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Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 19.

MAKING THE END KNOWN FROM THE BEGINNING

Signs of the Times

May 13, 1913

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 13, 1913

MAKING THE END KNOWN FROM THE BEGINNING

Isaiah 46:8-10, Bishop Lowth's translation
REMEMBER this, and show yourselves men: Reflect on it deeply, O ye apostates.
Remember the former things, of old time: Verily I am God, and none else; I am God, nor is there anything like Me. From the beginning making known the end; And from early times, the things that are not yet done: Saying, My counsel shall stand; And whatever I have willed, I will effect.

Question Corner

“IF YE WILL INQUIRE, INQUIRE YE.”
This Inquirers’ Department is conducted for the purpose of helping those who are studying the Bible. The answers are oftentimes only suggestive. They are never to be considered infallible, only as they agree with the infallible Word. The writer who may answer them does not consider that his opinion is infallible. He will simply give the best that he has, and plead with the inquirer to search the Word. Such questions only will be answered as, to the editors, seem to minister to the good of the readers and to the mission of the paper. We can not answer repeatedly in the same volume questions upon the same scripture. The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable. No letters are answered which do not contain the name of the writer. It is well always to enclose stamp for reply.

4067 — Ended His Work, Gen. 2:2

What is meant by “God ended His work which He had made”? Gen. 2:2. Did God do any work on the seventh day? If so, what was the nature of His work? Some claim that God worked part of the seventh day. F. E.
No, God did no part of the literal work of creating the world on that day. The thought of the text is, And God ceased His work,—He did not carry it over into the rest-day with Him. And yet on the other hand, there is a sense in which God worked on that day; that is, He made the Sabbath day on that day. He had His plan of work for that week. Each day He did something, and the seventh day He rested. But His very resting upon that day was to make it a perpetual memorial of His creative work, so it could be said that on the seventh day God made the Sabbath, fitting it forever to be a blessing to man. We may therefore settle that the Lord did not do any material work such as He had done the other six days, but that He did rest upon that day, and so made it a Sabbath day for man.

4068 — The Child and the Sinner, Isa. 65:20

Please explain Isa. 65:20. It seems to be talking of the new earth, but it says, “The child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed.” It does not seem to correspond with the rest of the chapter. C. A. T.
Note the object of the chapter, the promises in the context. Verse 17 declares that God will create a new heaven and a new earth, and that when they shall inhabit that new earth, the former shall not be remembered, nor come upon the heart. Verse 18 tells them to rejoice because He is going to do that very thing; and verse 19 declares that He will rejoice and joy in His people, and that in Jerusalem there will be no more heard the voice of weeping and the voice of crying, because all these things have gone forever. “There shall be no more thence,”—that is, from that time forward, from the time that God establishes Jerusalem,—there will be no more thence an infant of days, children dying young. There will be no more thence an old man that must pass away, or that has not filled his days. “The child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed.” All that is passed away, and then afterward, “They shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.” The “hundred years” is what puzzles many. It seems to us that this is that little period of time intimated in Revelation, the 20th chapter, the last clause of verse 3, and verses 7–10, from the time that the wicked dead are raised until they are utterly destroyed. That will be God’s last judgment and the execution of that judgment. The child which has died responsible to God will live through that period and die, and so also will the sinner who has been raised at its beginning. Their former years are not taken account of. They will see all of God’s wonderful work for His people and the demonstration of all His mighty truth in its triumph, and then they will die; and then His children will go on forever, not knowing sin or sorrow or weeping.

