
 following reasons: 
 
 1. If God had designed the seventh day ufon 
 which he rested to be the world 's Sabbath through- 
 out the ages, he would have expressly command- 
 ed it. 
 
 This he did not do. In Genesis ii. 2, 3, which 
 gives an account of the institution of the Sabbath, 
 we have a simple statement of two facts. One is 
 that God rested on the seventh day; the other, 
 that he sanctified the dav on which he rested. If 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 55 
 
 he had intended that the identical time observed 
 by him as a period of rest should be perpetuated 
 throughout all ages, he would have so arranged 
 the eons of time as to preclude all doubt and avoid 
 the possibility of mistake. But we are left in 
 doubt in the incipiency, as to when the day began 
 and ended. Who can decide from the statement 
 before us whether the day began at 12 o'clock 
 midday or 12 o'clock midnight, or at sunrise or 
 at sunset? All the evidence we have on the sub- 
 ject is contained in the account of the creation, in 
 the book of Genesis. In the fifth verse of the first 
 chapter we have the announcement: "And God 
 called the light day, and the darkness he called 
 night. And the evening and the morning were 
 the first day." A literal translation is: "And the 
 evening was, and the morning was day one." 
 The same statement is made of the succeeding 
 days down to the seventh, where it is said that 
 God ended his work and rested on the seventh 
 day from all his work; that he blessed the seventh 
 day and sanctified it. As the time of reckoning 
 the day has varied at different periods and among 
 different nations, who would dare assert at what 
 hour the day began and ended in the beginning of 
 time? The accepted theory of many scientists is, 
 that the days referred to in Genesis are not literal 
 days, but periods of time stretching through many 
 years. This theory has many advocates even 
 among the orthodox. If this should be true (wheth- 
 er true or false it does not effect the truth of the 
 
56 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 Bible), what becomes of the Sabbatarian theory?* 
 Of course no long period of time stretching through 
 a period of years can be observed by men as a 
 Sabbath of rest. But ^uch was the Sabbath that 
 God observed, if these days represented long peri- 
 ods of time. We find the Sabbatarian theory be- 
 set with insuperable difficulties in the beginning of 
 this argument, and these difficulties will be found 
 to increase as we proceed. 
 
 2. All that the law content-plates and enjoins is 
 that after six days of labor the seventh day shall be 
 observed as a day of rest and vjorship^ and to com- 
 memorate some important event. 
 
 This is the only reasonable, practical, and scrip- 
 tural view of this question. To contend for any- 
 thing else is to contend for the impossible. \n the 
 preceding chapter we have shown that the nations 
 of the earth have ever held to the septenary divis- 
 ion of time. That before there was a Jew upon 
 the earth, after six days of labor, the seventh was 
 observed as a day of rest. . After the institution of 
 the Sabbath at the creation, for a period of two 
 thousand five hundred and thirteen years, not a 
 word has come down to us through the Scriptures 
 upon this subject. Not an utterance is heard, 
 until we stand at the base of Mount Sinai and look 
 upon the imposing scene. The whole mountain is 
 wrapped in smoke and flame, and trembling as if 
 with fear and dread at the majesty of its mighty 
 
 * We use the word " Sabbatarian " for convenience to apply to 
 seventh-day Sabbath advocates. 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 5 7 
 
 Creator. The blasts of the trumpet bid the peo- 
 ple draw nigh to the scene, while the echoes of 
 the mighty thunders, commingling in sublimest 
 strain, warn the people not to touch the mount. 
 Beholding with awe, they see Moses ascend the 
 mountain, where God announces his sovereignty 
 and proceeds to say: "Remember the Sabbath 
 day to keep it holy." During the period of two 
 thousand five hundred and thirteen vears that had 
 intervened from the institution of the Sabbath to 
 this remarkable transaction, the Hebrew people 
 had come upon the stage of action, had been in 
 bondage, and had lost, because of oppression or 
 through neglect, their Sabbath. This is evident 
 from Nehemiah ix. 13, 14: "Thou earnest down 
 also from Mount Sinai, . . . and madest known 
 unto them thy holy Sabbath." And Ezekiel xx. 10— 
 12 : " Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of 
 the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wil- 
 derness. ... I gave them my Sabbaths, to be 
 a sign between me and them, that they might know 
 that I am the Lord that sanctify them." In the 
 first text it is said that God made known to the Is- 
 raelites the holy Sabbath. In the second text he 
 says he gave them his Sabbaths. If they had not 
 lost the Sabbath, this language is misleading. But 
 it is evident that they had lost the Sabbath. In re- 
 enacting the Sabbath law, God did not reckon from 
 the first day of creation, but from the first day 
 upon which manna fell. This fact is clearly estab- 
 lished in Exodus xvi. 2-30. Read and consider. 
 
58 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 
 
 The people murmured against Moses and Aaron. 
 The Lord promised bread from heaven, that the 
 people might gather a certain portion every day for 
 five successive days, that on the sixth day they 
 were to gather twice as much as on the preceding 
 days, (Verse 22.) "And he said unto them, This 
 is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the 
 rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." (Verse 
 23.) "Six days ye shall gather it; but on the 
 seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall 
 be none.'"' (Verse 26.) Some of the people went 
 out on the Sabbath day to gather, and found none. 
 "And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse 
 ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, 
 for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, 
 therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread 
 of two days: ... let no man go out of his 
 place on the seventh day. So the people rested 
 on the seventh day." (Verses 27-30.) Hence- 
 forth the seventh day from the falling of the man- 
 na was to be the rest day of the children of Israel, 
 not as a token or sign of the rest following the 
 work of creation, but as sign of their deliverance 
 from Egyptian bondage. They now had liberty 
 to keep God's commandments; and the Sabbath 
 just given them was to be a rest day from all serv- 
 ile labor, a holy day for worship, and a commem- 
 orative day, signifying their freedom from Pha- 
 roah's yoke. The evidence of this we have at hand : 
 " Six days thou shalt labor, and' do all thy work: 
 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord 
 
Changed by Divine A nthority. 59 
 
 thy God. . . . And remember that thou wast 
 a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord 
 thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty 
 hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the 
 Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sab- 
 bath day." (Deut. v. 13-15.) As the hebdoma- 
 dal cycle brought the Sabbath, the seventh day 
 from the falling of the manna, the people joined 
 in singing paeans to the God of their salvation for 
 the wonderful deliverance brought to them as a 
 nation. The Sabbath was a sign to them in a par- 
 ticular sense, as it signified a particular thing, and 
 in w r hich sense it w T as confined to the Jew r s. In all 
 this no attempt is made to compute time from the 
 creation. Not a word is said about the seventh 
 day upon w T hich God rested, nor have we here the 
 slightest intimation of that event. A new event 
 has transpired to which the Jewish Sabbath refers. 
 But all that God intended in the outset is here met. 
 The only difference between this Sabbath and the 
 original Sabbath is in the thing signified : the first 
 signified the creation ; this signified the deliverance 
 of the Jews from bondage. God's purpose is as 
 fully fulfilled by the one as by the other; all that 
 he ever contemplated is that after six days of la- 
 bor the seventh should be observed as a day of 
 rest and worship. Therefore the law reads: " Six 
 days shall work be done, but on the seventh day 
 there shall be to you a holy day, a Sabbath of rest 
 to the Lord." (Ex. xxxv. 2.) But for conven- 
 ience and to avoid confusion, that uniformity might 
 
60 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 
 
 be maintained in preserving the sanctity of the day, 
 God has given at different periods of the world's 
 history three important events to commemorate, 
 from which the Sabbath is reckoned, and to which 
 it is made to refer — to wit: the creation of the 
 world, the deliverance of the children of Israel 
 from Egypt, and the resurrection of our Lord from 
 the tomb. We call attention to the fact that it is 
 not essential to the sanctity of the day, nor a pre- 
 requisite element to the fact, that the Sabbath 
 should throughout all time fall upon the identical 
 day upon which the e^pnt transpired that it signi- 
 fies. The spirit of the law is met by the intent. 
 The Sabbath that has the prestige of the ages, 
 that has stood the test of centuries, and has had 
 the strongest defenders among the learned and the 
 pious, and upon which concenters both exoteric 
 and esoteric evidence is valid. It was not essential 
 to the Jews that they should keep the very day on 
 which the manna ceased to fail as the Sabbath, 
 but it was essential that they should keep one day 
 in seven as holy to the Lord. Neither is it essen- 
 tial to us that we keep the identical day upon which 
 Christ arose from the dead, but it is necessary that 
 we keep one day in seven holy to the Lord, and 
 that we regard that day as commemorative of the 
 resurrection of our Lord, a sign of our deliverance 
 from the thraldom of sin and the bitter pains of 
 eternal death. It is also necessary that there be 
 uniformity for the convenience of worship and 
 rest, and to preserve the sanctity of the day, and 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 61 
 
 also that the environments of the civil law may be 
 thrown around the day, to protect it from the des- 
 ecration of the vile. 
 
 3. As God designed religion to be practicable , he 
 has commanded, nothing that is impracticable. 
 
 A commandment requiring all men to keep the 
 seventh day, reckoning from the creation, would 
 be impossible. In this age of the world, amid the 
 confusion of chronologists, who can say that this 
 or that is the seventh day? We call attention to 
 the fact that the chronology of the Bible is that of 
 the Masoretic Hebrew Bible, which is followed 
 by Bede and adopted by the reformers. This 
 makes the world 4,004 years old to the Christian 
 era. But the Septuagint, w r hich Dr. Kennicott 
 and others argue is preferable, makes the world 
 1,500 years older. Here is a discrepancy of 1,500 
 years of time between the best chronologists. 
 This being true, who would have the audacity to 
 say that the day we call Saturday is the seventh 
 day from creation — the day upon which God rest- 
 ed? To undertake to maintain such a proposition 
 is to betray a spirit of dogmatism , if not to say 
 recklessness, that deserves the contempt of all lov- 
 ers of truth. It is out of the question to determine 
 any particular day when there exists such a dis- 
 crepancy of years. The fact is there is no period 
 from which we can reckon days in the beginning 
 of creation, since the Sabbath observed by the 
 Jews was reckoned from the first day the manna 
 fell. We would not dare assert that we keep the 
 
62 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 
 
 identical day, the first day of the week upon which 
 Christ arose from the tomb. Our chronology, 
 which was introduced by the Roman abbot, Dio- 
 nysius Exiguus, in the sixteenth century, which 
 became general during the reign of Charlemagne, 
 dates the Christian era December 25, 754 Anno 
 Urbis — i. e., from the founding of the city of Rome. 
 Dr. Schaff says: "Nearly all chronologists agree 
 that this is wrong by at least four years. Christ 
 was born A.U. 750 (or B.C. 4), if not earlier." 
 This statement he follows with an elaborate and 
 cogent argument. ( Schaff s " History of the Chris- 
 tian Church," Vol. L, p. 112.) So here again is a 
 discrepancy among the chronologers. If we have 
 no way by which we ,can certainly determine dates 
 (and w 7 e have not), neither can we determine 
 whether or not we keep the first day upon which 
 Christ arose. But we are not concerned about 
 that, since we meet the divine requirement, and 
 comply with the law. We fulfill the conditions for 
 which the day was instituted. It therefore makes 
 no difference whether we keep the first, second, 
 seventh, or any other day. We have a rest day, a 
 day holy to the Lord, a day for worship, which is a 
 sign of our redemption from the condemnation of 
 sin and death, as it commemorates the resurrection 
 of Christ. But who can say that we do not keep 
 the very day upon which Christ rose, and that this 
 is the identical day upon which God rested, the orig- 
 inal seventh, and that it is the very day given to the 
 Jews for their Sabbath? However, there is no evi- 
 
Changed by Divine A athority. 63 
 
 dence either in favor of, or against this. How can 
 there be amid the mutation of time that has produced 
 a discrepancy of years? We hardly know wheth- 
 er to pity the credulity of the man, or to condemn 
 the audacity of the dogmatist who contends for a 
 veritable Sabbath, the identical day upon which 
 God rested. This question of days is a sealed ques- 
 tion, that no man can lay open. 
 
 4. The theory of the Sabbatarians is opposed by 
 a physical barrier. 
 
 The difference of longitude and of latitude 
 makes a difference of time. Hence it is a physic- 
 al impossibility for all men to observe the identical 
 time as a day holy to the Lord. The diurnal rota- 
 tion of the earth, and the inequality of the days as 
 we travel from the equator to the poles, varying in 
 length from twenty-four hours to six months, op- 
 pose an insuperable barrier to this theory. What 
 shall those do who have six months day and six 
 months night, if this theory be true? How T can 
 they, and we, conform to the same day? This 
 fact of itself is sufficient to prove the absurdity of 
 the Sabbatarian theory. The sun is ever rising 
 and setting. Traveling west or east, on reaching 
 the 180th meridian of longitude, there is a sudden 
 change of time. So steamers and trading vessels 
 between San Francisco and Japan, on crossing 
 this line, immediately change their calendar going 
 or coming. Our antipodes keep one day and we 
 another. We may reckon from the same event 
 and keep the same day in numerical order, but we 
 
64 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 
 
 cannot keep the identical time. All this clearly 
 establishes the fact that God never intended that 
 the validity of the Sabbath should be made to de- 
 pend upon a fixed day. If so, he would have so 
 arranged the time table that there could have been 
 no variation. On the great dial plate of nature 
 there had been indelibly inscribed in fixed char- 
 acters the cycles of the ages. No such arrange- 
 ment has been made ; and if we are to be held to 
 the Sabbatarian dogma, we are lost in the laby- 
 rinth of the ages, and there is nothing left us but 
 the wail of despair couched in the words of Ad- 
 dison : 
 
 u The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, 
 Puzzled with mazes, and perplexed with error; 
 Our understanding searches them in vain." 
 
