Latter Day Saint movement

“ I do not know any other way for the Latter-day Saints than for every breath to be virtually a prayer for God to guide and direct his people, and that he will never suffer us to possess anything that will be an injury to us. I am satisfied that this should be the feeling of every Latter-day Saint in the world. If you are making a bargain, if you are talking in the house, visiting in the social party, going forth in the dance, every breath should virtually be a prayer that God will preserve us from sin and from the effects of sin. ”

“ Don't take away my human minister, whose God is no tyrant, and is better pleased to see us go smiling home from church, than bowing our heads like a bulrush, and groaning back to our dinners, till all you anti-Sabbatarians are mad to abolish Sunday,—and no wonder.
Our Catholic brethren have set us, at least one good example; their churches are not silent as the tomb on week-days. Their worshippers do not do up all their religion on Sunday. It may be only for a few moments they step in through that open church-door, on a week-day, to kneel and lay down burdens too heavy else to be borne. ”

“ No respectable man has ever yet, to my knowledge, pretended to say that the Latter Day Saints, as a society, have been guilty of any infringement of the laws of their country; or that they have refused to comply with any of the requisitions of the government under which they live. On the contrary, they are admitted, by all men of candor, to be peaceable, upright and honest in their dealings with the world; kind, benevolent and charitable to the poor and distressed in every situation, whether of their own belief or not ”

“ The great majority of Protestants who have kept the first day of the week as the Sabbath, although it is an institution of the Papacy, have not had the remotest idea that it had any connection whatever with that false system of worship. Have such been worshiping the beast, while they have been keeping Sunday without a thought of that power, honestly supposing they were keeping a Bible institution? By no means. Have they had the mark of the beast? Not at all. The denunciation of the third message is against those who knowingly keep Sunday as an institution of the beast. ”

“ Is there a human eye that knows not tears? Oh! how many things one day contains. It may be a prodigal child brought back; an upright life sanctified by sacrifice, a martyrdom, a consecration to God. It may be an overflowing of evil and impiety, and, on the other hand, prayer poured out in floods before the altar. A great church-festival, a first communion, a far-distant island conquered to the Gospel, a battle gained over the enemies of the faith—these, these are a day! ”

“ The prophecies regarding the work of the Papacy in seeking to change the law of God began to be understood, and it was seen that the last message of the everlasting gospel was a call to turn from human traditions to the New Testament standard—"the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:12. Then began the great movement for Sabbath reform and the proclamation of Christ's second coming, which has given rise to the Seventh-day Adventist people, [Pg 181] with a work spreading through all lands, leading thousands every year to keep the Lord's blessed Sabbath day. ”

“ The opportunities of worship, of religious meditation and service, which it brings will be esteemed as the value of Christian fellowship, the importance of Christian knowledge, and the duty of Christian endeavour are successively understood. On all these grounds the Sabbath, or Lord's Day, is for modern religion, as for that of the old covenant, a great declaration, a means of unity and development which the spiritual will earnestly uphold. Let it fail, and distinction between religious and non-religious will be without a sign. No doubt the reality is more by far than the symbol. ”

“ The same transforming effects attach to the real communion in which the finite human spirit feeds upon its true divine food and drink—the Life of Christ given for us. The real Sabbath is not a sacred day, kept in a ceremonial and legal sense, but rather an inward quiet, a prevailing peace of soul, a rest in the life of God from stress and strain and passion. The Church has been pitiably torn and mutilated by disputes over the genuine form of administering these outer ceremonies, supposing them to be in themselves sacraments of life. ”

“ If the Sabbath is of so little importance as not to be a test of Christian fellowship and eternal salvation; if men who break the Sabbath should be embraced in our fellowship the same as if they observed it; and if they can reach Heaven as surely in violating the fourth commandment as in keeping it; why not abandon it at once, and cease to agitate the public mind with a question of no real importance which is so unpleasant and annoying.
Seventh-day Adventists believe that in the restoration of the Bible Sabbath, under the last message of mercy, God designs to make it a test to the people. ”

“ Verily, as our Lord has said, the men of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. It is only in matters of religion that people seem to be satisfied with that which, in regard to any other subject, would be considered consummate folly.
And do these men who use the one-day-in-seven-and-no-day-in-particular theory, advocate a change of the Sabbath from the rest-day of the Father, to the resurrection-day of the Son? ”

“ But, alas, the Sunday worshipper might be quite content with that, for then, instead of offering his poor soul humbly before the dear God, he would be constantly chopping wood, counting the felled trunks, the sticks, the piles of brushwood, which on a week-day would not otherwise trouble him. Prayer would stream from the heart like a fountain of blood, if one's thoughts did not wander, but since they cannot always be controlled, we must guard the church like a fortress, so that the Sabbath may not leave it nor the work-day enter. ”

“ They who know their own slothfulness of spirit, and are in earnest in seeking after a deeper, fuller Christian life, will thankfully own, “the week were dark but for its light.” I distrust the spirituality which professes that all life is a sabbath, and therefore holds itself absolved from special seasons of worship. If the stream of devout communion is to flow through all our days, there must be frequent reservoirs along the road, or it will be lost in the sand, like the rivers of higher Asia. It is a poor thing to say, keep the day as a day of worship because it is a commandment. ”