4069 — Delivering Up the Kingdom, 1 Cor. 15:24

Please explain 1 Cor. 15:24 in the “Question Corner” of the “Signs.” Does Christ turn the kingdom over to the Father when all is finished? A. F. H.
The kingdom referred to in this scripture has reference to the kingdom of grace, where Christ sits a King-Priest. To get an understanding of verses 24–28, we should study in connection with it Ps. 110:1; Zech. 6:12, 13; Rev. 3:21. Perhaps we can do no better in explaining it than to give a paraphrase of it: “Then cometh the end [of Christ’s reign as a High Priest upon the throne of His Father], when He shall deliver up the kingdom [of grace and as priest] to God, even the Father; when He [the Father] shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He [Christ] must reign [according to Ps. 110:1], till He [the Father] hath put all His [Christ’s] enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is death. For, He [the Father] put all things in subjection under His [Christ’s] feet. But when He [the Father] saith, All things are put in subjection, it is evident that He [the Father] is excepted who did subject all things unto Him [Christ]. And when all things have been subjected unto Him [Christ], then shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him [the Father] that did subject all things unto Him [Christ], that God may be all in all.” This, it seems to us, is very plain. Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father as Priest (Heb. 8:1),—a King-Priest upon His Father’s throne. When the end of probation comes, the end of God’s work for man comes, Jesus Christ rises up from this throne and turns it over to the Father, and then takes His own throne, beginning that reign in the holy city, New Jerusalem; and when the problem of sin is finally solved, and all sin is banished from the universe, then it is that the 28th verse will be true; and God will be all in all.

4070 — 2 Kings 8:26; 2 Chron. 22:2

Please explain the seeming contradiction between these two verses. G. M.
The one text gives twenty-two years, the other forty-two years, for Ahaziah’s age. The “Bible Companion” suggests this,—that the forty and two years old could be rendered as it is literally,—“a son of forty-two years,” that is, of the house of Omri, on account of his connection with it through his mother. In 2 Kings 8:26 Ahaziah’s age—twenty-two years—is given when he began to reign in 790 B.C., during the two years of his father’s disease. His father, Jehoram, was thirty-two when he began to reign with Jehoshaphat, two years before the latter’s death. 2 Kings 8:16. This was in 796. Jehoram therefore was born in 828. Ahaziah his son, being twenty-two years old when he began his co-regency, was therefore born in 812, his father being sixteen years old. It is also suggested by others that there was a mistake simply in the copying of the manuscript, in which one Hebrew letter used for numbers could be easily mistaken for another. It certainly is very obvious that some such thing as this occurred, but the Bible is the freest of books from them.

4071 — Adam and Eve

Did Adam and Eve repent before their death, and will they be saved in the new earth? F. L.
We think so. We think that they repented when God made His promise to them, when He pronounced the sentence upon Adam, and when that implied promise was spoken that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Eve’s repentance and faith is shown in the fact that when Cain was born she thought that the promised Seed had come then,—“I have gotten a man from the Lord;” as rendered by some, “I have gotten the God-man.” But she was sadly disappointed. The one who she thought would be their Saviour proved a destroyer, and Abel was killed. But she and Adam were not hopeless. The next one that was born was Seth, and his name means “appointed,” and so she said, “God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel,” and through that seed came our Lord Jesus Christ. So it seems clearly evident that, sinning though they did, and as they did, they still had hope in that Seed that was to come through their descendants, the Lord Jesus Christ.

4072 — Salted by Fire, Mark 9:49

Please explain by letter, or in your paper, the text in Mark 9:49. Q. F. F.
The text reads, in our Common Version, “For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.” This last, of course, is a statement which is made in Lev. 2:13,—“Every sacrifice shall be salted with salt,” salt standing for life. “Every one shall be salted with fire” evidently has reference to the context, what comes before. The wicked will be destroyed in the unquenchable fire, but the righteous shall be preserved. When the glory of the great God appears, it will be the same glory to both classes; but the righteous will endure it because they are filled with the power and presence of God within. “Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire?” asks the prophet; “who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” and then he gives the answer: “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from taking a bribe, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil.” In other words, the consecrated, converted man, the one in whom Christ dwells, will not feel the burning glory; but he who has not known Christ, will be consumed by that glory. The fire will try every man’s work, of what sort it is. 1 Cor. 3:13. All then will receive of that baptism of glory that will change the righteous to immortality. It will destroy the wicked. That glory is the fulness of expression of the life of God, just as salt is a symbol of life, and the fulness of God’s life in the dead wine-skins of self-righteousness, of sin, will destroy the wine-skins. And therefore the apostle urges, Have salt in yourselves, have life in yourselves, let the life of God dwell within, and it will not harm from without.