 But we are not left in such a state ; we have the 
 blessed Sabbath, a day that has the prestige of the 
 ages, hoary with time, revered by men and 
 blessed of God. 
 
 II. The Change from the Seventh to the 
 First Day. 
 That there was a change of days at the resur- 
 rection of Christ there is no doubt. That at that 
 time the Jews were keeping the seventh day ac- 
 cording to their reckoning from the falling of the 
 manna, and that the Christians after the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ began to keep the first day of the 
 week, there is no doubt. 
 
 1. It is a significant fact that man' 's first day 
 was the Sabbath. God finished the work of 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 65 
 
 creation on the sixth day and rested on the seventh. 
 Man, having been created on the sixth day, began 
 his earthly career by observing the Sabbath ; then 
 followed six days of labor. As man began 
 the work of the first dispensation by observing 
 the Sabbath, so did men begin the work of 
 the second dispensation by observing the Sab- 
 bath, the first day, and then followed six secu- 
 lar days. Thus it appears that there is an exact 
 correspondence in this fact between the first Sab- 
 bath and the Christian. This is a significant co- 
 incidence which I do not believe is the work of 
 chance, but of design to impress men with the 
 great necessity of observing this holy day. The 
 fullness of time had now come, Jesus was crucified 
 and buried, and he lay in the grave on the old 
 Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, which had ful- 
 filled its end as a sign of the deliverance of the 
 Jews from Egyptian bondage. Now the first day 
 dawned upon the world, the conquering Son of 
 God in triumph broke the bands of death and 
 arose a conqueror from the womb of nature. 
 Never did the sun usher in a day so glorious. It 
 was the jubilee of the universe. At creation's 
 birth the morning stars shouted aloud for joy, but 
 at redemption's consummation the earth shook, 
 the rocks were rent, and graves were opened and 
 the dead resuscitated by infinite power, sprang 
 into life and walked the streets of Jerusalem. 
 
 "'Twas great to speak a world from naught, 
 'Twas greater to redeem." 
 
 5 
 
66 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty '. 
 
 It were meet that men should observe the prim- 
 ative Sabbath in token of the rest of God after he 
 had made the world, and because he had sancti- 
 fied the day. It were meet that the Jews should 
 observe the Sabbath given them in the wilder- 
 ness by Jehovah. It were also meet that the world 
 should commemorate an event that directly in- 
 volves the destiny of all men by observing the day 
 as sacred that marked the event. So we may 
 note that the change was a reasonable one, just 
 such a change as we might expect to take place in 
 view of the facts. At the death of Christ the 
 Jewish cult terminated in a more perfect system 
 of ethics, with rites less cumbersome. Nothing 
 was destroyed or abolished, but many things 
 were fulfilled, and some changed; the bloody 
 sacrificial types, adumbrations of Christ, were ful- 
 filled in his death. The seal of the covenant of 
 grace (not the covenant itself) was changed from 
 circumcision to baptism. The paschal feast, which 
 signified the passing over of the Israelites by the 
 destroying angel, gave place to the eucharistic 
 supper, which commemorates the death and suffer- 
 ing of Christ. The Sabbath was changed from 
 the seventh day, which was a sign of the deliver- 
 ance of the Israelites from Egypt, to the first day, 
 which commemorates the resurrection of the Lord. 
 Those who prefer the Jewish Sabbath to the 
 Christian thus far set aside the great fact of our 
 salvation and go back to the old Jewish questions. 
 To such the apostle speaks in the following words: 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 67 
 
 " But now, after that ye have known God, or 
 rather are known of God, how turn ye again to 
 the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye 
 desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, 
 and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of 
 you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." 
 The Jewish seventh-day Sabbath was connected 
 with ceremonial institutions. The Jews had 
 lugged in many appendages, and had rendered 
 the day burdensome. This day was a type of the 
 Christian Sabbath, and now that the Christian 
 Sabbath has been inaugurated $ there was no need 
 of the continuance of the seventh-day Sabbath. 
 It had fulfilled its mission, and was now a burden 
 rather than a delight. It gave way to its antitype, a 
 day unincumbered by Jewish ceremonies and tra- 
 ditions. To all who would resurrect this day the 
 apostle says, he is " afraid of them," lest he had 
 wasted his labor upon them. 
 
 2. The transfer was evidently of divine appoint- 
 ment, or it could never have been made. It was 
 not made by the Gentiles, but by the Jews them- 
 selves. What induced them to make the change? 
 They were much attached to their institutions, and 
 clung to them with deathless tenacity. It was not 
 all the Jews that made the change, but those that em- 
 braced the Saviour and his teachings. The others 
 remained in unbelief and continued to observe the 
 seventh day. Then the believing Jews observed 
 the first day, while the unbelieving Jews kept the 
 seventh. This increased the virulence of the 
 
68 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 
 
 latter against the former, and with other things 
 superinduced the spirit of persecution. Nothing 
 but divine authority could have induced the change, 
 for around the seventh-day Sabbath clustered the 
 memories of the past and associations that ren- 
 dered the Jews famous among the nations of the 
 earth. But as a matter of fact the change was 
 made, and that fact continues to this day as 
 strongly attested as the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper. If the change was not made in the apos- 
 tolic age and under divine authority, then the ques- 
 tion is : By whom and at what time was the change 
 made? The Sabbatarians allege that the change 
 was effected by Constantine, the Roman Emperor. 
 But this statement is self-contradictory, for the 
 Christians had observed the first-day Sabbath for 
 more than three hundred years before the edict of 
 Constantine respecting the Sabbath was. issued. 
 This edict was the first European civil enactment 
 upon the Sabbath question, but many others fol- 
 lowed at different times.. In A.D. 311, Galerius 
 issued an edict of toleration in connection with 
 Constantine and Licinius. In that document he 
 declared that the purpose of reclaiming the 
 Christians from their willful innovation and the 
 multitude of their sects to the laws and discipline 
 of the Roman State was not accomplished (by the 
 bloody persecution waged); and that he would 
 now grant them permission to hold their assem- 
 blies, provided they disturbed not the order of the 
 state. 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 69 
 
 At Milvian Bridge, near Rome, October 27, 
 A.D. 312, Constantine conquered Maxentius. A 
 short time after (313) Constantine and Lucinius 
 met at Milan and issued a new edict of toleration, 
 that went farther than the first and granted protec- 
 tion to the Christians. It was on March 7, A.D. 
 321, that Constantine issued his Sunday law, 
 which reads as follows: " Let all judges, inhabit- 
 ants of the cities, and artificers rest on the venera- 
 ble day of the sun. But husbandmen may freely 
 and at their pleasure apply to business of agricul- 
 ture, since it often happens that the sowing of grain 
 and the plowing of vines cannot so advantageously 
 be performed on any other day, lest by neglecting 
 the opportunity they should lose the benefits 
 w 7 hich the divine bounty bestows upon us." Bear 
 in mind these dates, which we are careful to give 
 that our case may be clearly made out. 
 
 Long before this edict, as will appear from the 
 evidence that follows, the Christians had observed 
 the Lord's day, which chanced to fall on the Sun- 
 day in question. This edict is not the language of 
 a decree establishing a rest day for Christians, but 
 that of legislation protecting a da)^ already held 
 sacred. Nothing can be plainer, for there is not 
 the remotest intimation here of establishing a day 
 of worship any more than in the edicts that have 
 followed from age to age. Theodosius, in A.D. 
 386, prohibited all business and shows upon this 
 day; and in 392 he prohibited contests of the cir- 
 cus, theatrical games, and horse races. In A.D. 
 
70 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 
 
 440 Leo I. issued his edict, which reads as follows: 
 ' 6 It is our will and pleasure that the holy days, 
 dedicated to the Most High God, should not be 
 spent in sensual recreations, or otherwise profaned 
 by suits of law. . . . As to the pretense that 
 an opportunity may be lost by this rest [of secur- 
 ing crops], this is a poor reason, considering that 
 the fruits of the earth do not depend so much on 
 the diligence and pains of man as on the efficien- 
 cy of the sun and the blessings of God. We com- 
 mand, .therefore, all, whether husbandmen or oth- 
 ers, to forbear work on this day of the resurrection. 
 For if other people [meaning the Jews who re- 
 jected Christ] keep the shadow of this day in a 
 solemn rest from all secular labor on the Sabbath 
 [the seventh day], how much rather ought we to 
 observe the substance, a day so ennobled by our 
 gracious Lord, who saved us from destruction." 
 Why not claim this as the beginning of the Chris- 
 tian Sabbath, for here is more the semblance of 
 primordial legislation than the edict of Constan- 
 tine ? But alas for the Sabbatarians ! here, too, we 
 find nothing but respect paid to an existing institu- 
 tion. Leo says that the Jews by observing the 
 seventh day kept only the shadow, while the Chris- 
 tians kept the substance, a day so ennobled by our 
 Lord, who saved us from destruction. In refuta- 
 tion of the allegation made by the Sabbatarians 
 that Constantine inaugurated the Christian Sab- 
 bath, we have many and competent witnesses who 
 vindicate fully and clearly the validity of our holy 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 7 1 
 
 Sabbath. The epistle which bears the name of 
 " Barnabas, " in existence in the second century, 
 says : " We keep the eighth day with joyfulness, on 
 which Jesus rose from the dead." Ignatius was 
 the disciple of St. John, the apostle, and he surely 
 knew the faith and practice of his leader and 
 teacher. Therefore his testimony must be conclu- 
 sive. He says: " Those who w r ere brought up in 
 an ancient order of things have come to the pos- 
 session of new hope, no longer observing the Sab- 
 bath, but living in the observance cf the Lord's 
 day; on which our life also has sprung up against 
 him and by his death." Justin Martyr, who wrote 
 about A.D. 120, says: " Sunday is the day on 
 which we hold our common assembly, because it 
 is the first day on which God, having wrought a 
 change in the darkness and matter, made the 
 world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same 
 day rose from the dead, for he was crucified on, 
 the day before, that of Saturn; and on the day 
 after that of Saturn, which is the 'Day of the Sun,' 
 he appeared to his disciples." Dionysius, Bishop 
 of Corinth, about A.D. 170, says: " To-day we 
 have passed the Lord's holy day, in which we 
 have read }^our epistle." Clement, presbyter at 
 Alexandria about A.D. 189, speaks of " the true 
 Gnostic as keeping the Lord's day in commemo- 
 ration of the Lord's resurrection." Bardesanes 
 writes about the close of the second century: 
 " Wherever we be, all of us are called by the same 
 name of the Messiah, ' Christians; ' upon one 
 
72 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 
 
 day, which is the first of the week, we assemble 
 ourselves together." Cyprian, A.D. 247, speaks 
 of the Lord's day as sacred, and as at once the 
 eighth and the first day." We have the testimony 
 of Eusebius, Tertullian, Origen, Anatolius (Bishop 
 of Laodicea), Victorius, Athanasius, and many 
 others to the same effect. 
 
 Before we leave this feature of the subject we 
 will quote from the teachings of the apostles a doc- 
 ument written, according to the consensus of the 
 scholars, not later than forty years after the death 
 of the last apostle > and while many were yet living 
 who had heard St. John. We quote from chapter 
 fourteen: "But every Lord's day do ye gather 
 yourselves together and break bread* and give 
 thanks, after having confessed your transgressions. 
 . For this is that which was spoken by the 
 Lord." Is not this sufficient? Do we desire more 
 evidence still ? Then listen to the heathen writer* 
 Pliny the Younger, in his letter to Trajan, the em- 
 peror, who wrote in the second century. He says 
 the Christians "were accustomed to meet on a 
 stated day before sunrise to sing a hymn to Christ 
 as to a god." This was evidently the Lord's day 
 upon which they met. So the allegation brought 
 by the Sabbatarians that Constantine inaugurated 
 the Christian Sabbath stands clearly refuted. It 
 is admitted by eminent defenders of the Saturday 
 Sabbath that within a hundred years after the 
 apostles the Sabbath idea had been transferred to 
 the Lord's day. So again we press the question: 
 
Changed by Divine A nthority. 73 
 
 By whom and at what time was the change made 
 from the seventh to the first day, if not by divine 
 authority under the apostolic administration? Let 
 it be remembered that the burden of proof does 
 not fall upon us, but upon the little band that would 
 overthrow the faith of the Christian world and fill 
 the land with confusion. But the defenders of the 
 seventh-day theory have been forced to acknowl- 
 edge that within a hundred years after the apostles 
 the Sabbath idea had been transferred to the 
 Lord's day, as shown by the teachings of Tertul- 
 lian, that " on the day of the Lord's resurrection 
 Christians should defer their business lest they 
 give any place to the devil. ? ' Being forced to re- 
 linguish this claim, they have changed their tactics 
 to some extent. The editor of the Outlook, the 
 leading paper of the Seventh-day Baptists, says: 
 " We make no attempt to show that the Sunday 
 was not devoted to religious worship and Church 
 assembling. All this we concede to have been 
 done from an early time. Neither do we attempt to 
 prove that in Europe the Church observed the Sab- 
 bath to any great extent after the fifth century; but 
 what we shall prove is that the Sunday, previous to 
 the sixteenth century, was never considered by the 
 Church to be the Sabbath, was not called the Sab- 
 bath, and therefore the assumption that the Sab- 
 bath was changed by divine authority or apostolic 
 example, from the seventh to the first day of the 
 week, at the resurrection of Christ, is merely an 
 assumption, without one particle of proof." 
 
