17. What complaint is made against Sunday trains and Sunday newspapers?
“They get a great many passengers, and so break up a great many congregations.” “The laboring classes are apt to rise late on Sunday morning, read the Sunday papers, and allow the hour of worship to go by unheeded.”—Elgin (Ill.) Sunday-law Convention, November, 1887.
Notes.—In the fourth century, Sunday games and Sunday theaters, it was complained, “hindered” the “devotion” of the “faithful,” because many of the members attended them in preference to the church services. The church, therefore, demanded that the state should interfere, and enforce Sunday observance by law. “In this way,” says Neander, “the church received help from the state for the furtherance of her ends.” In this way church and state were united, and the Papacy was placed in power. The same course pursued now will produce the same results.
It is proper and right for the church to teach Sabbath observance, and to decry Sabbath desecration; but it should not attempt to secure Sabbath observance through compulsory legislation; nor should it seek to fasten upon the people by any means the observance of a day which God has never enjoined, and for which, as is admitted on all hands, there is no Scriptural command. See admissions on pages [441], [442], [455], [456], [560].
18. What does the prophet say the two-horned-beast power will attempt to enforce upon all the people?
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.” Rev. 13:16.
Notes.—This mark is the mark of the beast, or the false sabbath. See Rev. 14:9, 10, and reading on page [446]. God's seal, or mark, is set in the forehead (Rev. 7:3; 14:1), the seat of the mind, the Lord accepting only the worship of conviction and conscience. The mark of the beast, however, is said to be received in the hand or forehead. Some are deceived and give assent to the false teaching with their minds, receiving the mark in the forehead; others, coerced or indifferent, give formal, outward consent, and so receive the mark in the hand.
Let the reader note this twofold aspect of the Sunday sabbath, as expressed by one of the most ardent and active Sunday-law advocates in the United States: “We, the Sabbath Union, W. C. T. U., all the churches, and the Y. M. C. A., are laboring with all our might to carry the religious sabbath with our right arm, and the civil sabbath with our left. Hundreds of thousands will receive it as a religious institution, and all the rest will receive it as a civil institution, and thus we will sweep in the whole nation.”—Rev. W. F. Crafts, in Sunday Union Convention, Wichita, Kans., Sept. 20, 1889.
19. What means will be employed to compel all to receive this mark?
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Verse 17.