4073 — Food in the Wilderness

Please explain what was the food for the flocks and herds of Israel while in the wilderness. O. F. F.
This is one of the questions in which the Lord does not satisfy our curiosity. Let us first say, however, that a wilderness does not necessarily imply a desert. We know that they drank of the water which God gave,—the water which came out of the rock, the herds drank of it. There were various valleys, or wadies, or canyons, along the wilderness way, more or less, in which doubtless green things grew and green food was gathered. Not only that, but when they stayed in the wilderness so long, they must have gathered around some fertile part where the flocks and the herds could be cared for. Certainly this is learned,—that the two and a half tribes that stayed on the thither side of Jordan had large flocks and herds which had increased during the time of their journeys. In these ways the life of the cattle may have been preserved. And still further, the Lord may have fed the cattle and herds just the same as He did the men. Certainly we know that He kept them.

Our Bible Band

Schedule for the Week Ending May 17, 1913

Day Date Reading
Sunday May 11 1 Kings 1
Monday ” 12 ” 2, 3
Tuesday ” 13 ” 4, 5, 6
Wednesday ” 14 ” 7
Thursday ” 15 ” 8
Friday ” 16 ” 9, 10
Sabbath ” 17 Psalms 33, 34
The week’s readings open with 1 Kings, and continue to the 10th chapter. The Kings were written, it is thought, by Jeremiah, partially compiled, no doubt, under the inspiration of the Spirit, from the records that were given of the reign of the various monarchs of the two kingdoms. The books of the Kings give far less detail in the beginning of the reigns of Solomon and David, less of detail regarding the kingdom of Judah, but much more concerning the kingdom of Israel. The book opens with the last days of David. Solomon is called to the throne, and enters upon his reign. It tells us of his wonderful glory and wisdom, of the mistakes he made in multiplying wives to himself, of his affinity with Egypt in the marriage of the Egyptian princess, and of his preparation for the building of the temple, of his prayer at the dedication, and the visit of the queen of Sheba. The week closes with Psalms 33 and 34, great spiritual lessons, the one telling of God’s creative power, the other of trust in Him.

A Lesson in Prayer

By Ellen G. White

By Mrs. E. G. White
Nehemiah, the Hebrew exile, occupied a position of influence and honor in the Persian court. As cup-bearer of the king, he was familiarly admitted to the royal presence, and by virtue of this intimacy, and his own high abilities and tried fidelity, he became the monarch’s counselor. Yet in that heathen land, surrounded by royal pomp and splendor, he did not forget the God of his fathers or the people who had been entrusted with the holy oracles. With deepest interest, his heart turned toward Jerusalem, and his hopes and joys were bound up with her prosperity.
Days of peculiar trial and affliction had come to the chosen city. Messengers from Judah described to Nehemiah its condition. The second temple had been reared, and portions of the city rebuilt; but its prosperity was impeded, the temple services disturbed, and the people kept in constant alarm, by the fact that its walls were still in ruins, and its gates burned with fire. The capital of Judah was fast becoming a desolate place, and the few inhabitants remaining were daily embittered by the taunts of their idolatrous assailants. “Where is your God?” The soul of the Hebrew patriot was overwhelmed by these evil tidings. So great was his sorrow, that he could not eat or drink; he “wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted.” But when the first outburst of his grief was over, he turned in his affliction to the sure Helper. “I prayed,” says he, “before the God of heaven.” He knew that all this ruin had come because of the transgressions of Israel; and in deep humiliation he came before God for pardon of sin and a renewal of the divine favor. He addressed his petitions to the God of heaven, “the great and terrible God;” for such the Lord had shown Himself to be in the fearful judgments brought upon Israel. But with a gleam of hope, Nehemiah continues, “that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love Him and observe His commandments.” For repentant and believing Israel there was still mercy.
Faithfully the man of God makes confession of his sins and the sins of his people: “Let Thine ear now be attentive, and Thine eyes open, that Thou mayest hear the prayer of Thy servant, which I pray before Thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel Thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against Thee; both I and my father’s house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly against Thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which Thou commandedst Thy servant Moses.”