74 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 If it were true as set forth in the above extract, 
 that the first-day Sabbath was not called by the 
 specific name 6t Sabbath" in the earlier centuries 
 of this era, that would not invalidate the day. 
 There is an infallible test given us by the Master 
 respecting false prophets, that applies to the case 
 in hand: "By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 And another similar to that was meant to apply to 
 his own divinity: " My doctrine is not mine, but 
 his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he 
 shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, 
 or whether I speak of myself." Apply these tests 
 to the Christian Sabbath, and they will be found to 
 meet every condition of these principles, as we 
 shall see further on. The question does not turn 
 upon the name given to the day. It is not a ques- 
 tion of names, but of facts. The question is: Does 
 the first-day Sabbath answer the end designed ? 
 Does it meet the requirements and conditions of a 
 Christian Sabbath? Does it serve the same pur- 
 pose under the Christian dispensation that the sev- 
 enth-day Sabbath did under the Mosaic dispensa- 
 tion ? "We will here consider the cognate character 
 of the institutions. Dr. Orr has said: "The points 
 of analogy, however, are so numerous that the better 
 word w T ould be identical." i. Both are rest days 
 for the bodies of men and for the beasts of burden. 
 2. They are both holy days, ov/ned and blessed of 
 God, and set apart for public congregational wor- 
 ship, days for observing the ordinances of the 
 Church. 3. Both stand connected with an impor- 
 
Changed by Divine A nthority. 75 
 
 tant event, and are made to commemorate it. 4. 
 And both are types of something future : the sev- 
 enth-day Sabbath was the type of the Christian 
 Sabbath, and the Christian Sabbath is a type of 
 that eternal Sabbath that awaits the people of God 
 beyond the grave. 
 
 The mathematical axiom is here apropos : Things 
 that are equal to the same things are equal to each 
 other. These days, being equal to the same things, 
 are equal to each other. The seventh-day Sab- 
 bath having served its purpose as a part of a cere- 
 monial administration, an administration of adum- 
 brations, was fulfilled and supplanted by the 
 Lord's day. The Jews when they met to worship 
 were aroused to gratitude by a retrospective glance 
 at. their deliverance from Egypt's yoke, and a 
 prospective faith in abetter inheritance, a superior 
 form of worship, less cumbered and transcendent- 
 ly glorious. To this fact the apostle refers when 
 he says: "And these all, having obtained a good 
 report through faith, received not the promise: 
 God having provided some better thing for us, that 
 they without us should not be made perfect." As 
 already stated, the seventh-day Sabbath was a type 
 of the Lord's day. The Jews were loath to give 
 up the shadow for the substance, and because of 
 their great attachment for their former feasts and 
 rest days the apostles had no little trouble in keep- 
 ing out these from the worship of the early Church. 
 And this is true of other Jewish forms. It was to 
 rebuke this effort to ingraft Jewish forms upon the 
 
76 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 
 
 Christian Church that the apostle wrote to the Co- 
 lossian Christians: "Let no man therefore judge 
 you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy 
 day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: 
 which are a shadow of things to come." (Col. ii, 
 16, 17.) And in Hebrews x. 1-9 he says: "For 
 the law having a shadow of good things to come, 
 and not the very image of the things. 
 He taketh away the first, that he may establish the 
 second." The Jewish Sabbath was included in 
 the things that were taken away, that the Chris- 
 tian Sabbath, superior in some particulars, might 
 be established, that the type, the shadow, might 
 merge into the substance. 
 
 The Christian Sabbath differs from the Jewish 
 in that greater liberty is enjoyed. It is free 
 from the appendages of tradition that rendered the 
 Jewish a burden. It differs in that the Jewish was 
 restricted to a national history, and made a com- 
 memorative sign of a national event. The Chris- 
 tian Sabbath commemorates an event that involves 
 the destiny of all men, and is connected with a 
 cosmic plan that contemplates the elevation of the 
 nations of the earth. To all men it is a type of an 
 eternal rest. It matters not by what name you 
 may call it. It answers its end. It fulfills the con- 
 ditions of a Sabbath such as is befitting the 
 grand system of which it is a part. It has all the 
 prestige and environments that in any sense are 
 prerequisite to validate any claim. But to proceed 
 with the argument. 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 77 
 
 3. The Neva Testament furnishes as -proof ^posi- 
 tive of the change from the seventh to the first day 
 as the Sabbath, 
 
 It is true that the apostles did sometimes resort 
 to the Jewish synagogue on the seventh day, the 
 old Sabbath, but simply as an expedient to get 
 the ear of the Jewish worshipers, just as we fre- 
 quently have service on Saturday as a matter of 
 expedience, but in no way to sanction the claim 
 set up by the Sabbatarians. 
 
 (1) Let us consider that this day was pecul- 
 iarly honored by the resurrection of our Lord 
 from the grave. In this it has a peculiar mark 
 and distinction from all other days. Christmas 
 day, which has the distinction of commemorating 
 the birthday of our Lord, is held in honor by all 
 professing Christians ; but strange to say there are 
 those who profess to honor Christ who would de- 
 grade and profane the Christian's holy day that 
 witnessed the triumph of life over death, the day 
 of conquest, the day of redemption. It is also 
 significant that Christ had his first meeting with 
 his disciples on the first day — in the evening of the 
 same day of His resurrection. And the fact that 
 his second appearance after the resurrection was 
 just one week from the first appearance and on the 
 first day goes quite far in fixing the sanctity of the 
 day, and stands as a pledge that his presence shall 
 be manifested to his people in the coming ages, 
 when assembled upon that day, for His worship. 
 This day was also honored with the fulfillment of 
 
78 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty . 
 
 the prophecies relative to the baptism of the Holy 
 Spirit— for upon this day was the Pentecost, ever 
 memorable as the event when full-orbed salvation 
 burst upon the earth in all its splendor and hal- 
 lowedness; the harbinger of victory over death, 
 hell, and the grave; the signal of the victory of 
 the cross over all principalities and powers. Was 
 ever day like this, so blessed of God and honored 
 of men? These two grand events are enough to 
 render this day sacred forever, and to perpetuate 
 it as the Lord's day throughout all time. 
 
 (2) The apostles observed the Lord's day, or 
 the first day of the week. So we have the state- 
 ment: "And upon the first day of the week, when 
 the disciples came together to break bread, Paul 
 preached unto them." (Acts xx. 7.) The dis- 
 ciples came together to break bread, to celebrate 
 the Lord's Supper on the first day of the week, 
 and Paul preached unto them. The early Chris- 
 tians took collections at their services just as we 
 do, to meet current expenses and to assist the 
 poor. These weekly collections were taken on 
 the days that they met to worship. Respecting 
 these collections the apostle says: " Now con- 
 cerning the collection for the saints, as I have 
 given order to the Churches of Galatia, even so do 
 ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one 
 of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered 
 him, that there be no gatherings when I come." 
 (1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2.) If these collections were tak- 
 en on the day that the Christians met to worship, 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 79 
 
 and that day was the first of the week, then the 
 first day of the week w r as the day that the early 
 Christians regarded as sacred, or as the Sabbath. 
 So, then, the fact is clearly established that the 
 Christians in the apostolic age did observe the first 
 day of the week as the Christian Sabbath. This 
 day, as we have already seen because it was ren- 
 dered sacred by the resurrection of the Lord, re- 
 ceived a specific and distinct name: the Lord's 
 day; a hallowed day, to which all the prophecies 
 pointed as the culminating event of the great re- 
 medial plan; the Lord's day in a sense that no 
 other day can be ; a day not to be profaned by men 
 either by doing ordinary work therein or seeking 
 pleasure thereon. St. John speaks of this day by 
 its specific name: " I was in the Spirit on the 
 Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, 
 as of a trumpet." (Rev. i. 10.) This text does 
 more than demonstrate the fact that this day was 
 denominated the Lord's day, for it also reveals to 
 us the fact the Apocalyptic vision of St. John was 
 given upon that day. This intensifies the sacred- 
 ness of the day. But long before this, the 
 Psalmist, looking down through the roll of the com- 
 ing years by prophetic foresight, forestalled his- 
 toric statements in the sublime language: "The 
 stone which the builders refused is become the 
 head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's do- 
 ing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day 
 which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and 
 be glad in it." What day is referred to? Evi- 
 
80 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 dently the Lord's day, the first day, the day upon 
 which the Lord rose from the grave, the day 
 that resuscitated the cherished hopes of a sin- 
 cursed earth, the day that threw over the grave 
 a coruscation of light that dispels all gloom, a 
 day in which rejoicing angels caught up the refrain 
 of earth's paeons, and sent back the watchword: 
 " Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reign- 
 eth." With the Psalmist we can say: "We will 
 rejoice in it." 
 
 4. This day has been and is being peculiarly hon- 
 ored of God. 
 
 There never was a day like this. It was made 
 glorious by the resurrection of our Lord; ren- 
 dered ever memorable by the grandeurs of the 
 Pentecost, when the sanctifying presence and 
 power of the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, came to 
 abide with the Church as never before. . This day 
 was signalized by the appearance of the Lord after 
 his resurrection unto his disciples. It was ren- 
 dered sacred by the apostles and early Christians 
 who assembled together on that day to worship; 
 and favored with the Apocalyptic vision of St. John. 
 This day has been revered by confessors and mar- 
 tyrs, by the noble and the ignoble, and by the good 
 and wise. It has stood the test of the centuries 
 for nearly nineteen hundred years. And to-day it 
 is the glory of men in all the walks of life, whether 
 rich or poor, learned or unlearned, saint or sinner. 
 This day is ever to be reverenced by men because 
 it is honored of God. It stands interwoven into 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 8 1 
 
 the very texture of the Christian system. Destroy 
 this day and you destroy the system. If you go 
 back to the seventh-day Sabbath, you destroy the 
 significance of the day, and revert to the Jewish 
 sign of deliverance from bondage. You resusci- 
 tate an effete cult and substitute a form for the 
 substance. More than 400,000,000 people are di- 
 rectly committed to this day. It is a part of their 
 system, a part of their spiritual life, because of its 
 vital connection with their spiritual supply. Mill- 
 ions upon millions have from age to age received 
 their spiritual life upon this day. Sunday follow^-* 
 ing Sunday the witnessing Spirit has manifested 
 his presence and power as he did on the day of 
 Pentecost at his first coming in such wonderful 
 power. Conviction, repentance, regeneration, jus- 
 tification, and sanctification have accompanied the 
 preaching of the word on this holy day. Upon it 
 children, young men, and maidens have caught 
 the inspiration, while the middle-aged and the old, 
 looking out into the bright -prolepsis^ have shouted 
 victory from the humble chapel to the magnificent 
 structure festooned in rich drapery. The echoes 
 of salvation have been heralded from the centers of 
 civilization, until the heathens in the regions beyond 
 have realized the impulse of the spirit and sent 
 back the watchword: "Thy kingdom come." 
 Reign on, thou blessed Jesus, reign on, until like 
 a sea of glory the light of thy holy Sabbath day 
 becomes the signal of conquest to all the nations 
 of the globe ! This day, hoary with the frost of 
 6 
 
82 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 the ages, majestically attested by angels and the 
 ever blessed God, is the glory of man. In the 
 faith of this day our mothers and fathers have 
 lived in the full assurance of hope, and come 
 down to death in glorious triumph. In the face 
 of all these things who would desecrate this holy 
 day? The covetous through greed of gain, epicu- 
 reans for sensual indulgence, the skeptical through 
 contempt for the truth, and the vile in hatred of 
 the good, would destroy this day. 
 
