WHY IS IT? by A. S. HUTCHINS

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1868

WHY IS IT?

By A. S. HUTCHINS

Why is it that some men consider themselves so much more competent to judge of the freedom, peace, and blessedness connected with the service of God, after they have backslidden, and perhaps become bitter opposers of God's holy law, than when they were trying to obey all his holy commandments? Is it because their judgment is so much better, their minds clearer, and their hearts more imbued with his love and Holy Spirit?

David says, “I will walk at liberty; for I seek thy precepts. Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies; for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers; for thy testimonies are my meditation.” Ps. cxix, 45, 98, 99.

“The men that keep thy law with care, And meditate thy word, Grow wiser than their teachers are, And better know the Lord.”

And John testifies: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not grievous.” 1 John v, 2, 3.

Now suppose these servants of God had, through the power of Satan and the craft of those who loved not the law of the Lord, been turned away from the truth to some popular error, or to some tradition gray with age, and borne a testimony directly opposite to the above, would our Antinomian friends have said of them, Now they talk like men of sense? How much better it seems to hear them speak since they have got off the “old yoke of bondage?” In this way they talk of men who give up God's holy Sabbath, and turn to the Pagan and Papal error of Sunday-keeping, at the present time.

Some years since, after listening to a discussion on the Sabbath question, in which the no-Sabbath advocate made bad work while trying to disprove the obligation of Christians to keep the Sabbath; he said to me as we separated, “Well, Bro. H., be good, be clever, do all the good you can. And if you ever do give up the Sabbath, you will then acknowledge that you have got out from under a yoke of bondage.” My reply was, I cannot tell what I may say after backsliding, if I should turn away from the truth; but at present, I most cheerfully testify, from years of experience in keeping the Sabbath, that the yoke sets easy, and it is my conviction that when the yoke sets hard, the fault is not so much in the yoke, as in the neck, or rather the heart.

This circumstance reminded me of the zealous Methodist lady, who, failing to convince her friend that his deceased companion had gone to Heaven, exclaimed, “Ah! you don't believe the dead know anything, nor you won't till you die; then you will find out they have knowledge.” So we will find out that the law is a “yoke of bondage,” when we give up to the carnal heart and reject the law. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God; neither indeed can be.” Rom. viii, 7.

“For in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” Ps. vi, 5.

Again, we ask, Why is it? It seems to me, this question finds its answer in the language of the poet.

“When men oppose that law of love, They lack the wisdom from above; Deluded souls! they're in the dark, Without the truth, without the ark.”

Men may pass on in blindness and delusion here, opposing the commandments of God, but they will learn their sad and awful mistake, if not before, when they meet Him over his broken law, in the great day of Judgment. A. S. HUTCHINS.