“ One must not preach against intemperance, against slavery, against war, on Sunday. It is not "evangelical;" not "preaching the gospel." Yet it is thought proper to preach on total depravity, on eternal damnation; to show that God will damn forever the majority of mankind; that the apostle Peter was a Unitarian. The Sunday is not the time, [Pg 99] the pulpit not the place, preaching not the instrument, wherewith to oppose the monstrous sins of our day, and secure education, temperance, peace, freedom, for mankind. It is not evangelical, not Christian, to do that of a Sunday! ”

“ I can go with you to church on a Christmas morning, to celebrate the birth of my Saviour—on a Good Friday, to commemorate his death—and on an Easter Sunday, to rejoice in his resurrection. And though some may censure this as a dereliction of principle, I do not so view it. It gives me greater pleasure to unite with my fellow-Christians, than to live in a state of alienation from them: and while I would condemn all superstitious attachment to these days, I would reprobate the spirit which treats them with contempt. ”

“ Sunday after Sunday, the Christian pulpit complains that the great masses of the people keep away from their communion tables and do not even darken their doors.
Does not the fault really lie in the folly—I may almost say sin,—of demanding of men to believe so many things that neither reason nor enlightened moral sense can accept, and making of these dogmas five-barred gates through which alone there is any admission to heaven? ”

“ Should a communion be the business of an idle morning, perhaps gained from a customary slumber or the vain cares of dress? Ah! the thoughts of it should long previously occupy and affect us; time should even be necessary to strengthen us, if I may venture to say so, against our feelings of respect, and against the idea of his majesty: the days previous to this sacred festival should be days of retirement, of silence, of prayer, and of mortification: every day which brings us nearer to that blessed term, should witness the increase of our anxieties, our fears, our joy. ”

“ If each one can say to-day, the last of the Easter-time, I have obeyed the commands of the church and made my Easter duty, then each soul is free from mortal sin and knows the judgment of our Lord will be in his favor. Let any such soul die at any moment now and the mercy of God is surely his, for he is now in the friendship of God, his soul is restored to its heavenly state, and every soul in this state is so acceptable to our Lord that he can not condemn it, but must welcome it to the society of those who are saved for ever. ”

“ What is meant by that is that those Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are going to High Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from their religion ”

“ But deem not that, because the day of Christian worship is chosen for the great yearly assembly of a Christian commonwealth, the more directly sacred duties of the day are forgotten. Before we, in our luxurious island, have lifted ourselves from our beds, the men of the mountains, Catholics and Protestants alike, have already paid the morning’s worship in God’s temple. They have heard the Mass of the priest or they have listened to the sermon of the pastor, before some of us have awakened to the fact that the morn of the holy day has come. ”

“ The influence of Catholicism is to be seen in the elaborate forms and ceremonies of worship and the cross and candle sticks on the altar. Those afflicted with a guilty conscience remain on their knees during the entire Sunday service, crossing themselves repeatedly. ”

“ This, however, cannot be until the people are better organized in a temporal point of view, that all their temporal actions may point to the building up of the kingdom of God, when no man will say that ought he possesses is his own, but hold it only for the interest and good of the whole community of the Saints. ”

“ We are not told, again—and I beg you all to mark this well—that this great multitude consists merely of those who, according to the popular notion, have “gone to heaven,” as it is called, simply because they have not gone to hell. Not so, not so! The great multitude whom we commemorate on All Saints’ Day, are saints. They are the holy ones, the heroes and heroines of mankind, the elect, the aristocracy of grace. These are they who have kept themselves unspotted from the world. ”

“ Oh, if every boy and girl, every man and woman, who has been brought into outward and inward communion with Christ, would only realize that he or she is to go onward, never ceasing to pray and strive against evil; ever pressing on for more and more of the Holy Spirit; striving each day to be more and more like Christ,—then would be realized what is meant by the words of the wise king: "The path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
"Don't you think it would be nice to have a Harvest Home Festival for the Sunday-school on Thanksgiving?" ”

“ Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.”
This is what they are like; and what we, I fear, too many of us, are not like. But in proportion as we grow like them, by the grace of God, just so far shall we enter into the communion of saints, and understand the bliss of that everlasting All Saints’ Day which St John saw in heaven. ”

“ During that period of sixteen years the Saints had been constantly fleeing from mobs and from the tyranny of oppressors. They were in a state of constant uncertainty and could find comfort and consolation only in the divine assurance that they were a peculiar people, a chosen people, destined to open a new and marvelous dispensation among the children of men. ”

“ These things are said for the instruction of those who are eager and anxious on Sundays and holydays of obligation to heap devotion upon devotion and who make a crime of everything that is not an exterior act of [78] piety. They apply themselves, it seems, to the material observance of the sabbath, following the superstitious custom of the Pharisees, instead of peacefully sanctifying the Lord’s day with that sweet and holy liberty of spirit which our divine Saviour teaches in the Gospel. Too much dissipation and over long prayers are two extremes each of which it is equally necessary to avoid. ”