 But why should the little band of Sabbatarians 
 "manifest so much hatred for the day? Why are 
 they so dogmatical as to seek to rob a nation of a 
 rest day rather than have any impediment thrown 
 in the way of their proselytism? It is mere jargon 
 to talk of reversing the order of things, and re- 
 storing the seventh-day Sabbath. The present 
 order cannot be reversed. We cannot go back to 
 the seventh day. This is evident from the fact 
 that the seventh-day advocates have made no prog- 
 ress to speak of. Although they have been advo- 
 cating this question for more than two hundred 
 years, there is at present only a little band of them 
 numbering about 35,000. During this period the 
 adherents to the Christian Sabbath have reached 
 many millions. Such a reversal would require a 
 radical change in the faith of the Church. It 
 would be an impeachment of the piety and wisdom 
 of the good and wise who have gone before us. It 
 would require the rewriting of history. To advo- 
 cate this change tends to confuse the mind of the 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 8 
 
 o 
 
 uninformed. It genders strife and produces skepti- 
 cism. It confuses society and fosters hardness and 
 alienation among neighbors. A change can better 
 no one 9 while it smacks of fickleness on the part of 
 those who advocate it, and lessens confidence in the 
 truth. It tends to destroy the Sabbath entirely. 
 
 It is plainly a violation of the Divine will. Rev. 
 W. F. Crafts makes the following points on the 
 Sabbatarians: "Before they can thus turn back 
 the dial of the nations they must clear up seven 
 difficulties: i. Can the example of God's creative 
 week, whose ' days ' are generally considered by 
 Biblical scholars and scientists as long periods, be 
 consistently cited as a binding precedent for rest- 
 ing on Saturday, until it is proven that God's rest 
 from his creative work w r as on Saturday? (Com- 
 pare Gen. ii. 4; Ezra vii. 9; John viii. 56.) 2. 
 Since the Bible reckons time from the birth 
 of Adam (Gen. v. 3), how can it be shown that 
 the first Sabbath of human history was not the 
 first day of its first week? 3. If Saturday was the 
 sacred day of Adam, how doe<s it happen that the 
 nations, except the Jews, observed Sunday as their 
 most sacred day? 4. If Saturday was the sacred 
 day before the Exodus, how does it happen that 
 God commanded the Jews to break it by march- 
 ing, in their exodus from Egypt, on that day? 5. 
 How can the literalism of the seventh-day theory 
 be reconciled with the fact that one who travels 
 around the world loses or gains a day, and also 
 with the fact that no day begins or ends at exactly 
 
84 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty . 
 
 the same time in any two remotely separated places ? 
 6. Since seventh-day Christians find that they have 
 made in the last six centuries almost no headway 
 in changing the Christian Sabbath back to Satur- 
 day, how do they explain the fact that the com- 
 plete change of the seventh day to the first was 
 made in the early Christian Church in less than 
 two centuries, if there was no divine warrant for 
 it ? 7. How can the claim that the change of day 
 was a serious and sinful enormity, wrought by ' the 
 man of sin who changes times and laws' (An- 
 drew's Preface, IV.), be reconciled with the fact 
 that the richest pentecostal blessings of God have, 
 from the first, fallen upon Christians as they have 
 gathered for worship on the first day of the week? 
 ' The divine blessing on the (first day) Sabbath,' 
 says Dr. Dwight, ' has been too evident, too uni- 
 form, and too long continues to admit of doubt „' ' 
 
 Recapitulation. 
 
 1. The Bible does not specify when the day be- 
 gan and when it ended at the institution of the 
 Sabbath. It simply states that the evening and 
 the morning were the first day, and so on down to 
 the seventh day. This is an indication that the 
 reckoning of the day began with the evening. 
 
 2. The validity of the Sabbath does not depend 
 upon a fixed and specific time extending through- 
 out all ages; for such an arrangement is impos- 
 sible, being precluded by the mutation of time 
 during the ages agone, by nature herself, and by 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 85 
 
 the fact that there is no such history establishing 
 such a day. 
 
 3. God only designed that one day in seven 
 shall be held sacred for man's good and His glory, 
 and the day thus held be made to commemorate 
 some great event. The original Sabbath was 
 made to commemorate God's creative work. The 
 Jewish Sabbath, given to them in the wilderness, 
 was a sign of their deliverance from Egypt. (Deut. 
 v. 13, 15.) The third great event was the resur- 
 rection of Christ, and our Sabbath is to com- 
 memorate that fact. 
 
 4. N. B. That it is the seventh day that is to be 
 kept holy. A day, the seventh day, after six days 
 of labor, the next day, the seventh day, is the 
 Sabbath. Nothing is said about a particular day 
 to be observed throughout all time'. Not a word 
 is to be found in the record about reckoning from 
 a given date to determine with definiteness the 
 Sabbath. On the contrary, we have the three 
 events from which the Sabbath has been reckoned^ 
 the creation, the falling of the manna, and the 
 resurrection of Christ. The first and the second 
 events are cosmic; they pertain to all the world, 
 and the Sabbath that commemorates them is the 
 world's Sabbath. The second event was restrict- 
 ed to the Jews, being a part of their history; so the 
 Sabbath commemorating that event was the Jewish 
 Sabbath, and is to this day, and was confined to 
 the Jews after the resurrection of Christ until re- 
 cently. Again, we say that it is the seventh day 
 
86 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 after six days of labor that is to be kept holy. 
 This idea is in strict harmony with the letter of 
 the law. "Six days thou shalt labor, and do all 
 thy work: but the seventh day m the Sabbath of 
 the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any 
 work." But to prevent confusion and to have 
 conformity, at the beginning of the three great 
 events specified, God gave sanction to the day 
 that should be observed ; and that day, according to 
 the best chronological account, has been observed 
 thoughout these three periods of the world's his- 
 tory marked by the events in question. The first 
 period stretches through 2,513 years. The second 
 event stretches through a period of 1,491 years. 
 The third event has reached a period of 1,992 
 years, and is to continue to the eschatology of all 
 things. 
 
 The Sabbath was Changed from the Jewish 
 
 Sabbath, the Seventh Day, to the 
 
 Christian Sabbath, the First Day. 
 
 1. This change has the sanction of the Lord, 
 who rose from the grave on that day and made 
 his first two appearances upon that day. 2. It has 
 the sanction of the apostles, w r ho worshiped upon 
 that day. Upon it they took collections, preached, 
 and administered the sacrament. And they also 
 discouraged the Christians from observing the 
 seventh-day Sabbath. 3. The allegation that 
 Constantine changed the day is refuted by the 
 Scripture testimony given above, and by the testi- 
 
Changed by Divine A uthority. 87 
 
 mony of the fathers; by the terms of the edict 
 itself, and by the fact that the edict was not issued 
 until more than three hundred years after the 
 Sabbath was changed. 4. The fact remains that 
 the change was made, and that it was made by the 
 Jews themselves, and that fact remains to this day 
 more fully settled upon the world than ever before. 
 Considering the nature of the Jews, their stead- 
 fastness to existing institutions, their national pre- 
 dilection to all that relates to them as a nation, 
 their seclusiveness, with distinctive peculiarities 
 that tend to separate them from all other people, 
 and their natural antipathy to every thing that is 
 averse to their rites and ceremonies, who wroild 
 dare say that anything less than divine authority 
 could ever have induced them to give up the Jew- 
 ish for the Christian Sabbath? But the change 
 w r as demanded by the facts involved. To disas- 
 sociate the Jews from the forms and ceremonies of 
 Judaism changes were necessary. Otherwise they 
 had never given up these forms. So the whole 
 manner and style of worship was changed. The 
 officiating priest, with bleeding victim and holo- 
 caust, gave place to the unpretentious preacher, 
 who points to the propitiation of our sins through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord who offered himself once 
 for all to redeem us to God. The rite of circum- 
 cision gave place to baptism; the passover, to the 
 eucharist; and the yezvish seventh-day Sabbath, to 
 the Christian first-day Sabbath. Jewish feasts also 
 were relinquished for Christian celebration days 
 
88 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty \ 
 
 such as Christmas and Easter Sunday. While 
 from the seventh day patronage was withdrawn, 
 and interest waned in it, around the first day 
 there was the intense concentration of the life of 
 the Church. 5. Our Sabbath stands attested by 
 the highest authority possible. God has in many 
 ways given sanction to the Christian Sabbath. 
 Would he sanction a wrong thing by blessing it as 
 he has blessed this day? Has not his displeasure 
 rested upon individuals and nations who have 
 profaned this day? We could here present the 
 reader with much proof of this fact if any were 
 needed, but common observation teaches all men 
 that this is true. Again, has not God's blessings 
 been upon individuals and nations that have re- 
 spected and honored this day? So this day car- 
 ries the credentials of the Lord Jesus, of the Holy 
 Spirit, of the everlasting Father who is over all 
 and above all, the apostles, of martyrs, and con- 
 fessors, of popes, bishops, and councils, Roman 
 Catholics and Protestants and all professing $eoj>le 
 from the first to the sixteenth century, the Jews ex- 
 cepted. It has the indorsement of Luther, Calvin? 
 Knox, and the Wesleys, the great reformers. It has 
 been the subject of legislation from Constantine 
 down to the present day. And finally none would 
 destroy it but the vicious, the depraved, the covet- 
 ous, the pleasure-loving, skeptical, and the dog- 
 matical. It has stood the test of the ages, it still 
 abides, and it will continue to the end of time. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE INCEPTION, PROGRESS, AND PERFECTION 
 OF RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERT T. 
 
 I. Inception. 
 At the beginning of the creation, at the majestic 
 touch of an infinite God, order arose from the in- 
 ane, and teeming spheres flew into space, to track 
 their orbits throughout time. God spake, "Let 
 there be light," and darkness fled before the 
 heavenly luminaries. In his own image and like- 
 ness God created man, and laid contribution upon 
 universal empire for his glory and happiness. 
 Man's authority extended over the land and over 
 the sea, and his charge from God was, " Subdue 
 it; " therefore he could say: 
 
 " I'm monach of all I survey, 
 My right there is none to dispute." 
 
 Man's high endowments of mental and moral fac- 
 ulties indicate to us the possibility of wonderful 
 achievements. There was none to oppose, noth- 
 ing to antagonize, no jarring elements, no con- 
 fluent tides. His government was complete. His 
 liberty was perfect in his sphere as man, as God 
 in his sphere is perfect as God ; for he was looking 
 "into the perfect law of liberty, and continuing 
 therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer 
 of the work, was blessed in his deed." 
 
 This was the inception of liberty — -perfect liber- 
 
 (89) 
 
90 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 ty. This God-given liberty is the quintessence 
 and embodiment of all freedom. Personal and 
 civil liberty are found and embraced in the scope 
 of this higher liberty, this divine freedom. But 
 for the fall, there never had been thraldom, servi- 
 tude, nor bondage, natural nor spiritual. By the 
 fall man reduced himself to the most abject slavery. 
 He entailed this slavery, with all its attendant mis- 
 ery, upon his posterity. Consequent upon this, 
 came disruption, disintegration, and deterioration, 
 till the lowest depths of human degradation were 
 reached. 
 
 Let me call especial attention to this fundamen- 
 tal truth. 
 
 Liberty is a -primordial -principle contained in 
 a life force. That life for ce\s the gospel; that life 
 force is the Christ of the gospel. Hence Paul, the 
 great apostle to the Gentiles, said: " For the law 
 of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me 
 free from the law of sin and death." And one 
 greater than Paul hath- said: " If the Son there- 
 fore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 
 
 Taking for granted that this premise is admitted, 
 we shall proceed to build our argument upon it, 
 not fearing its validity to warrant the conclusion 
 we shall reach. We must briefly scan the his- 
 tory of the past, that we may prove our position, 
 which, be it remembered, carries with it the idea 
 that civilization is the outgrowth of the gospel. 
 
 At an early date of the world's history the bab- 
 bling tribes of the earth were scattered from Babel 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 91 
 
 to find their homes in congenial climes. Ages 
 on ages of darkness, mist, and fog begirded the 
 world, with only here and there the scintillation of 
 liberty, except as found with some eminent pa- 
 triarchs, as Abraham, with whose descendants the 
 germ of liberty grew into a theocracy. We shall 
 take no steps into the occult labyrinths of antiquity, 
 to speculate upon tribal organization, or com- 
 pare one rude government with another. Tribal 
 organization is lost in the very night of time. 
 
 2. The Aryans are said to be the fir st people that 
 instituted a state. 
 
 The struggles of ancient Greece, to throw off 
 tribal society and adopt modern political society, 
 extended over some centuries of time. The same 
 is true of Rome. In Greece, Cleisthenes, B.C. 
 509, by his legislation brought out the modern idea 
 of a state. But all this was far short of our ideal 
 of civil liberty, and even up to this point of devel- 
 opment, who can say that the life force was absent? 
 
