September 22, 1898
ALL religious legislation puts a barrier between man and God.
NO LAW of man was ever powerful enough to drag a soul to Christ.
THE true evangelist points the weary and burdened soul to Christ, not to the law.
IF the Sabbath is not the seventh day of the week, it is not the seventh day of anything.
SINCE all men must come to Christ to find rest, the rest which the Sabbath law enjoins must be religious.
NO MAN can come to God save through Jesus Christ, and no man can come to Christ save through the freedom of his own will.
INSTITUTIONS which rest upon a basis of truth, are much more stable than those which rest merely upon a legal basis.
THE law of the Sabbath, which commemorates creation, is no more uncertain or imperfect in any way than the laws by which creation is governed.
SOCIETY needs not the restriction of new laws, but liberation from the old laws inwrought in human nature, which hold men in the ruts of sin and error.
IT is religion, and that alone, which keeps the Sabbath rest from becoming a period of aimless inactivity positively demoralizing to mind and body.
PEOPLE who think they ought to legislate upon religious matters should remember that a good motive did not protect Uzzah when he put forth his human hand to stead the ark of God.
CONSCIENCE should be the only compelling power in all religious observances.
IF men would be careful to give to God as much as they exact from their fellowmen, there would be far less hypocrisy practiced in the name of religion.
IF God had not mean to make his Sabbath law plain to human comprehension, he would not have used in expressing it so many words of one syllable.
THE workingman needs the support of a moral strengthing [sic.] within, rather than the propping up of religious laws from without.
[Inset.] JESUS CHRIST says, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Those only who accept this invitation will find rest. It must be an act of their own free will. But the Sunday laws are for the purpose of compelling the “heavy laden,” and all people, to rest. And to be compelled to rest is not accepting an invitation to rest; free will and forced will are exactly opposite conditions. And therefore those who yield to the Sunday laws—those who are compelled by them—by that very thing shut themselves away from receiving the rest which Christ offers, and which they need. They are shut away from the blessing of God.