A BETTER WAY by J. E. Swift

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · May 5, 1885

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 18

A BETTER WAY.

By J. E. Swift

EVIDENTLY the churches are in trouble about their Sunday, and something should be done to help them. The Christian Statesman of April 16 copies from the Watchman an article upon “A Standard of Sabbath Observance,” from which we take the following: “The enforcement of Sunday laws, for which appeals are frequently made, is rendered in many cases difficult, if not impracticable, by the fact that among those who believe the observance of the Lord’s day to be obligatory and important, there is no agreement as to the standard of observance.” And he might just as truthfully have added that there is no agreement as to the reasons why it should be observed. In fact, the very reason why there is no “standard of observance” is because there is no reason why any should observe the Sunday. After lamenting the fact that Christians travel upon Sunday trains, and Sunday papers are read by Christians, he tries to adjust the difficulty in this way: “The churches have need, if they would rescue the Lord’s day for its appointed uses, to set up for themselves, their members, and their families, a standard of proper observance, and live up to it.” Have the Watchman and Statesman drifted so far from the underlying principle of Protestantism, that God’s holy word furnishes them no standard for religious practice? Or are they so wedded to their man-made Sunday Sabbath, that they entirely ignore God’s claims upon them? Do they not know that they must soon stand before God’s holy law in the Judgment, and meet the fourth commandment which tells them that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord their God?

If they will stop their vain and God-dishonoring business of “setting up for themselves, their members, and their families, standards” of right and wrong, and turn reverently and submissively to their Bibles, they will find that the proper way to observe Sunday is to use it as God and Christ and the prophets and apostles have used it, as a common laboring day. Then if they wish to really honor God by keeping his sanctified rest day (the seventh day), they will find already set up a standard so plain and so reliable that no one need be mistaken in regard to God’s claims. See Ex. 20:8–11; Isa. 58:13, 14. In the great decisive day which is just before us, instead of being like the foolish man that built his house upon the sand (Matt. 7:26, 27), they will then be granted a home in the city of God. Rev. 22:14. Which is the better way? J. E. Swift.