 Far down the annals of time, somewhere be- 
 tween 1,280 and 880 years B.C., Manu (Munoo) 
 wrote his code, which, while it contained many 
 good things, falls infinitely below the true concep- 
 tion of liberty. Along with Manu we shall class 
 Zoroaster, the Persian, and Confucius, the Chi- 
 nese. Their writings are not comparable to the 
 Pentatuch. In the Pentateuch we find the princi- 
 ples of liberty. The life force assumed form at 
 first in the patriarchal government, then in the theo- 
 cratic, and next in the monarchial form of govern- 
 
92 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 ment. But religious liberty was with the Jews re- 
 stricted, and hedged about by rites and ceremonies. 
 But throughout all these years of Jewish history 
 there was a gradual development of God's plans. 
 Among the most wonderful prophecies of the Old 
 Testament stands Nebuchadnezzar's dream. He 
 saw an image composed of four kinds of metal, 
 which represented the four great kingdoms: Bab- 
 ylonian, Grecian, Medo-Persian, and Roman. 
 A small stone was cut out without hands and smote 
 the image and broke it in pieces. Prophecy is 
 history forestalled. So in this case we have a 
 most wonderful prediction, which in many of its 
 particulars has been fulfilled. The little stone has 
 broken the image in pieces. The day is hastening 
 and will fully dawn, when, to its minutest detail, 
 this prophecy shall have been fulfilled; then the 
 work of the gospel shall culminate in the complete 
 overthrow of all feudal systems, serfdoms, and 
 anarchies. Then bondage, thraldom, and oppres- 
 sion shall be things of the past. Then nations 
 shall war no more ; for this little stone will have 
 become a great mountain and will fill the earth; 
 for Christ must " reign till he hath put all enemies 
 under his feet." It is true that our Lord hath 
 said that " my kingdom is not of this world; " but 
 it is also true that a whole is made up of its parts, 
 without the least of which it could not be a whole; 
 that the spiritual kingdom was not made for the 
 temporal kingdoms or governments of men, but 
 that which is temporal to subserve the demands 
 
Inception. Progress , and Perfection. 93 
 
 of the spiritual. Let it be remembered that man's 
 corporeal organism, with all its functions and 
 environments, such as personal and civil liberty, 
 is had as the mere accident of an earthly existence, 
 to subserve the one great end : man's freedom and 
 perfection as a spiritual being. To this end God 
 gave us the perfect law of liberty. 
 
 3. This brings us to consider the grandest -period 
 that marks the pages of history. 
 
 Up to this time, the day w r hen Jesus came to the 
 culmination of his sufferings upon the cross, and 
 exclaimed with nature's expiring throes, " It is 
 finished," and yielded up his spirit, but little had 
 been accomplished to secure perfect liberty. But 
 this agony upon the cross, this suffering, this 
 fountain of blood and this death were Heaven's 
 pledges to man of the final conquest of God's own 
 forces, over all earthly powers and Satanic cohorts. 
 From henceforth this internal force, this life pow- 
 er, the power of the gospel, the liberty or law 
 force of Christ, is to enter more fully upon its mis- 
 sion. 
 
 Up to this hour there had been, in the broad 
 sense of the term, no cosmic religion; no systems 
 of truth; no principles of moral ethics, nor code 
 of civil laws adapted to, and guaranteeing civil and 
 religious liberty to all nations. We have already 
 noted the fact that the Jewish system of ethics 
 (moral, civil, and religious), was restricted to the 
 Jewish commonwealth. The heathen cults' were 
 all essentially national, with no cosmic element. 
 
94 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty, 
 
 The Jewish had a cosmic element, for it had the 
 "life force" But now a new era dawns upon the 
 world, a remarkable period in the history of free- 
 dom. From Jerusalem this dynamic force went 
 forth, borne in earthen vessels, incorporate with a 
 few obscure persons, some of whom had been 
 fishermen and tax-gatherers, destined to join bat- 
 tle with two great forces. 
 
 (1) The first enemy was Judaism, which had 
 now become a mere hull, a defunct compact; it 
 had served its end; the spirit of life having de- 
 parted and entered upon its world's conquest, 
 must needs abolish this system of adumbrations. 
 
 After a fierce contest, in the short space of sev- 
 enty years, Judaism was conquered, nevermore to 
 be a national religion. From that day this scrip- 
 ture has been fulfilled: "The children of Israel 
 shall abide many days without a king, and without 
 a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an 
 image, and without an ephod, and without tera- 
 phim." 
 
 (2) The next great external foe was paganism. 
 Look at this corporal's guard of simple men and 
 women confronting the Roman Empire with a hun- 
 dred millions of subjects ingulfed in heathen idol- 
 atry. So insignificant was the number of Chris- 
 tians that their distinctive mission was overlooked 
 by the heathen as they heaped their vituperations 
 upon the opprobrious Jews. But soon they learned 
 to discriminate and to hate, to persecute and to 
 kill the Christians. 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection, 95 
 
 But steadily this inward force worked outward. 
 Before it idols fell; oracles were struck dumb; 
 heathen temples were demolished; the prejudices 
 of education were overcome; heathen manners 
 and customs were reformed, and society was lifted 
 to a higher plane. 
 
 Without presuming to enter the political arena, 
 yet it laid its hands upon the Roman Senate, and 
 dominated thought and legislation. Gradually Ro- 
 man laws were amended, until in the latter part of 
 the sixth century, under. the reign of Justinian, 
 their laws were collected and digested, and have 
 come down to modern times. " With most of the 
 European nations, Spanish America, in the prov- 
 ince of Lower Canada, and in Louisiana of the 
 United States, the Roman law r constitutes the prin- 
 cipal basis of their common iaw r ." 
 
 After this "life force," in its corporate body of 
 true Christians, had fought many hard battles, aft- 
 er the suffering of ten bloody persecutions, and 
 the land had been drenched with the blood of the 
 saints, on the 27th day of October, A.D. 312, at 
 Milvian Bridge, Maxentius, the representative of 
 heathenism, yielded the palm to Constantine, who 
 had espoused the Christian cause. 
 
 It is said of Constantine when he enlisted in this 
 war, as the sun was declining in the west, he saw 
 a bright cross upon the sun, and over it the in- 
 scription in letters of light, "toutone nika" (in 
 this sign conquer). Be this as it may, we find 
 from -this date on the Roman helmets, on the 
 
96 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 shields, and on the very coin, in hundreds of ex- 
 amples, the cross and monograph of Christ in the 
 sacred Greek letters, X. R. It must be remem- 
 bered that Julian the Apostate set himself against 
 the Christians and thought to overthrow their lib- 
 erty and faith. But his plans were thwarted, and 
 he died feeling conquered by the "life force." 
 Some say his last words were: " Nazarene, thou 
 hast conquered." 
 
 We have only time to state that Constantine 
 made a great mistake in coalescing Church and 
 state. This is demonstrated by the history of 
 the facts. In the fifth century Christianity had 
 conquered paganism, and paganism had infect- 
 ed Christianity. The Church was now victo- 
 rious and corrupt. The rites of the Pantheon had 
 passed into her worship ; the subtleties of the acad- 
 emy, into her creed. " In an evil day," says Ba- 
 con, " though with great pomp and solemnity, was 
 the ill-starred alliance stricken between the old 
 philosophy and the new faith." The persecutions 
 of the first three centuries were the safeguard of 
 the Church. These kept the unworthy from the 
 ranks of the faithful. ' These served as purifying 
 fires to retain intact the sanctity of the Church. 
 But, says Mr. Wesley, " Constantine heaped riches 
 upon the Church, and she grew corrupt." This 
 gave rise to Roman Catholicism. 
 
 (3) From this date an insidious enemy, an in- 
 ternal foe, stealthily stole into the corporate body, 
 and so perverted the souls of men that the "life 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 97 
 
 force " withdrew. Then followed centuries of 
 darkness; throughout these, innovation after inno- 
 vation was introduced, until Roman Catholicism 
 was fully developed and set herself up in opposi- 
 tion to liberty in all its phases, personal, civil, and 
 religious. The minions of hell held high carnival 
 while Catholicism, the Antichrist, the enemy of 
 all good, swayed the unhallowed scepter, reeking 
 with the blood of the innocent. 
 
 This moral monstrosity, the archenemy of lib- 
 erty, presented a solid front to the intrepid and ag- 
 gressive Luther. After ages of darkness, reach' 
 ing through a period of more than a thousand 
 years, you may score another grand epoch in the 
 conquest of the world's freedom, effected by min- 
 isters of the gospel. Wyclif, Huss, and Ridley 
 caught glimpses of the light of day, and dared op- 
 pose the vicegerent of hell and speak for liberty, 
 but soon fell victims to the malicious hate of this 
 inveterate foe. 
 
 As Ben Franklin caught the lightning, and 
 brought it from the clouds to the earth, so Luther 
 caught the electric spark of liberty from God, 
 which so surcharged his sc^ul that with invincibk 
 courage he thundered his philippics against the 
 canons of the Romish Church and the abuses of 
 the age, till all Europe was aroused and the Romish 
 Church was made to tremble to her utmost limit. 
 
 This is another striking instance of the power 
 of this " life force ," finding expression in the per- 
 son of one man. Others were impelled by the 
 7 
 
98 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 same force, and came boldly to the front in vindi- 
 cation of freedom. 
 
 But these men had not in thought and theory 
 arrived at the ultimatum^ perfection's point. Some 
 of these reformers became persecutors. Philipp 
 Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox were 
 noted for their intrepidity and uncompromising 
 devotion to the cause they espoused. Their his- 
 tory and the part they took in the great reforma- 
 tion are too well known to require a detailed state- 
 ment. Through them wrongs were rectified, evils 
 abolished, the people were aroused against priest- 
 craft and pontifical ignominy. They were much 
 persecuted. But they pushed the battle against 
 the odds; and despite the menaces, insults, and 
 most determined resistance of Catholicism, these 
 reformers under God overcame their assailants. 
 
 But even the reformers did not attain to the cor- 
 rect idea of liberty. 
 
 II. Progress. 
 
 Development marks the work of nature. There 
 are not two Gods. The God of nature is the God 
 of the remedial plan. Then it follows that He pro- 
 ceeds in grace as in gature. So the plan of re- 
 demption, with its concomitants, religious and civil 
 liberty, is not the result of a single action or the 
 outgrowth of one revolution, but the accretion of 
 ages. The bias of education, the power of igno- 
 rance, the prejudices of men, the contradiction of 
 philosophers, attachments to ancient cults and in- 
 fidelity, must need be subdued. 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 99 
 
 Calvin's code was stern. Trivial offenses re- 
 ceived the infliction of the severest penalties. 
 Dancing, the manufacture and use of cards, and 
 playing ninepins brought down upon the delin- 
 quents the vengeance of the law. This grew out 
 of the limited idea of the proper functions of the 
 state. The ancient religions were all State reli- 
 gions. It was the universal conception that a na- 
 tion must all practice the same religion. 
 
 The toleration of the ancients, which has been 
 lauded by modern skeptical writers, was only such 
 as polytheism required. To introduce foreign 
 rights, or make proselytes of Roman citizens was 
 contrary to Roman law, and was severely punished. 
 It was no easy matter to get rid of the idea of re- 
 ligious propagandism by the prowess of physical 
 force. 
 
 Erasmus stood in the front rank among the re- 
 formers of the sixteenth century in advocacy of 
 religious liberty. " He thought many things 
 should be referred, not according to the popular 
 cry, to the next general council," but to the time 
 when we see God " face to face." After the 
 overthrow of heathenism, conformity to the reli- 
 gion of the empire was enforced by the successors 
 of Constantme. The feeling of the necessity of 
 uniformity in religious belief and worship, and of 
 the obligation of rules to punish and to exterminate 
 infidelity and heresy within their dominions, was 
 universal in the Middle Ages. To this end the in- 
 quisition was established by Pope Innocent III. in 
 
ioo The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Libei'ty. 
 
 1208. All this came of a misapprehension of the 
 scope and intent of ecclesiastical authority, and an 
 erroneous conception of the relation of Church 
 and state. Even the reformers held it to be the 
 duty of the magistrates to protect and foster pure 
 religion, and. to put down false religion. To this 
 he was most solemnly bound. The toleration .of 
 Zwingli and Erasmus was strongly supported by 
 Luther, who disapproved punishing the Anabap- 
 tists, saying: " With the Scripture they would check 
 and withstand them; with fire they will accom- 
 plish little." Again Luther says: "Over the 
 souls of men God can and will have no one rule 
 save himself alone/' Thus we see the progress 
 of liberty. In the light of the gospel men grew 
 more and more tolerant. 
 
 Time would fail us to tell of William of Orange, 
 the inimitable Knox, the dauntless Cromwell, and 
 the chivalrous Hampden; brave spirits and noble 
 men who fought the battle of liberty for earth's 
 coming generations. Milton was no obscure 
 factor in solving the problematic question of liber- 
 ty. Impelled by the holy fire of freedom, this 
 bard gave vent to his soul in the beautiful lines 
 from Euripides : 
 
 " This is true liberty, when freeborn men, 
 Having to advise the public, may speak free, 
 Which he who can and will deserves high praise." 
 
 And more than this, he boldly resisted the 
 tyranny of Charles I. He braved the dangers of 
 the hour and brooked the tide of oppression. 
 
Inception > Progress, and Perfection. 101 
 
 How different from Hume, who hated religion 
 so much, says Macaulay, "that he hated liberty 
 for having been allied with religion, and has 
 pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of 
 an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a 
 judge." 
 
 Let us repeat, freedom is embodied in the 
 " life force" of the gospel. Ministers were, and 
 are, charged with the promulgation of the gospel. 
 Hence it follows as a logical sequence that for the 
 freedom of the age we are indebted to the ministry. 
 Listen to the testimony of McCrie: " In effecting 
 that memorable revolution, which terminated in 
 favor of religious and political liberty in so many 
 nations of Europe, the public teachers of the 
 Protestant doctrine had a principal influence/' By 
 their instructions and exhortations, they roused 
 the people to consider their rights and exert their 
 power. 
 
