”They taught us how to keep the Sabbath. It is granted on all hands that they were more careful than any other churches about Sabbath observance…The world calls that narrow, but our fathers were nearer right than wrong. You can’t well be too strict in Sabbath keeping. When one is hurt by too rigid a Sabbath, a thousand are ruined by a loose one. A man’s attitude toward the Sabbath is a fair test of his spiritual character. If he is loose on the Sabbath he is lacking in vital goodness, his convictions are shallow, he is not rooted and grounded in love. If he honors the Sabbath he is still anchored to God. Letting down on the Sabbath is like the letting out of water. Once you begin there is no stopping place till the sacredness of the day is utterly gone. You hallow it in your heart as God’s own holiday, on which we are not to do our own work nor find our own pleasures nor speak our own words nor think our own thoughts, or you loose reverence for it altogether. And the transition is not slow. Twenty years ago Christian people would have been horrified if someone had prophesied that the theaters would be in full blast and great crowds would flock to see baseball games in all our cities on Sabbath. But that is what has come to pass. If it had been prophesied twenty years ago that every Sabbath day the railroad trains would be crowded to the very doors with men and women and children going off to a picnic, Christians would have said, ‘Impossible!’”. But it is going on today all over this country. Our fathers were right. They saw the danger. They knew the tendency. They taught us to stand like a stonewall against even the slightest infringement of the spirit of the Sabbath. They so stood in their day, thereby leaving us a blessed Sabbath. And from their graves they call on us to follow their example. Only so can we transmit a holy Sabbath to our children.”
– Rev. D.G. Phillips, “The Centennial Address: 1803-1903″ pg. 723-724
[...] HT: Mountains and Magnolias [...]