The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-06-19
THE SABBATH GODS DAY.
Rev. DR.. IaSS' Views on Sabbath
Observance.

at Tybee and the Sunday Thunder
/ bolt Visitor Violate the Holy Day
and Steal From God What Belongs
to Him Sunday Mails Unnecessary
/ and Wrong-The Retribution Of the
! Almighty Ia Being Visited Upon the
Corporations Who Have Violated
| Gods Law.
Rev. L. c. Vass, D. D., of the First
I Presbyterian church, preached an elo-
quent and forcible sermon yesterday on
Sabbath Observance, taking his texts
from Isaiah wi, ?. and lviii., last verses.
Sunday, he said, is a holy day, not a
holiday. God owns it, and not man. God
calls it my holy day" and this pro-
prietorship of the almighty is to be con
sidered in its Observance If God doesn't
own it, why that does away with the
question altogether.
He spoke Of the fact that only two in
situations had come down to us through
the ages unchanged, marriage and the
Sabbath. God rested on the seventh day,
he said, and blessed and sanctifed it, and
called upon and demanded that his
people observe it in the deca-
logue. Christ honored the Sabbath
by saying he came not to destroy but to
uphold the law. Sunday, he said, was an
integral part of moral law and had its
foundation in mans moral constitution.
1t was a fundamental necessity of society
and its origin and design had never been
changed.
If constituted according to the declara-
ton of God the Sabbath is the time for
the consideration of our sinfulness, and a
sense of Gods presence, power and
mercy. 1t lifts men into holy communion
with God, and from these facts is shown
to be necessity
MAN HAS NO RIGHT 10 CHANGE THE LAW.
Man, he said, had no more right to
change the law of the Sabbath estab-
lished in Eden than he had to change the
law of marriage established there The
seventh day was set aside for rest and it
was required to rest deprecated circu-
lation. Investigation had shown that
man could do better work with one days
rest in seven.
Investigation showed also, he said, that
the greater percentage of crimes had
their first origin in the disregard for the
Sabbath day. Sabbath keepers, he said,
rarely commit a murder or perpetrate
any heinous crime. Public sentiment, he
said, needs publication and the
church more zeal and energy in carrying
on a crusade against Sabbath breaking.
Our wishes and desires in regard to the
Sabbath day should be the same as those
of God.
We should do no secular work on the
Sabbath day; all labor should be sus-
pended; we should take no Journeys nor
build any fires. "What, he asked. would
. some people do without their Sunday ex-
cursions and the Sunday rides, or with
out their Steamiup dim ers2 20
OPPOSED TO SUNDAY SODA AND CIGARS.
Everybody should suspend his secular
toll and rest. This is the plain declara-
tion of Gods word, and yet there are
bookkeepers and merchants in this city
who spend Sunday behind their counters
arranging their business. There are men
in this city selling goods, such as soda
water and cigars on the Sabbath, as the
necessities of life. They are nothing but
luxuries, and the real necessities can't be
bought on that day.
God says cease worldly amusement on
the Sabbath. DIR. Vass referred to a trip
he had once made on the Sabbath to be
near the bedside of dying man. He said
no other occasion would Justify such
trip and that travelling ON the cars on the
| Sabbath would be to him damning sin,
as it should be to all true Christians.
There was no danger, he thought, in the
observance of the Sabbath becoming too
strict. 1t would be better, he said, if
some cavilers knew more history and did
not pervert what they did know No
! such thing as blue law, he said, had
! ever existed, and while there were some
severe eXactions in the old laws of Con-
necticut, the laws in regard to the Sab
bath come from the prosecutors of the
puritans, and so could not be called puri-
tanicaL If the old law requiring people
oh
! was it on the statute books of so anti
/ puritanical state as South Carolina2
/ and why had it been on the statute books
! of Georgia.
| WHY THE DAY IS NOT STRICTLY OBSERVED
The ruling motive for the lack of senti-
| ment with regard to Sabbath observance
is love of pleasure and self. It is not
! true that man can worship God better
! in the country or at the seaside than he
4 can in the sanctuary. The position of
/ the Sabbath breaker who has been sport
ing in the waves and having glorious
time at Tybee, or who has been partal1ing
| of a fish supper at Thunderbolt, or watch
! ing base ball game, and who thought he
, was elevated and was not disobedient to
Gods law, DR.. Vass thought was extremely
/ ludicrous. He said that the Roman Catho-
/ lie idea that if half the day were spent
properly in attending worship. that the
other half could be spent in recreation,
was not Gods idea, and he preferred
Gods idea, as we have no right to change
his law.
He said the Sabbath opening of the
New Orleans exposition had caused it to
prove great failure, and that this fact,
together with the statement of the secre-
tary of the Columbian exposition that he
had on'file petitions against Sunday open
ing, signed bynearly %, 000, 900 people, were
very significant. Carrying the idea of a
less sLrict observance of the Sabbath out
TO its conclusion, DIR. Vass said that hu-
man cupidity and depravity would soon
grasp everything, and men would soon
find themselves working seven days in
the week and getting no more pay for it.
WHY RAILROADS ARE IN RECEIVERS HANDS.
DIR. Vass advanced new theory as to
railroad wrecks and strikes, and es-
pecially with regard to why most of the
railroads in Georgia, and a great many of
those in the United States, are in the
hands of receivers and were financially
wrecked.
Nearly 100000 men work on the rail
roads of this country, he said, on the Sab
| bath day and are deprived of their moral
and legal right of one days rest in seven
They are deprived, too, from the divine in
huence of the gospel. From this grew a
general deprayity which often resulted
in wrecks of trains, strikes and loss of
life, for he said, when a man breaks the
-,