 That stormy day, the 21st of December, 1620, 
 marks an ever memorable period in the world's 
 history. The Pilgrim Fathers had sought the 
 wilds of America, that they might give expression 
 to advanced thoughts of religious liberty. And now 
 amid New England's stormy wilds, they joined 
 in paeons till the deep jungles reverberated the 
 praise of the God of liberty. John Robinson was 
 their leader. His philosophic mind had attained 
 to principles which approached, though they did 
 not reach to, the modern doctrine of toleration, of 
 the limited sphere of the state. It remained for 
 
102 The Sabbath : Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 one man — and who but a minister? — to bring for- 
 ward the new doctrine as to the state, which limits 
 the functions of the magistrate to the cognizance of 
 offenses against the second table of the law. This 
 doctrine involves the toleration of all forms of re- 
 ligious belief and worship, as far as they do not 
 directly disturb the peace of society, or infringe 
 upon the authority of the magistrate in his own 
 proper sphere. This principle of religious liberty 
 which Roger Williams adopted in Massachusetts, 
 was incorporated in the government of the colony 
 which he founded in Rhode Island, and is the 
 principle to which the American system of gov- 
 ernment have gradually conformed. 
 
 To-day we boast of the best government that 
 ever graced the earth. Beyond contradiction it is 
 the product of the kingdom of God among men, 
 the result of the work of God's messengers, the 
 reflection of God's perfect law of liberty photo- 
 graphed on the hearts of men — the crystallization 
 of Christian sentiment,, the correlation of the 
 earthly and the divine. 
 
 We cannot refrain at this juncture °of our trea- 
 tise from paying a just tribute of respect to the 
 memory of the Wesleys. We come not to pro- 
 nounce an empty panegyric upon buried virtues, 
 but we come to speak of living facts and to tes- 
 tify to a conscious experience. We would not 
 abate one jot or tittle from the names of the illus- 
 trious dead (Luther, Calvin, and others); but we 
 must say that no two men have done more in 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 103 
 
 advancing freedom's cause than John and Charles 
 Wesley. They too were reformers, both of the- 
 ory and of practice. They took up the work of 
 reformation where Luther left off. 
 
 It could not have been expected of Luther to 
 break away from the darkness of Catholicism into 
 the full light of liberty at a single leap, but he 
 boldly and earnestly emphasized the great doc- 
 trine of justification by faith and its concomitants. 
 This produced its fruits: a great reformation in 
 thought and practice. 
 
 The Wesleys made their great fight for "Armin- 
 ianism " and " Christian perfection.'' The stress 
 laid upon the doctrine of salvation for all, condi- 
 tioned upon faith in Jesus Christ, found a hearty 
 response in the generous and natural impulse of the 
 human heart. So this doctrine spread like fire in 
 dry stubble. So rapid has been its progress that 
 to-day it begirds the world. The Wesleys empha- 
 sized the highest type of liberty: salvation from 
 all sin. We are taught from experience, as well as 
 from God's word, that to be under the dominion 
 of sin is to be a slave. No slavery is so abject as 
 the slavery of sin. No man is a free man until he 
 has the mastery over all outward sin, until out- 
 ward foes are conquered. Aye, no man is per- 
 fectly free until all inward as well as outward sin is 
 conquered — yea, more, is extirpated. Then he is a 
 free man, and not until then. The Wesleys urged 
 their followers on to this state. This is perfection 
 in Christian experience — the freedom of the per- 
 
104 The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty. 
 
 feet law of liberty. This state has its counterpart 
 in civil liberty; to this we are hastening and must 
 come before the final end. 
 
 The bursting in of resplendent liberty upon the 
 American colonies was hailed with rapt delight. 
 Some were speechless with ecstacy, many wept, 
 and the old doorkeeper of Congress died of joy. 
 Congress did a befitting thing, by meeting at an early 
 hour on the 20th of October, 1781. That afternoon 
 they marched in solemn procession to the Luther- 
 an Church to return thanks to Almighty God for 
 giving them liberty. While the war that gave this 
 liberty was pending, Patrick Henry said, " Three 
 millions of people armed in the holy cause of lib- 
 erty are invincible by any force that our enemies 
 can send against us. Besides this, there is a just 
 God that presides over the destiny of armies and 
 nations, and he will raise up friends to fight our 
 battles for us. ' ' So our forefathers were witnesses 
 to the truth of my theory. 
 
 But despite the history of the past, which records 
 the faithfulness and efficiency of God's ministers, 
 and despite their fidelity in this age to the best in- 
 terests of society, because, forsooth, they would 
 exterminate the whisky demon, ex-Governor, now 
 Senator Coke, of Texas, would scourge them 
 back and cut off their rations. Why thus treat 
 them ? What evil have they done? Why, some of 
 them have the courage of 1heir convictions, and 
 seek upon the hustings, and through the press, as 
 well as in the pulpit, to expurgate this land from 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 105 
 
 this dread foe, this enemy of all good. Because 
 they appear as the advocates of sobriety and of 
 virtue, to vindicate the innocent and to fortify the 
 defenseless against the oppression of the sensual 
 and devilish. For this cause, and this only, would 
 this learned Democratic leader relegate them 
 to the poorhouse. Hon. R. Q. Mills, now Sena- 
 tor, of Texas, in his Dallas speech against the 
 amendment providing for State constitutional pro- 
 hibition, delivered in May, 1887, propounds this 
 question: " Who brought this new idea [meaning 
 prohibition] into Texas anyhow? ' : To this he 
 gives the following answer: "It was brought in 
 the bosoms of Protestant political priesthood." 
 Then after reviewing the history of the golden 
 calf, made at the instance of Aaron, he said: 
 " Would you have thought that that idolatry and 
 that great sin could have come from a preacher ? 
 And yet it did, and yet the whole history of the 
 human family will show you that there has been 
 more cruel and remorseless suffering caused by 
 the preachers and priests than ALL THE BAL- 
 ANCE OF THE WORLD." Before such in- 
 gratitude let us hide our face in contempt. Before 
 such ignorance, or malicious perversion of history, 
 silence would be inexcusable. 
 
 We are not called upon to speak in vindication 
 of Catholic priests, and pontifical bravadoes who in 
 the ages agone, consorted with the evil. But 
 we shall vindicate the true successors of the 
 apostles, the apostles themselves, and faithful and 
 
io6 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 true ministers of all ages, and especially of this 
 age,, against such aspersion. We dare say that 
 God's accredited ministers have always conserved 
 the best interests of the people; they have advo- 
 cated the highest type of liberty in their respec- 
 tive periods of the ages, and have worked out this 
 problem of freedom. We challenge the world to 
 contradict successfully our conclusion — to wit: 
 Civilization is evolved from the life force of the 
 gospel; civil liberty is inseparably connected with 
 religious liberty, and follows it as cause and effect. 
 But the end is not yet. Perfection is God's order 
 in nature, in Christian experience, in the govern- 
 ment of men, in individual freedom, in every rela- 
 tion of life — in all things. We have not yet at- 
 tained to, but are pressing on to the final goal. 
 
 III. Impediments to Further Progress. 
 
 1. First, we shall mention Roman Catholicism. 
 
 This is no ordinary foe. The adroitness, the 
 chicanery — yea, the simony — of this compact have 
 been manifest throughout the ages. Their wisdom 
 in planning, their skill in building, their outward 
 show of charity, their imposing ceremonies, their 
 educational scheming and their unfaltering energy 
 indicate to us a compact of strength hoary with the 
 frost of ages. Can you read the signs of the times ? 
 Then call me not a pessimist. On every hand may 
 be heard the click of the craftsman's chisel, or the 
 thud of the mechanic's hammer, polishing and fit- 
 ting the stones, and tiling roofs where principles 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 107 
 
 adverse to our liberties are inculcated. Teeming 
 hundreds of Roman Catholic immigrants are annu- 
 ally pouring into these United States. Already 
 they are interfering with our educational system. 
 Their aim is to control the public school fund, so 
 as to foster their own institutions. Senator Blair 
 said in a speech before the Senate that the Jesuits 
 were there "to defeat legislation that might not 
 suit their ideas, and to control it to their interest; 
 that they had a representative upon the editorial 
 staff of every leading secular journal throughout 
 the United States." They are pushing their work 
 on every hand, and yet men tell us that there is 
 no danger to our government from this source. Let 
 it be remembered that eternal vigilance is the price 
 of liberty. Let the unsuspecting tell us what this 
 means. On May 28, 1890, a Catholic mass meeting 
 was held in Milwaukee, Wis. After affirming the 
 infallibility of the pope and acknowledging the dual 
 duty of Catholics as members of the Church and as 
 citizens, they proceeded to talk of personal and he- 
 reditary rights. They wound up by saying: " The 
 chief object of this organization will be to see that 
 no friend of the paternal measure is elected to ei- 
 ther branch of the Legislature, and to watch and 
 oppose all bills presented in the Legislature antag- 
 onistic to Catholics." But what if these Catholics 
 should get control of the ballot box? Much every 
 way. They have never renounced the old doc- 
 trine of the subordination ,of the state to the 
 Church, and the authority of the latter in matters 
 
108 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 of civil government and legislation, as well as in 
 religious matters. On the contrary they boldly 
 assert these principles. Hear this from the Cath- 
 olic World for July, 1872: " With the means of 
 intelligent communication and rapid transportation, 
 it is not an improbability to hope that the Head of 
 the Church may again become the acknowledged 
 head of the united family of Christian nations ; the 
 arbiter and judge between princes and people, be- 
 tween governments and governments, the expo- 
 nent of the supreme justice and the highest law. 
 While the state has rights, she has them only in 
 virtue and by permission of the superior authority, 
 and that authority can only be expressed through 
 the Church — that is, through the organic law, in- 
 fallibly announced and unchangeably asserted re- 
 gardless of temporal consequences. It is within 
 the power of the ballot, wielded by Catholic hands, 
 to establish." 
 
 This betrays their policy. They are grabbing 
 after the reins of this government. They are con- 
 centrating their strength in the United States. 
 
 Again it may be asked: " But what if the Cath- 
 olics should get the balance of power? 5: Let facts 
 answer this question. 
 
 At the general assembly of missionaries of all 
 denominations in Mexico in 1888, it was ascer- 
 tained that over sixty persons had suffered mar- 
 tyrdom at the instance of Roman Catholic priests 
 during the past twenty-five years ; and the end is 
 not yet. This bloody work is still going on. True 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 109 
 
 to the instincts of their depraved hearts, they 
 breathe out bitterness, and manifest their hate and 
 murderous spirit in the United States as well as 
 Mexico. 
 
 The New York Freeman, the leading Roman 
 Catholic organ of this country, in its issue of 
 March 29, 1890, advocates the extermination of 
 Protestantism as soon as Rome has the power in 
 America. The occasion of this furor was the ap- 
 pointment of Dr. Dorchester and Gen. Morgan as 
 Indian Commissioners. The Catholic News, of 
 New York, March 5, says: " Every Senator who 
 voted for this confirmation must be carefully 
 watched. His future political career in his State 
 must not be advanced by the Catholic votes which 
 helped him to reach the position he so shamefully 
 abused. Every one is now a marked man." Our 
 countrymen, we appeal to your patriotism, to your 
 judgment, to your conscience. Be not deceived; 
 here is an insiduous foe undermining the founda- 
 tion of our freedom. Shall we look idly on and 
 let this rising tide sweep away our chartered rights ? 
 Heaven forbid ! No tongue could tell the human 
 sorrow, or pen portray the scenes of carnage and 
 death consequent upon Roman Catholic rule. 
 
 2. The next obstacle to our development is ava- 
 rice and appetite. 
 
 We stand to-day face to face with a gigantic 
 evil: we refer to the whisky traffic. It is a dread- 
 ful incubus upon society, a blotch upon our fair 
 escutcheon, the disgrace of the nineteenth century. 
 
no The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 It is folly to undertake to describe this evil. Its 
 proportions are wonderful, its effects baneful, and 
 its results death. It is an acknowledged evil. 
 There is no controversy about this. Reason de- 
 mands its prohibition; an enlightened age demands 
 it ; human philanthropy demands its extermination ; 
 suffering widowhood and depressed orphanage de- 
 mand its abolition; religion demands it; earth 
 and heaven demand it. Up to this hour, avarice 
 and appetite have held the balance of power. It 
 is said, " Knowledge is power," and so it is; but 
 " the love of money is the root of all evil." In 
 this fight money is the balance of power, for it 
 prostitutes knowledge to its selfish ends. Money 
 controls politics and legislation. The whisky traf- 
 fic is to-day one of the greatest menaces to the lib- 
 erty of this commonwealth. It lays its hand either 
 directly or indirectly upon statesmen, who run 
 " greedily after the error of Balaam for reward," 
 or else, for fear they will lose political prestige, 
 come boldly forward as the champions of this ne- 
 farious business. Strip this question of its stolen 
 livery, separate it from its borrowed appendages, 
 let it stand in its true, light, put it on its own merit, 
 and no man with a scintilla of self-respect and a 
 single impulse of true humanity would have the ef- 
 frontery to advocate this traffic for one day. 
 
