September 9, 1897
ALL just legislation is not for the purpose of making men do right, but of compelling them to respect human rights.
IF God had intended that men should be compelled to do right, he would have made it impossible in the first place for them to do wrong.
STATUTES and decisions of courts that are not entitled to respect do more to produce anarchy than all the incendiary speeches that were ever uttered.
IT does not belong to man to say what is morally right. Only God can tell that, and he makes it clear to each individual by his Word and his Spirit.
A MAN-MADE sabbath law is a robbery upon both man and God. It robs man of his freedom of choice, and it robs God of the service which might be rendered to him through man’s free choice in Sabbath-keeping.
SIN cannot be separated from the individual sinner. A “corporation sin” is simply the sins of its individual members. A corporation, as such, cannot sin. If it could, it could repent, and be saved, as such; and we would have in heaven the spectacle of saved corporations,—a strange sight, indeed.
IT is impossible that Christians should let their light shine before men by a strict observance of Sunday, because in this there is no light. The world is getting to understand the subject well enough to know that there is no good Scriptural argument in favor of Sunday as the Sabbath. Hence they can see in strict Sunday observance only an exhibition of fanaticism or hypocrisy.
WHETHER the Sabbath shall be preserved or lost, is not the question that is before the American people, or any people. The question is whether the soul shall be lost or not, and this is the question of whether an individual—any and every individual—shall believe on Jesus Christ for salvation. To the soul that thus believe, the Sabbath cannot be lost; and to the soul that does not believe, the Sabbath counts for nothing. Let ministers and religious workers therefore seek to have souls believe on Jesus Christ, and not to have the Sabbath “preserved” by legislation.