The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution: A discussion between W. H. Littlejohn, Seventh-day Adventist, and the editor of the Christian StatesmanLittlejohn, Wolcott H.
Religion
The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution: A discussion between W. H. Littlejohn, Seventh-day Adventist, and the editor of the Christian Statesman
Littlejohn, Wolcott H.
Sabbath; Seventh-Day Adventists -- Doctrinal and controversial works; Sunday; Sunday legislation -- United States
First, then, let us suppose that the policy inaugurated shall be that of
the class represented above as desiring to strip the subject of its
religious garb, and to array it in the habiliments of mere policy and
temporal considerations. Are the benefits reasonably to be expected from
such a course such as would warrant the enthusiasm now manifested by the
advocates of the proposed reformation? We believe not. In fine, so
certain are we of it, that we should not hesitate to predict immediate
and perfect paralysis to their efforts, so soon as they should inscribe
this doctrine upon their banners. How many of the gentlemen in question
are really so profoundly interested in the social status of the
working-man that their zeal in his behalf could be wrought up to the
point of sacrificing time and money, and of devoting voice and pen to
the mere work of giving him a septenary day of physical rest? What
satisfaction would be afforded them by the reflection that, as the
result of legal enactment, the carefully appointed police in our great
cities should be able to meet each other on the boundary lines of their
respective beats, on the morning of Sunday, with the accustomed
salutation, All is quiet! and cessation from labor is complete in all
parts of the great metropolis? Who would highly prize a coerced rest of
this sort? What particular gratification would be afforded to the
religious world, as they gather, in their costly churches, by the
thought that the great mass of the people were quietly sleeping, or
lazily lounging in the various places of their retirement? Certainly
there is nothing in such a state of things which offers results
sufficiently desirable either to reward them for the great sacrifices
with which it would be necessary that they should be purchased, in the
first instance, or to secure that patient continuance in vigilant
perseverance which would be required to insure the perpetuity of an
order of things at once so compulsory and so precarious. We say,
therefore, that to rest the contest upon this issue would be simply to
falsify the facts. It is not the physical consideration of rest, in any
large degree, which animates the mind and strengthens the resolve of
those engaged in the newly organized reform. No; there is something
behind all this. The informing soul, that which electrifies, stimulates,
and nerves to action, is the profound conviction that this is a
religious movement; that which is sought is the honoring of God by the
observance of a Sabbath such as is found in his word. If this be not so,
if the higher idea of Christian worship as the primary one is not
paramount in this matter, then the whole thing is a farce, from
beginning to end. Not only so; if what is sought is merely the
improvement of bodily condition, then the plan suggested is, in many
cases, far from being the best which might be offered. Take, if you
please, our over-populated cities, with the dense masses of human beings
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