The General Assembly [pp. 536-562]

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order to acquit vast numbers of Christians, who are of unchallenged piety, from the charge of Sabbath desecration. And
it is no less obvious that, in its application to new cases and
circumstances, everything depends upon the breadth or narrowness of construction we give to the terms "necessity and
mercy." Is the "necessity" intended absolute, the contrary
of which cannot be in the nature of things, or without the
most palpable and demonstrable injury to the soul or body,
the individual or society, the Church or the world, God or
man? Or is it a relative necessity, a necessity only as it is
judged to be beneficial in the slightest degree, to the health,
the comfort, the welfare of ourselves or others? And of the
things supposed to be, in this sense, necessary to man's highest
good, who is the judge, or how far is it to be left to the judgment and conscience of the individual Christian, or the Church
courts, or each for each, within its due sphere, and what are the
bounds of that sphere? The same, too, of mercy. Mercy requires those services on our part which mitigate or prevent
suffering, or danger to the life and health of man, and often of
beast. But who shall undertake to say how much of the labor
done on the Sabbath without scruple by most Christian people
might be avoided without loss or harm of any sort to man or
beast? Such queries show how much remains to be done before unmistakable lines of clear and sharp definition can be
drawn in reference to the law of the Sabbath, in its applications.
By this, however, we do not mean that there is ordinarily any
difficulty for the candid mind in determining what is, and what
is not, a desecration of the Sabbath in any concrete case. But
there is great difficulty in formulating definitions and phrasing
detailed rules so that they will precisely include all actual cases
of Sabbath desecration and exclude all others. It is commonly
supposed that accurate definition is in fact, as it is logically, the
first step in any science. But with respect to all but the formal
sciences, all the sciences of actual being, accurate definition has
been shown to be the last achievement. Nevertheless, people
know objects from each other, though they cannot specify the
marks of the difference. The most untutored know a man from
an animal, and humanity from brutality, though they cannot ac curately define the differentia, just as all can distinguish differ ent faces and chirographies, although, on the witness-stand, a
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