The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-07-28
SUNDAY CLOSING

nOtlceu last week the passage Oh the
ordinance dealing with this subject.
In our opinion the ordinance will
engender bitterness and antagonism
among our people and will result,
not only IN being barren of any good
results, but will work positive harm.
The day when any set of men could
constitute themselves the conscience
keepers of their neighbors was
thought to have passed away long
ago. While it prevailed in Europe
many people were killed under the
sanction of the church because their
opinions did not coincide with the
accepted doctrines of the dominant
religion.
The wars of the reign of Louis the
XIV. of France, which covered
period of nearly sixty years, was to
coerce mems religious beliefs.
The st. Bartholomew Massacre was
the expression of this feeling of re-
ligious intolerance.
America was indebted to this in
tolerance for her splendid Huguenot
pioneers, for the great Scotch-Irish
settlements in the Carolinas, for the
Quaker settlements of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth Rock. They were driven
hither in order that they could en-
joy liberty of conscience, even if they
had to face an unbroken wilderness
and hostile savages.
Now let US examine little into the
religious authority for this move
ment; because, whether the churches
in Barlow be responsible for it or not,
it is going to be attributed to them,
and they are going to be the princi-
pal sufferers from this ordinance.
In the ten commandments that
were given for the government of the
Jews there was one which was as
follows:
Remember the Sabbath day, to
keep IL Holy. iSx days shalt thou
AdDOl anu w lily WOlhs Out OA
the seventh day is the Sabbath of the
Lord thy God; IN it thou shalt not
do any work, thou, nor thy cattle, nor
thy stranger that is within thy gates;
For in six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all
that in them is, and rested on the
seventh day; wherefore the Lord
blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed
IT,"
Genesis 2-3 says: "And God bless
ed the seventh day, and sanctified it:
because that in it He had rested from
all His work which God created and
made"
Here we find the origin of the Sab
bath, and we find that it was hallowed
because God rested on that day.
This commandment was one of ten
given to the Jews for their govern
ment. They were fixed and absolute
in their character, and were not
amenable to construction by any
supreme court to write reasonable"
or unreasonable" into them, butwho-
ever broke the least of them had
in the eyes of the law broken all of
them.
The Jews made pretense of obey
ing this law, but to the time of Christ,
1t is not believed one human being
had ever kept it, and even His decip-
les broke it in His presence: He
even defended them against their ac-
cusers for so doing, saying that the
Sabbath was made for man, not man
for the Sabbath
Perhaps a great majority of Christ
ians believe that the Mosaic law was
repealed when Christ set up his King
dom. The great underlying spirit of
truth and justice embodied in it were
appropriated by Christ and permeated
every part of the doctrine that has
governed the civilized world since He
came. He. however, struck from the
limbs of men the shackles that chain
ed them to the performance of empty
ceremonials, whose object was to ap-
pease an angry God, and set up for
His followers a standard of excellence
measured by the love of, and service
to their fellow-men Both He and His
Apostles were singularly silent on the
subject of observing the seventh day
of the week, or the first day, either
for that matter.
Our city council will, therefore,
have to fall back for their authority
to the ten commandments, and we
are interested in knowing how far
they propose enforcing them. If they
are now in force as the Divine Law,
every man, woman and child in Bar
tow is lost. Every woman who cooks,
or causes a servant to do so, every
preacher who bitches up his horse to
drive to church, every livery stable
man who allows a horse to be used,
every man who runs an automobile,
every man who does anything, what
soeyer not necessary to preserve life,