No Divine Command

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 14, 1913

No Divine Command

INTELLIGENT laymen who are willing to give fair consideration to the evidence in the case, are fully convinced that there is no divine command for the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath. Here is recent testimony to this fact. Rev. Joseph Keevil, the corresponding secretary of the Kings County Sunday Observance Society, wrote under date of July 17, 1913, to Hon. W. J. Gaynor, the mayor of New York, declaring that games of baseball were being played in the city on Sunday contrary to the law, and urging Mr. Gaynor to have the law enforced. We quote a paragraph from the mayor’s reply:—

I am unaware of any divine law forbidding us to play games on Sunday. If you think there is such a divine law, I should be glad to have you cite it to me and correct me. When the great Christian minister, John Knox of Scotland, went to Geneva, in Switzerland, to visit that other great Christian minister, John Calvin, and called on him at his home of a Sunday afternoon, he found him out back in the fields, playing at bowls with his sons and neighbors. He knew of no divine law prohibiting him from doing so, nor did John Knox know of any. Do you?

We are positively sure that Mr. Keevil will be unable to cite any passage from the Scriptures which will be accepted as proof by the legal mind of Mr. Gaynor, who was formerly a judge on the bench; for the simple reason that there is no such command.