A FEW days since, the Woman’s Sabbath Alliance, so-called, of this city, adopted the following pledge, which the members of the society are required to sign:—
To resist by precept and example whatever tends to undermine the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship, such as the Sunday secular newspapers, social Sunday entertainments, and Sunday driving and traveling for personal convenience, gain or pleasure; and we further pledge ourselves to exert our influence to create a right sentiment on all aspects of the Sunday question, especially in reference to traffic of every kind on that day.
Commenting upon this pledge, the Sun says:—
No fault whatever can be found with that pledge, on the ground that it proposes any invasion of personal liberty or any interference with the rights of anybody…. They simply bind themselves together “to create a right sentiment on all aspects of the Sunday question” as it seems to their own consciences, and to resist by their personal example and by their precept the present tendency “to undermine the Sabbath.” They pledge themselves not to read a Sunday newspaper nor to attend “social Sunday entertainments,” and not to drive and travel on that day for convenience or pleasure; but they do not assume to deny those privileges to anybody else. They will only try to induce other people to refrain from them, in obedience to their understanding of the Mosaic commandment.
This, these women have a perfect right to do. Of course they err greatly in supposing that Sunday is the Sabbath. The Bible says: “The seventh day is the Sabbath,” and everybody knows that Sunday is not the seventh day but the first day. But the women of the Woman’s Sabbath Alliance have a perfect right to believe that the first day is the seventh, or that the Lord has changed his mind, or that he transferred the Sabbath to another day and neglected to tell anybody about it, or to believe any other absurdity they wish to believe; moreover, they have a perfect right to persuade everybody whom they can influence, to believe and practice as they do. But if they stop here they will indeed be unique among so-called Sabbath reformers. The logic of error is to compel everybody to obey, and in this the Sunday-sabbath advocates are not peculiar. Having no divine law they seek human legislation; having no divine judgments to declare against those who disregard the first day, they uniformly appeal to human law and to civil penalties. We shall confidently expect to see, erelong, this so-called Sabbath Alliance going the way of the American Sabbath Union in this matter, namely, appealing to the civil law. [61]