Holding Fast the Divine Promise

And now, taking fast hold, by faith, of the divine promise, Nehemiah lays down at the footstool of heavenly mercy his petition that God would maintain the cause of His now penitent people, restore their strength, and build up their waste places. God had been faithful to His threatenings when His people separated from Him; He had scattered them abroad among the nations, according to His word. And Nehemiah finds in this very fact an assurance that He will be equally faithful to fulfil His promises. His people had now returned in penitence and faith to keep His commandments; and God Himself had said that if they would do this, even tho they were cast out into the uttermost part of the earth, He would gather them thence, and would cause the light of His countenance again to shine upon them. This promise had been given more than a thousand years before; but it stood unchanged through all the centuries. God’s word can not fail.
Nehemiah’s faith and courage strengthen as he grasps the promise. His mouth is filled with holy arguments. He points to the dishonor that would be cast upon God, were His people, now that they have returned to Him, to be left in their state of weakness and oppression.
Nehemiah had often poured out his soul thus before God in behalf of His people. Day and night had he offered this prayer. And as he prayed, a holy purpose had been forming in his mind, that if he could obtain the consent of the king, and the necessary aid in procuring implements and material, he would himself undertake the arduous task of rebuilding the ruined walls of Jerusalem, and seeking to restore the national strength. And now in closing his prayer he entreats the Lord to grant him favor in the sight of the king, that this cherished plan may be carried out.

His Persistence in Prayer

Four months he was compelled to wait for a favorable opportunity to present his request to the king. During this period, while his heart was oppressed with grief he constantly endeavored to carry a cheerful and happy countenance. In his seasons of retirement, many were the prayers, the penitential confessions, and the tears of anguish, witnessed by God and angels; but all this was concealed from human sight. The regulations of Eastern courts forbade any manifestation of sorrow within them. All must appear gay and happy in those halls of luxury and splendor. The distress without was not to cast its shadow in the presence of royalty.

An Audience with the King at Last

But at last the sorrow that burdened Nehemiah’s heart could no longer be concealed. Sleepless nights devoted to earnest prayer, care-filled days, dark with the shadow of hope deferred, leave their trace upon his countenance. The keen eye of the monarch, jealous to guard his own safety, is accustomed to read countenances and to penetrate disguises. Seeing that some secret trouble is preying upon his servant, he suddenly inquires, “Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart.”
This question fills the listener with apprehension. Will not the king be angry to hear that while outwardly engaged in his service, the courtier’s thoughts have been far away with his afflicted people? Will not the offender’s life be forfeited? And his cherished plan for restoring the strength of Jerusalem—is it not about to be overthrown? “Then,” he says, “I was very sore afraid.” With trembling lips and tearful eyes he reveals the cause of his sorrow,— the city, which is the place of his father’s sepulcher, lying waste, and its gates consumed with fire. The touching recital awakens the sympathy of the monarch without arousing his idolatrous prejudices; another question gives the opportunity which Nehemiah has long sought: “For what dost thou make request?” But the man of God does not reply until he has first asked the support of One higher than Artaxerxes. “I prayed,” he says, “to the God of heaven.”

The Precious Lesson of Prayer

A precious lesson is this for all Christians. Whenever we are brought into positions of difficulty or danger, even when surrounded by those who love and fear not God, the heart may send up its cry for help, and there is One who has promised that He will come to our aid. This is the kind of prayer that Christ meant when He said, “Pray without ceasing.” We are not to make ejaculatory prayer a substitute for public or family worship, or for secret devotion; but it is a blessed resource, at our command under circumstances when other forms of prayer may be impossible. Toilers in the busy marts of trade, crowded and almost overwhelmed with financial perplexities, travelers by sea and land, when threatened by some great danger, can thus commit themselves to divine guidance and protection. And in every circumstance and condition of life, the soul weighed down with grief or care, or assailed by temptation, may thus find comfort, support, and succor in the unfailing love and power of a covenant-keeping God.

Sunday in Oppressive Legislation

By J. O. Corliss

By J. O. Corliss
The history of civil legislation in behalf of Sunday observance is of deep interest, because it opens to candid minds the great injustice of all such acts to individual conscience. Furthermore, it reveals the subtle methods by which dominating church sentiment has succeeded in harnessing the civil power to its car of creeds, and thereby bringing oppression to sincere believers in Bible doctrines.
While traces of Sunday legislation are found in most centuries of the Christian era, laws of that nature did not originate in Christianity, but with paganism. Genuine Christianity has never needed nor desired the arm of civil power to advance its interests, since the “arm of the Lord” has from the first been pledged to the support of His offspring, through any and every phase of its history. For this reason the remark of Benjamin Franklin was to the point when he said: “When religion is good, it will take care of itself; when it is not able to take care of itself, and God does not see fit to take care of it, so that it has to appeal to the civil power for support, it is evidence to my mind that its cause is a bad one.”

