Читать книгу The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution онлайн

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The amendment proposed is in substance as follows: An acknowledgment of God as the ultimate source of all power and authority in civil government; of Jesus Christ as ruler of nations; and of the Bible as the fountain of law, and the supreme rule of national conduct. Let this be distinctly borne in mind. We have here a clear assertion of the very principles for which the seventh-day Sabbatarian most strenuously contends.

Just here, we would take occasion to say that even if the proposed amendment contained an express acknowledgment, in so many words, of the first-day Sabbath, and if the argument for the seventh-day Sabbath were a perfect demonstration, there would still be, on that account, as matters actually stand in our land at present, no valid objection against such explicit Constitutional acknowledgment of the first day.

Suppose a company of the advocates of the seventh-day Sabbath, going forth as missionaries, should discover, in a distant sea, an island inhabited by a people in many respects highly civilized, possessing a portion of the Bible, and observing one day in seven, say the fourth day of the week, as a day of rest and worship of the true God, and acknowledging it as such in their Constitution of government. Suppose that in the same island should be found a large and active minority, thoroughly infidel and atheistic, striving in every way to overturn the Sabbath. The missionaries, perceiving much room and opportunity for doing good to the people, settle among them, and seek, among many things, to change the Sabbath to what they regard as the proper day. In what way would they attempt to accomplish this? Would they permit themselves for a moment to be classed with the infidel and atheistic opponents of the Sabbath? Would they not stand side by side with those who defended the Sabbath observances of the country against the attacks of immoral and unbelieving enemies of all Christian institutions?