SELF-ASSERTING IGNORANCE.
By Editor
THE following paragraph we cut from a Christian Advocate. As a matter of justice we will state that it came across the mountains—California is not responsible for it:— “The writer, with the whole host of these Seventh-day Adventists, seems never to have learned that the word Sabbath was applied in the Scriptures to divers great festivals, as well as to the seventh day, but they take it for granted that whenever and wherever the word occurs it refers to the seventh day, and to that alone. This is one of their many capital errors. To make this particular application of the word to one day only, when in fact it was applied to a number of days, is of course a grievous error.” If that Advocate supposes that Seventh-day Adventists are ignorant of the fact that there were festival or annual sabbaths as well as a weekly Sabbath, then its ignorance is as inexcusable as it is surprising. That they take for granted that wherever the word Sabbath occurs in the Bible it refers to the seventh day alone, is a statement which will amuse those who are not singularly ignorant of the state of the Sabbath controversy. Indeed, all who are acquainted with us, and do not, as this Advocate, affirm whereof they are utterly ignorant, know that we deny that the word, sabbaths, in Col. 2 : 16 refers to the seventh day, or to the weekly Sabbath, but does refer to the festival sabbaths enjoined in the law of Moses. We suppose there must be many readers of this Advocate who are as ignorant of us as is the editor who wrote the article. Yet it seems strange that anybody in the land could be made to believe that statement is true. We would fain believe that the editor is not so grossly ignorant as his writing would imply; but then we should be compelled also to believe that he was stating an untruth willfully, to impose upon his readers, and to cast a slur unjustly upon his neighbors. We are not so uncharitable as to believe that of him, and therefore we give him the benefit of a claim to most unexampled ignorance. Not a very good refuge for the editor of an important denominational journal, but it is the only one left to him. The controversy which is current on the Sabbath question is not concerning yearly or festival sabbaths. In behalf of these we have never urged a word. Now we will ask the Advocate a question: Does the Bible speak of more than one weekly Sabbath? Does it ever call any day of the week the Sabbath beside the seventh day? This question is open to all, in every latitude and longitude, though, in connection with this article, calculated especially for the valley of the Mississippi.