God Could Not Support It

Sunday keeping could not well have God’s support, being contrary to His expressed will regarding the weekly rest day. His established day of rest was given for the definite purpose of keeping His creative power prominent before the world, while its rival, Sunday rest, was introduced in honor of sun-worship. To uphold an institution established for that purpose would be to dethrone Himself as sovereign of the universe. This being true, the civil power that attempts to enforce such an institution by legislative enactment, goes as far as its power permits, in the same direction, because it enforces the observance of a pagan festival upon those who ought to have in mind the weekly memorial of God’s creative power.

Oppressive Sunday Laws

In his “Critical History of Sunday Legislation,” Dr. A. H. Lewis says: “The first Sunday legislation was the product of that pagan conception, so fully developed by the Romans, which made religion a department of the state. This was diametrically opposed to the genius of New Testament Christianity. . . . The emperor Constantine, while still a heathen—if indeed he was ever otherwise—issued the first Sunday edict by virtue of his power as Pontifex Maximus in all matters of religion, especially in the appointment of sacred days. This law was pagan in every particular.”
The early church, it seems, in addition to Sabbath observance, rather favored the recognition of Sunday as a resurrection festival, and so in time gradually combined that idea with the pagan conception, as the result of receiving into fellowship those who held in some measure pagan views of sun-worship. Later, as papal rites were being evolved from pagan observances, and the Papacy itself assumed civil jurisdiction, religious regard was demanded for the day, in honor of Christ’s resurrection. Accordingly the council of Laodicea, in A.D. 364, decreed Sunday to be the Lord’s day, and enjoined its observance, at the same time forbidding members of the church to rest on the “Sabbath like Jews.”
About the middle of the fifth century, says Heylyn, in his “History of the Sabbath,” part 2, chapter 4, section 8, a law was made by Leo, then pope of Rome, that holy orders were to be conferred on no day but Sunday. So to be in line with the church, the emperor Leo, in A.D. 469, issued a decree that if any one in the empire should ignore Sunday observance, and engage in worldly business or pleasure on that day, he should be punished by loss of his commission if a military man, or by the confiscation of estate and goods if a common citizen.
This persistent effort to destroy the Sabbath, and to lift Sunday into recognition as a holy day, was followed by more stringent legislation. In volume 8 of his “Ecclesiastical History,” Fleury says that Pope Gregory, near the close of the sixth century, sent out an epistle condemning all who advocated the observance of Sabbath in conjunction with Sunday, calling them “preachers of antichrist.” So far, indeed, was this spirit made manifest, that the twelfth council of Toledo, in Spain, held A.D. 681, forbade the Jews to keep even their own festivals but to observe Sunday so as not to express outward objection to the worship of Christ. (“Dialogues on the Lord’s Day,” page 267.)
This sentiment was not long in reaching England, and to be applied there. In A.D. 784, Egbert, archbishop of York, made this canon: “Let nothing else be done on the Lord’s day, but to attend on God in hymns and psalms and spiritual songs.” (Morer, page 269.) In the ninth century, says the same author, the civil power of Bavaria ordered that any one doing secular work on Sunday, after being admonished twice by the priest, must “receive no less than fifty stripes.” (“Dialogues on the First Day,” pages 261, 262.)

Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered for Refusing Sunday Allegiance

In Crosby’s “History of English Baptists,” volume 2, pages 165-171, it is related that in A.D. 1661, a Seventh-day Baptist minister, Mr. John James, while preaching on Sabbath from his pulpit in Bull-steak Alley, London, was arrested on the charge of having spoken treason against the king. Utter’s “Manual of Seventh-day Baptists,” pages 21-23, says of this case, that notwithstanding the decided Christian bearing of Mr. James at his trial, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. When dead, his heart was removed and burned, his quarters were affixed to the gates of the city, and his head raised on a pole in Whitechapel, opposite to the alley in which his meeting-house stood.
But it is not necessary to dwell on these early bygone scenes to show that oppression invariably follows the enactment of Sunday laws. It is enough to ask here, If such laws were not intended to supplement moral suasion, why have they been enacted? One certain lesson may, however, be gathered from the citations employed in this article, and that is that the uniform reason given for the enforcement of Sunday rest, has been on account of religion. Had the Reformation repudiated the papal claims of sanctity for Sunday, and adhered strictly to Bible forms of faith, the spirit of persecution under papal rule might have died at the birth of Protestantism. But having brought the Sunday rest day over from Catholicism, without any Biblical foundation for its observance, and not wishing to acknowledge its pagan-papal origin, some means of enforcing its pseudo sanctity must be devised.