 But these politicians come to us with a ruse. 
 They talk to us about sumptuary laws and a -pa- 
 ternal government. They ring the changes on 
 personal liberty until they dupe with their sophis- 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. in 
 
 try the illiterate and almost deceive the very elect. 
 A review of this whole question, the evils of in- 
 temperance, the baneful effects of saloons on so- 
 ciety , the corruption, subjective and objective, of 
 this whisky traffic; the support given to this the 
 greatest of all curses by men in high position — men 
 to whom we have committed the keys of govern- 
 ment, the custodians of society — horrifies us in the 
 extreme. Here are men of the first order of tal- 
 ent; men of wealth, men of influence; senators, 
 Governors, Congressmen, and State representa- 
 tives, joined together and in league with the worst 
 elements of society — the saloon elements, the rab- 
 ble, and the prostitutes — to foster this Moloch and 
 to rivet upon society the chains of the most galling 
 tyranny ever known to man. To hide their crime 
 they have arraigned the ministry and innocent 
 w r omanhood, and held them before society as ob- 
 jects of contempt. Over the weaknesses of men, 
 and inadvertent mistakes, we throw the veil of char- 
 ity; but over their audacity, their effrontery we 
 would hang the light of the ages, and print their 
 deeds indelibly upon memory's pages. 
 
 Lord Francis Bacon beclouded a brilliant life 
 by acts of perfidy. His ingratitude and infidelity 
 toward Lord Essex was truly reprehensible, and 
 deserved the condemnation that was visited upon 
 him. His conduct in the case of Peacham, an 
 aged clergyman, outrages humanity, and challenges 
 comparison with the most brutal acts of paganism. 
 Peacham was accused of having written a sermon 
 
[12 The Sabbath: ReHgiotis and Civil Liberty. 
 
 that contained some passages of a treasonable na- 
 ture. This sermon was never preached; was 
 found in the old man's study. The most servile 
 lawyers said there were grave difficulties both as 
 to the facts and as to the law involved in this case. 
 Bacon was attorney-general, and was employed to 
 settle the question of law by tampering with the 
 judges; and the question of facts by torturing the 
 prisoner. Bacon succeeded with the judges, hav- 
 ing met and overcome strong resistance in Lord 
 Coke. But in order to convict Peacham it was 
 necessary to find facts as well as law. So this 
 wretched old man was put to the rack, and while 
 undergoing the horrible infliction was examined 
 by Bacon in vain. No confession could be wrung 
 out of him. The charge was obviously futile, yet 
 Peacham was left to drag out the rest of his days 
 in prison. 
 
 Sad as this story is, it is not as dark as the his- 
 tory before us. We dare assert, if the statesmen 
 of this grand state of ours had stood by the min- 
 istry and the women, who were for home, God, 
 and country, Texas to-day would have been free 
 from the whisky curse. Call us fanatics if you 
 will; one thing is fixed: We are now and forever 
 the enemy of the whisky traffic. We admire the 
 patriotism of Hamilcar, who swore his son Han- 
 nibal upon the altar of his country never to be 
 the friend of the Romans. We admire as much 
 the devotion of Hannibal, who cherished the reso- 
 lution to avenge some day upon Rome the shame 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection. 113 
 
 and injuries of Carthage* So we would visit to- 
 day the sins of these leaders upon them, that they 
 may learn to sin no more. To-day we charge 
 them with sacrificing the best interests of this com- 
 monwealth; we charge such of them as were mem- 
 bers of the Church with perfidy to the Church; 
 we charge them to-day as the enemies of true free- 
 dom. 
 
 Personal liberty! What is liberty? We aver: 
 Liberty is freedom of action within prescribed lim- 
 its. We speak reverently when we say, God him- 
 self is restricted. The periphery that restricts 
 Deity is greater than that which restricts man. 
 But He cannot do wrong; He must do right. The 
 attributes of justice, righteousness, and love hold 
 Him to the right. The law of right doing that re- 
 stricts God restricts men, individually and collect- 
 ively. 
 
 If we aid or abet an evil, then we are -pa?'ticefs 
 criminis. The same is true of a government. 
 This whislcy traffic is a great evil ; for the govern- 
 ment to license it is to pervert the end of govern- 
 ment, which end is to subserve the best interests 
 of the commonwealth. 
 
 God has given to us a natural law and a divine 
 code. Mr. Blackstone says: "Upon these two 
 foundations — the law of nature and the law of Rev- 
 elation — depend all human laws; that is to say, no 
 human laws should be suffered to contradict these." 
 As an illustration, he cites: *! Murder, which is ex- 
 pressly forbidden by the law of revelation, and 
 
114 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Libei'ty. 
 
 demonstrably by the natural law; and from these 
 prohibits arise the unlawfulness of this crime." 
 Apply this principle to the question under consid- 
 eration. God, in Revelation, says: " Woe to him 
 that putteth his bottle to his neighbor's lips." He 
 prohibits drunkenness and revelry. 
 
 Nature's law teaches us that drunkenness is a 
 crime; the two, the natural and the divine law, 
 agree as touching this question. Then it follows, 
 expressly from the divine law, and by necessary 
 implication from natural law, to foster this evil is 
 wrong. They tell us to prohibit the whisky traf- 
 fic is an infringement of personal rights. They 
 tell us that man's highest liberty is found in unre- 
 stricted freedom. Philip Philips, in his " Social 
 Strictures," says: "Carried to its logical conclu- 
 sion, the doctrine of unrestricted freedom is the 
 gospelof anarchy. Its advocates stop at what they 
 call the police line. But if such ideas be true, 
 why should we have police? Why not let every 
 one take care of himself and enforce his own 
 rights without calling on others for help." This 
 idea of unrestricted liberty is founded on the 
 basest selfishness. It is in manifest antagonism to 
 the Divine law, which teaches us that we are re- 
 sponsible for our brother to the extent of our in- 
 fluence and the effect of our actions upon him. 
 That law teaches us that " if meat make my broth- 
 er to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world 
 standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." That 
 law teaches us that our greatest freedom is found 
 
Inception , Progress, and Perfection. 115 
 
 in the most perfect self-renunciation and sacrifice. 
 The law requiring this sacrifice for others is termed 
 a perfect law, and the freedom it brings of the high- 
 est type. This principle of sacrifice is interwoven in 
 nature's laws: the sun shines for the earth, vege- 
 tation grows for animals, lower animals live for 
 the higher. "No man liveth to himself." Man 
 must live for man. If our appetites control us in 
 hurtful indulgences, then we are not free, but 
 slaves — slaves to tobacco, or whisky, or some- 
 thing else. If avarice controls our actions in a 
 hurtful matter, as dishonesty, the oppression of 
 the poor, or the robbing others of happiness, we 
 are not only slaves, but we are great sinners. 
 Personal liberty, they say! Aye, do they not 
 mean the right to rob homes of happiness, the 
 right to trample on affections and crush hearts, the 
 right to wave the bloody hand of death over the 
 home of despair; the right to make money at the 
 price of blood and virtue? The picture of this 
 kind of liberty w r as graphically drawn by the 
 apostle Peter in his Second Epistle ii. 18, 19: 
 " For when they speak great swelling w r ords of van- 
 ity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through 
 much wantonness, those that were clean escaped 
 from them who live in error. While they prom- 
 ise them liberty, they themselves are the servants 
 of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, 
 of the same is he brought in bondage." Person- 
 al liberty? Yea, the liberty of corruption, the lib- 
 erty of bondage, says Peter ; derogating manhood, 
 
n6 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 depleting society, quenching devotion, and blast- 
 ing virtue. The whisky traffic is based upon the 
 law of self-indulgence, of self -liberty. This is the 
 law that obtains among the brutes ; it is not the 
 liberty of freemen, it is beneath the dignity of 
 men, it is antithetical to philosophy and plainly re- 
 pugnant to the ethics of Deity. All law, human 
 and divine, requires us to seek not our own indul- 
 gence, but the good of others. This, and this 
 only, gives us happiness and contentment. True 
 freedom is found is self-denial. This requires us 
 to surrender certain personal rights for the good 
 of others. 
 
 3. We have space to notice but briefly the third 
 obstruction to the -perfection of liberty, which is 
 avarice. 
 
 It rises up in its might and urges on the battle 
 between labor and capital. There are slumbering 
 fires of discontent ready to burst out and leap forth 
 into the most terrific political conflagration at the 
 slightest touch of some miscreant. The political 
 pot is briskly boiling. Political parties are multi- 
 plying, factional organizations and political fili- 
 bustering predominate. Discontent, strifes, and 
 strikes are rife. These are the indications of the 
 unrest of mind and perturbation of spirits that ac- 
 tuate the masses of this republic. This indicates 
 to us potential elements, as the pent up fires in 
 the bosom of a vast mountain, just ready to find 
 outlet in dread eruption, which may baptize this 
 fair land in blood. 
 
Inception, Progress, and Perfection, 117 
 
 This avarice, in its greed of gain, overleaps all 
 restraints, and not only oppresses the poor by pool- 
 ing and forming trusts, but in open defiance of all 
 law, desecrates God's holy Sabbath to an alarming 
 extent. Freedom's great battle must be fought in 
 the West and in the Southwest. The great cen- 
 ters of population and marts are shifting ; they are 
 coming to us. This fertile soil, these verdant 
 plains, this salubrious air, the delectable hills and 
 valleys are attracting myriads of immigrants. A 
 heterogeneous mass of humanity, representing all 
 nationalities and all religions, are here, and con- 
 tinue to come. There is a want of affinity among 
 them. They are incongruous elements, at war 
 with each other. 
 
 But what have we to oppose to all of this? 
 Looking from the standpoint of a pessimist, the 
 heart beats slowly and the blood congeals. But 
 when we step upon the mount of God, with the tele- 
 scope of faith, and sweep through the future, we 
 see the Captain of our salvation marshaling the 
 sacramental army for impending conflicts; not to 
 act on the defense, but to wage an aggressive w r ar, 
 a war of extermination against the allied forces of 
 hell; to drive back Apollyon and his minions of 
 darkness, to bind him and cast him out, to send 
 him down to the bottomless pit in chains ; to abol- 
 ish saloons, counteract avarice, and subdue the 
 the spirit of Antichrist ; to overthrow the dynasty 
 of anarchy and establish the kingdom of freedom. 
 " For he must reign till he hath put all enemies 
 under his feet." 
 
n8 The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 
 
 4. Conclusion. 
 
 We now occupy the standpoint of an optimist. 
 We look back over the battlefields of the past. 
 We see the enemies of freedom fleeing from every 
 battlefield— now conquered. We behold over a 
 defunct Judaism, over an abolished Roman hea- 
 thenism, over a subdued Roman Catholicism of the 
 sixteenth century, and over hundreds and thou- 
 sands of battle grounds of less moment, the ban- 
 ner of Jesus Christ, stained with his own hallowed 
 blood, and with this inscription upon it: "If the 
 Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 
 Hallalujah, "unto the King eternal, immortal, in- 
 visible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for- 
 ever and ever. Amen ! " He has never lost a sin- 
 gle battle. 
 
 The great " life force" is unifying God's peo- 
 ple, and is crystallizing public thought and senti- 
 ment. It is bringing the nations of earth together 
 with hearts of sympathy and words of mutual 
 friendship. Good men are praying and looking 
 when the prayer of our Lord shall be answered, 
 when we shall all be one. 
 
 What means pan-national councils, Ecumenical 
 Conferences, and international assemblies ? These 
 are the scintillations of the star of hope, the har- 
 binger of the coming day. 
 
 Electricity and steam are bringing the ends of 
 the earth together. So is the electric force of the 
 perfect law of liberty bringing God's people to- 
 gether for the finale^ the perfection of freedom. 
 
Inception, Prog?' ess, and Perfection. 119 
 
 This is to be the end, and we are gradually ap- 
 proaching it. We hail with rapt delight every ad- 
 vance along these lines. We advocate and pray 
 for the day when all barriers shall be removed 
 from between God's people, and they shall be one 
 and inseparable. "United we stand, divided we 
 fall." To hasten this day, the day when freedom, 
 civil and religious, shall find its counterpart in 
 God's perfect law of liberty, we must be true to 
 each other, true to our country, and true to God. 
 
 The Lord Jesus is getting ready to take this 
 world. From center to circumference the camp 
 fires are burning, and the shout of triumph from 
 the home land is answered from the far-off re- 
 gions. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 A. 
 
