THE Independent (N. Y.), of October 14, makes this very truthful statement: “The fourth commandment is the workingman’s palladium, his best defense against oppression, and was so intended from the first.”
The fourth commandment was designed by keep men in constant touch with the Author of liberty. Whoever shall keep the fourth commandment will know freedom in its highest sense.
The fourth commandment is not only a command to every individual to rest on the Sabbath day, but it is the guaranty of the highest power in the universe that every person shall enjoy the privilege who will take it. For does the God of heaven command any person to do that which he is not fully able to do?
All that is necessary is for the workingman to have confidence in God. God offers to all men absolute freedom and independence; in other words, a noble, upright manhood, which never need bow its head in servility and cringing fear. “God made man upright,” is the declaration of the Scriptures of truth. God made man to be upright, and not the less so in this age of the world than in any other. All the bossism and the servility which characterize the relations of man to his fellow man in this day, are not of God’s ordering, but are directly contrary to it.
God has not made the privilege of Sabbath rest contingent, for a single one of his creatures, upon the lofty condescension of some other man in giving him permission to enjoy that rest; or upon the happen-so of some other man’s choosing to keep the Sabbath himself. It is the duty of employers to keep the Sabbath himself. It is the duty of employers to throw no obstacle in the way of their employés as regards the keeping of the Sabbath, as is said in Deuteronomy, “That thy man servant and thy maid servant may rest as well as thou.” But this statement is not a declaration that men servants and maid servants cannot have a Sabbath rest if their employers do not see fit to rest themselves or to grant them the permission.
In Christ, there is no distinction of master and servant, but all are free and on a perfect equality; and the duty and privilege of one, in respect to Sabbath observance, do not vary one whit from those of another.
Let the workingman, and every other man who has them not, accept the freedom and manhood that are in Christ. They are worth more to him than anything else.