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    October 10, 1889

    “National Reform Bigotry” American Sentinel 4, 36.

    E. J. Waggoner

    The Christian Statesman of August 8, contains a characteristic report from Secretary Gault. He has been circulating through Iowa recently, and in the course of a report of some meetings held at Malvern, we find the following paragraph:—AMS October 10, 1889, page 285.1

    “The preceding Sabbath I preached twice at Afton, county seat of Union County, in the evening, on the Sabbath-Rest question, at a union service of the Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Evangelical churches. Here there was but one lady, a Seventh-day Adventist, who opposed the petition when it was put to vote of the congregation. She was landlady in the hotel where I lodged, and all day Sabbath her sewing machine hummed with a vim that was significant and unmistakable.”AMS October 10, 1889, page 285.2

    We mean nothing personal when we say that that is the utterance of a narrow-minded bigot. We simply state a fact. A bigot is one who thinks there is no one in the world of any consequence but himself, that the world was made for him, and that the sun shines principally for his benefit. The only possible inference that can be drawn from Mr. Gault’s remark is that that lady committed an unpardonable act in doing her ordinary work on Sunday while he was in the hotel. The bigotry of the thing may be shown if we turn it around. Suppose that lady, or any individual who conscientiously observes the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, should chance to stop at a hotel kept by one who observes Sunday, would Mr. Gault think that person ought to cease his ordinary work on that day?AMS October 10, 1889, page 285.3

    If Mr. Gault were a hotel keeper, and by chance a seventh-day observer should stop over the Sabbath with him, would he have everything stopped in his own house? Of course he would not. It is only when he is around that things must stop. It is his presence that must be regarded. If anyone believes differently from him, that individual has no right to exist, at least to carry out or act upon his belief This principle is not peculiar td Mr. Gault, although it seems to be very fully developed in him, from what we have seen of his writings. But it is the principle of National Reform to act as though “we are the people, and the government must shape its action to conform to our opinions and to please us. It does not make any difference if other people are discommoded. What does that matter? They have no business to believe differently from what we do.” This is National Reform in a nutshell. It must, from the very nature of the case, make bigots of those who devote themselves to it, no matter how liberal minded they might be by nature.AMS October 10, 1889, page 285.4

    E. J. W.

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