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Will It Do

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 10, 1866

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 27, No. 19.

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Will It Do.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

A MINISTER whom I met the other day, in speaking about keeping the Sabbath, said, "Well, I think that if we keep one day in seven, one-seventh part of the time, it makes no difference what particular day we keep, whether it is Saturday, Sunday, or any other day."
Said I, "God divided time into periods of seven days each, called weeks, has he not?"
"Yes."
"One-seventh part of that time is a Sabbath?"
"Yes."
"One-seventh part of that time God has blessed, has made holy? 'The Lord blessed the Sabbath-day and hallowed it.'"
"Certainly."
"Then one-seventh part of each week is holy time?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then it is not all holy time?"
"No."
"Now suppose that there were seven men, one keeps Sunday, another Monday, another Tuesday, and so on, the week through, each keeping a different day. The seven together, keep the whole time. Is it then all holy time?"
"Why—no,—I suppose not."
"Then they can not all be keeping holy time, can they?"
"It would seem not, from that."
"How much of the time in each week is holy?"
"One-seventh part of the time only, of course."
"But here are seven men keepingseven-sevenths of the time. Some of them must be keeping unholy time, must they not?"
"Yes, I suppose they are."
"How many, then, can be keeping holy time?"
"Only one."
"Then the rest are wrong, and he is right?"
"It must be so of course."
"Now to make the application: You keep Sunday and I keep Saturday. Together we are keeping two-sevenths of the time; but only one-seventh is holy time. Hence, one of us must be keeping unholy time; one of us must be wrong?"
"Yes, that seems evident."
"Then the one-seventh-part-of-time-theory will not do?"
He admitted that it would not, and then tried to sustain his Sunday Sabbath by another argument. By the above, we see that it is impossible to sustain the theory that any one-seventh part of time will do, as long as they admit that one-seventh of the time is holy.
D. M. CANRIGHT.