America on Sunday Laws in Nineteenth Century

To this end, all the American states but two have incorporated Sunday laws in their statutes. As to how these have operated where steps have been taken, by bigoted religionists, to enforce them, the records from a few states will readily show. In the state of Arkansas, during the middle eighties of the nineteenth century, no less than twenty Seventh-day Adventists were arrested for Sunday work, while those from other churches round about were working at will on the same days, and that without molestation. Some of these were so heavily fined as to take away, by forced collection, the last means of family support. The shame of this affair was briefly told, as follows, in the St. Louis Globe Democrat of November 30, 1885:
“They have been from the first apparently an industrious and God-fearing people, the chief difference between them and other Christian bodies being that they observe the seventh day as the Sabbath, according to the commandment. But it seems that sectionalism can not lay down its arms even when the sacred precincts of religion are entered, so among the first things performed by the legislature at its session last winter, less than a year after these people had come into the state, was the repeal of the clause which gave them the liberty to keep the day of their choice. . . . It is a little singular that no one else has been troubled on account of the law, with perhaps one minor exception, while members of the above denomination are being arrested over the whole state. It savors just a trifle of the religious persecution which characterized the Dark Ages.”
At a later date, 1892, wholesale prosecutions were maintained, under similar conditions, in Tennessee. A Mr. King, of Obion County, was imprisoned under such circumstances that he survived but a short time his incarceration. Three others were made to work in the chain-gang along with the vilest criminals. In a statement made by the trial judge, he repudiated the Sabbathian conscience of the prisoners, saying, “Let them educate their consciences by the laws of Tennessee.” But because this could not be done with an open Bible in hand, Mr. W. H. Parker, of Springsville, was made to serve a sentence aggregating two hundred and eighty days. He, too, died soon after being released from prison.
The writer was present at the trial of Day Conklin at the county seat of Forsyth County, Georgia, in 1889. In this case, the prosecuting witnesses freely acknowledged that they had worked on Sunday whenever they desired to do so, yet no charge of law-breaking was made against them. But Mr. Conklin was fined thirty dollars for the necessary act of splitting an armful of dry wood at his back door, to keep his family from suffering with cold. At a similar trial held later at Gainsville, Georgia, the prosecuting attorney, who had been present at Mr. Conklin’s trial, said of that case:
“One of these Seventh-day Adventists was tried over here in Forsyth County, and I think there never was a more unrighteous conviction. There was a man named Day Conklin, who was moving on Friday. He got his goods wet on Friday, and it turned off cold. On Saturday he went out and cut enough wood to keep his family from freezing. On Sunday he still hadn’t his things dry, and it was still as cold as it had been on Saturday. He still cut enough wood to keep his family warm, and they convicted him for doing this. I say that it was an outrage, an unrighteous conviction; for he was doing the best he could. One of the jurymen told me that they did not convict him for what he had done, but for what he said he had a right to do. He said he had a right to work on Sunday.”
Without doubt this was a genuine case of religious persecution, since two of the witnesses against Mr. Conklin were known to have chopped wood the very next Sunday after the trial. But lack of space forbids the presentation of a tithe of such cases as might be offered. It is enough to say that the same kind of unrighteous prosecutions were conducted in Missouri, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia, and even in cultured Massachusetts. The record of only two years (1895-6) in the states cited, shows that seventy-six persons served in jails and chain-gangs, all the way from fourteen to one hundred and twenty-nine days, as violators of iniquitous Sunday laws. Always and everywhere Sunday laws have robbed men of God-given rights just because bigoted religionists insisted upon wreaking vengeance on an adverse faith. Sunday legislation can be nothing less than oppressive legislation.
Continue reading: The Witnessing of God: The Basis of Our Confidence