 At the last session of the Northwest Texas 
 Conference, held in Corsicana from November 
 25 to December x, 1891, while the report on the 
 Sabbath question was up for discussion, Bishop 
 Fitzgerald, who was presiding over the Confer- 
 ence, having been called upon to decide a question 
 of law, growing out of the question of the pending 
 report, took occasion to criticise the word "for- 
 eigner" which occurred in the report, The word 
 was used in the report in the same connection as 
 it appears in this treatise. The good bishop ob- 
 jected to the word, because he said that " it was 
 in bad taste, a reflection, and an insult to many- 
 good people, and that in a sense we were all for- 
 eigners." These remarks were astounding to the 
 writer,who was Chairman of the committee which 
 brought in that report. At that time, however, 
 we deemed it best to set up no defense of a par- 
 ticular word, since the word in question was not 
 essential to the validity of the facts contained in 
 the report, the object being to get the report 
 adopted by the Conference. But now we will 
 make a careful survey of this criticism. Webster 
 defines the word as follows: "Foreigner: A per- 
 son belonging to or owning allegiance to a foreign 
 (120) 
 
The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 121 
 
 country; one not native in the country or jurisdic- 
 tion under consideration or not naturalized there; 
 an alien; a stranger." In brief, the word means 
 one born in another country from the one spoken 
 of, although he may be a naturalized citizen. 
 And this has been the meaning of the word from 
 time immemorial. The word was in use among 
 the Hebrews, and occurs in Deuteronomy xv. 3 and 
 elsewhere, and was used in the sense in which we 
 have used it. It is from the Hebrew word noki'ij 
 a derivation from the root nakar, to know, but con- 
 tra not to know, etc. This word Gesenius the 
 lexicographer defines as follows: " Unknown, 
 strange, foreign. Spoken of as one from another 
 land and people." (Deut. xiv. 21; Ezra x. 2; and 
 Ex. xxi. 8.) This agrees exactly with Web- 
 ster and definitely fixes the primary meaning of 
 the word to be of foreign birth. There is another 
 word, however, toshabh, which was in use among 
 the Hebrews, w r hich means a sojourner, stranger, 
 without the right of a citizen. Leviticus xxii. 10, 
 xxv. 47.) The Greek word -paroikos, which oc- 
 curs in Ephesians ii. 19, is the counterpart of this 
 w r ord. Thayer, the Greek lexicographer, says of 
 -paroikos: " In the Scriptures a stranger, foreigner, 
 one who lives in a place without the right of 
 citizenship." The latter word is specific; the 
 former is generic. We used the word in the first 
 sense given — to wit, not native born. As to the 
 criticism that " the word is in bad taste," we 
 would say that we have the highest authority for 
 
122 Appendix. 
 
 its use: Moses and Paul, who were under divine in- 
 spiration, as well as the best writers of every age. 
 Again the bishop claimed that it was " an insult to 
 every foreign-born citizen/' What is it that is an 
 insult, and in what way an insult? Is it " an insult 
 to tell a man that he was born in England, Scot- 
 land, Ireland, France, or Prussia? If born in any 
 of these lands, then he is not a native, but a for- 
 eigner; not indigenous, but exotic. But w r hat is 
 there in this to insult him? If anything, we con- 
 fess that we are too stupid to see it. The bishop 
 told us that "in a sense we are all foreigners." 
 Admitted, but not in any sense that the word was 
 used in that report or in this book; for the word 
 used refers to a naturalized citizen, so it has purely 
 a political application. It is used, in "an accom- 
 modated sense and has a spiritual application in 
 the English version, and means " one who lives on 
 earth as a stranger, a sojourner on the earth." 
 In this sense we are all foreigners, but no other. 
 
 B. 
 
 The importance of this question entitles it to a 
 careful review. We believe that those to whom 
 we commit the destiny of our country should be 
 held to a strict account for all their political acts. 
 Adequate censure should be duly administered for 
 every innovation upon our sacred institutions. 
 The moral sentiment of this country should not be 
 dormant; it should be both defensive and aggres- 
 
The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty, 123 
 
 sive. Silence and inactivity may be construed to 
 imply concurrence or connivance. The majority 
 of the committee to whom was referred the Maetze 
 " Sunday "bill," brought in a favorable report. 
 But there was a minority report which reads as 
 follows : 
 
 The undersigned beg leave to dissent from the majority re- 
 port of said committee recommending that Senate Bill No. 185 
 do pass. We believe that the passage of this law will greatly 
 increase crime, discourage moral sentiment, and be injurious to 
 the general healthfulness of our common country; that it will 
 establish nuisances in our large cities, and we enter our solemn 
 protest against its passage and recommend that it do not 
 pass. 
 
 Respectfully submitted. Kearby, 
 
 Craxforb. 
 
 Senator Kearby moved to adopt the minority re- 
 port. Maetze, Garwood, and Townsend spoke 
 against the adoption of the minority report, and 
 Kearby, Simkins, and Cranford in favor of it. 
 The vote was taken upon engrossment of the bill, 
 with the following result: In favor of engrossment: 
 Atlee, Burney, Clark, Glasscock, Johnson, Lub- 
 bock, Mott, Pope, Townsend, Garwood, Maetze, 
 and Tyler. Against engrossment: Carter, Crane, 
 Finch, Frank, Kearby, Kimbrough, McKenney, 
 Potter, Seale, Simkins, Stephens, and Whatley. 
 It will be seen that there was a tie vote, there 
 being twelve on each side. Lieut. Gov. Pen- 
 dleton voted in favor of the bill. Senator Cran- 
 ford announced that he was paired with Senator 
 Clements; that he (Cranford) was opposed to 
 the bill and that Clements would vote for it if he 
 
124 Appendix. 
 
 were present. The bill coming up for final action, 
 the vote was taken, which resulted as follows: In 
 favor of the bill, E. A. Atlee, Burney, James Clark, 
 Clements, H. M. Garwood, G. W. Glasscock, J. 
 H. Harrison, E. J. Maetze, T. U. Lubbock, M. 
 Mott, W. H. Pope, G. W. Tyler, and R. N. 
 Weisiger, making thirteen; against the bill, A, -M. 
 Carter, M. M. Crane, J. W. Cranford, H. A. 
 Finch, L. M. Frank, J. G. Kearby, J. M. Mc- 
 Kinney, C. L. Potter, W. B. Page, E. J. Simkins, 
 J. H. Stephens, H. T. Sims, and L. A. Whatley, 
 making thirteen, which was a tie again. So 
 Lieut. Gov. Pendleton gave the casting vote the 
 second time against God, against Christianity, 
 and against humanity. If righteousness exalteth 
 a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people; and 
 if our prosperity as a nation depends upon our 
 fidelity to God, then how can we look for God's 
 blessings to rest upon our land, when the very 
 men who are the loudest in denunciation of moral 
 reformation are the most easily and certainly ele- 
 vated to positions of trust. Does not God say: 
 " The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest 
 men are exalted?'' But when is this great wrong 
 to be corrected? Not until those who profess to 
 be the children of God withhold all support and 
 encouragement from such politicians. If we so 
 readily pass over the malicious and diabolical acts, 
 deliberately made to throttle Christianity, or else 
 committed to curry the favor of the vicious ele- 
 ment of society, we may not expect soon to recover 
 
The Sabbath: Religious and Civil Liberty. 125 
 
 from our moral paralysis. Our gratitude is due 
 the faithful thirteen who stood for the Sabbath, 
 and to a conservative House of Representatives that 
 killed the nefarious bill. We are grateful to God 
 that true patriotism is still living, and we devoutly 
 pray that the day may soon dawn upon us when 
 we may have true men at the helm of State. 
 
 That the reader may apprehend more fully the 
 animus of the " Maetze bill," and realize how the 
 legislation of Texas for the past twelve years tends to 
 the destruction of our Sabbath, we will append the 
 Sabbath law found in the revised Statutes of the 
 State, 1879, and the subsequent legislation. 
 
 Article 183. Any person who shall hereafter labor, or com- 
 pel, force, or oblige his employees, workmen, or apprentices to 
 labor on Sunday, shall be fined not less than ten nor more than 
 fifty dollars. 
 
 Article 184. The preceding article shall not apply to house- 
 hold duties, work of necessity or charity ; nor necessary work 
 on farms or plantations in order to prevent loss of any crop; 
 nor to running of steamboats and other water crafts, rail cars, 
 wagon trains, common carriers, nor to the delivering of goods by 
 them or the receiving or storing of said goods by the parties, or 
 their agents to whom said goods are delivered; nor to stages 
 carrying the United States mail or passengers ; nor to founder- 
 ies, sugar mills, or herders who have a herd of stock actually 
 gathered and under herd; nor to persons traveling; nor to fer- 
 rymen or keepers of toll bridges, keepers of hotels, boarding 
 houses and restaurants and their servants; nor to keepers of 
 liveiy stables and their servants ; nor to any person who conscien- 
 tiously believes that the seventh or any other day of the week 
 ought to be observed as the Sabbath, and actually refrains from 
 business on that day for religious reasons. 
 
126 Appendix. 
 
 Article 185. Any person who shall run or be engaged in 
 running any horse race, or shall permit or allow the use of nine 
 or ten pin alley, or shall engage in match shooting, or any spe- 
 cies of gaming for money or other consideration, within the 
 limits of any town or city on Sunday, shall be fined not less 
 than twenty nor more than fifty dollars. 
 
 Article 186. Any merchant, grocer, or dealer in wares or 
 merchandise, or trader in any lawful business whatever, who 
 shall barter or sell on Sunday shall be fined not less than ten 
 nor more than fifty dollars; provided this article shall not apply 
 to markets or dealers in provisions as to sales made by them be- 
 fore 9 o'clock A.M. 
 
 Article 187. The preceding article shall not apply to the 
 sale of drugs and medicines on Sunday. 
 
 The following amendment was adopted in 1883: 
 
 Section i. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of 
 Texas, That Article 186 of the Penal Code be amended so as 
 hereafter to read as follows — to wit: 
 
 Article 186. Any merchant, grocer, or dealer in wares or 
 merchandise, or trader in any lawful business whatever, or 
 agent or employee of any such persons, who shall sell or barter 
 on Sunday shall be fined not less than twenty nor more + lian 
 fifty dollars; provided that this article shall not apply to mar- 
 kets or dealers in provisions as to sales of provisions made by 
 them before 9 o'clock A r M., nor the sale of burial or shrouding 
 material; provided that the sale of newspapers, ice, and milk 
 at any hour in the day shall be permissible ; provided further, 
 that nothing in this title shall be construed to prevent the send- 
 ing or receiving of telegraph messages. Approved April 10, 
 1883. 
 
 In 1887 the following amendment was adopted: 
 
 Section i. Amending the Sunday law, additional exemp- 
 tions. An act to amend Article 183 of the Penal Code of the 
 State of Texas, and to amend an act entitled An act to amend 
 Article 186 of the Penal Code approved April 10, A.D., 1883, 
 Chapter 2, and Title 7, and to amend said chapter and title by 
 adding thereto Article 186 a, providing additional exemptions 
 from the operation of the Sunday law. 
 
The Sabbath: Religions and Civil Liberty, 127 
 
 Section i. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of 
 Texas, that Article 183 of the Penal Code of the State of Texas, 
 and that an act to amend Article 186 of the Penal Code, ap- 
 proved April 10, A.D., 1883, be amended so as to hereafter to read 
 as follows: 
 
 Article 183. Any person who shall labor, or compel, force, 
 or oblige his employees, workmen, or apprentices to labor, on 
 Sunday, or any person who shall hereafter hunt game of any 
 kind whatsoever on Sunday within one mile of any Church, 
 schoolhouse, or private residence, shall be fined not less than 
 ten nor more than fifty dollars. 
 
 Article 186. Any merchant, grocer, or dealer in wares or 
 merchandise, or trader in any business whatever, or the propri- 
 etor of any place of public amusement, or the agent or employee 
 of any such person, who shall sell or barter, or permit his place 
 of business or place of public amusement to be opened for the 
 purpose of traffic or public amusement, on Sunday, shall be fined 
 not less than twenty nor more than fifty dollars. The term 
 " place of public amusement " shall be construed to mean cir- 
 cuses, theaters, variety theaters, and such other amusements as 
 are exhibited and for which an admission fee is charged ; and shall 
 also include dances at disorderly houses, low dives, and places 
 of like character, with or without fees for admission. 
 
 Article 186 a. The preceding article shall not apply to 
 markets or dealers in provisions as to sales of provisions made 
 by them before 9 o'clock a.m., nor the sale of burial or shroud- 
 ing material, newspapers, ice, ice-cream, milk, nor to the send- 
 ing of telegraph or telephone messages at any hour of the day, 
 nor keepers of drug stores, hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, 
 livery stables, barber shops, bath houses, or ice dealers, nor to 
 telegraph or telephone offices. 
 
 A careful study of these amendments will show 
 the gradual encroachments upon the Sabbath by 
 the Legislature of our State, which is just cause 
 for much alarm and stands as a challenge to the 
 greatest vigilance on the part of Christians. Mr. 
 Maetze and his colleagues sought to pass the fol- 
 
128 Appendix. 
 
 lowing amendment: " Senate bill No. 185, being 
 an act to amend Chapter 2 of Title 7 of the Crim- 
 inal Code of the State of Texas by adding thereto 
 Article 187 a, limiting the operation of said Chap- 
 ter 2 to the hours between the hour 9 a.m. and 
 the hour of 4 p.m." It will be seen that, had this 
 bill passed, Texas would have had no Sabbath ex- 
 cept between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. 
 
 The End. 
 
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