THOSE who read carefully the article on the first page of this paper will wonder how anybody could have been deceived by the papal platitudes about going forward bearing in one hand the popish bible and in the other an emasculated and distorted constitution; the one falsely labeled “The Book of Christian Truth,” the other “The Constitution of the United States.” It is not so strange, however, that under the magnetism of a gifted orator, an audience largely in sympathy with the speaker should be moved by his eloquent words rather than by sound reason; but it is more than passing strange that such a paper as the Independent, of this city, should, months after the utterance of such a sentiment, quote it in cold type as though Mgr. Satolli had really meant the Bible as it is, and the Constitution of the United States as it reads. And yet this is done in an article in the Independent, of August 16. It is true that it is not an editorial utterance, but it appears in the paper without dissent, and is evidently approved. But let no true Protestant be deceived by such Jesuitical utterances. Rome curses alike the Protestants’ Book of sacred truth and the patriot’s copy of the Constitution of the United States. Read the article referred to in this paper, and then when Rome asks for applause, Keep your seat.
WE have said before that these Saturday-Sabbath people are the worst enemies of the Lord’s day we have to contend with in our effort to secure a quiet Sabbath; it looks from this that they are the worst enemies the State has to contend with in its battle with anarchy.—Christian Statesman, Sept. 1, 1894.
This is just what “these Saturday-Sabbath people” have expected for forty years. We have all that time known from the Scriptures of Truth that those who were loyal to God’s Government would be denounced as enemies of civil government. The following quotation from “Great Controversy,” page 409, proves that we have been looking for just this thing:—
Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of society, causing anarchy and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God upon the earth. Their conscientious scruples will be pronounced obstinacy, stubbornness, and contempt of authority. They will be accused of disaffection toward the Government. Ministers who deny the obligation of the divine law will present from the pulpit the duty of yielding obedience to the civil authorities as ordained of God. In legislative hall and courts of justice, commandment-keepers will be censured and misrepresented. A false coloring will be given to their words; the worst possible construction will be put upon their motives.
But Adventists are not the enemies of civil order; and to all such accusations, whether from pulpit or press, they reply in the words of Elijah to the wicked Ahab: We “have not troubled Israel; but thou and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and hast followed” the man of sin by observing his false Sabbath.