CREDULITY-SKEPTICISM by Robert F. Cottrell

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

CREDULITY—SKEPTICISM.

By Robert F. Cottrell

How credulous, how skeptical is man! How ready to believe, and yet how slow! even to believe without a mite of proof, and disbelieve against all proof divine! In spite of reason, spite of common sense, to swallow lies and still reject the truth!

God rested on the seventh day from the work of creation. It is easy enough to believe that he rested on one day in seven; but how difficult to believe that he rested on any particular day.

The day on which He rested he called his Sabbath, or rest-day. How perfectly reasonable to believe that that rest-day can be changed to some other day of the week, some day on which he did not rest; but how absurd, how utterly impossible that it should forever be confined to the definite seventh day. Who ever heard of such a thing as that the time to commemorate any event should be confined to the day on which it occurred!

After God had rested on the seventh day, he blessed the day on which he had rested. How easy to lift that blessing and place it on another day; but how difficult to believe that it still rests only on the same seventh day on which it was originally placed.

God sanctified, set apart, or appointed the seventh day, reserving it from secular employment, because that in it he had rested. How very natural and easy to believe that he did not sanctify or appoint any one day, but only a seventh part of them all, and left man to sanctify or appoint any day he pleases. How wholesome and convenient too for man to make his own laws, and appoint his own times, so that they can be varied to suit his own character and convenience! How unreasonable that God should reserve to himself each successive seventh day for all time to come. How narrow such a scheme!

Apostolic teaching represents believers as being buried by baptism in the likeness of Christ's death, and that by being raised up from the liquid grave they show their faith in the resurrection of Christ by the power of God. Col. ii, 12. Rom. vi, 4, 5. How difficult to see how baptism can memorialize the resurrection of Christ; but how perfectly adapted to this purpose it is to rest on that day of bustle and activity on which Jesus joined two of the disciples in a pretty long walk down to Emmaus, and met with them again, and the remainder of the eleven at Jerusalem the same day at evening. Of course the resurrection cannot be changed to another day.

How evident that the true first-day has been preserved to the present time; but how absurd to suppose that the seventh day has been preserved. How almost certain it is that that day has been lost!

How utterly impossible for the seventh day to be observed

all over the round and rolling earth; but how easy to keep the first day in any latitude or longitude.

How very natural and easy to believe that the law of the Most High is changeable; how hard to believe that “all his commandments are sure,” that “they stand fast for ever and ever.”

How hard to believe that the antichristian power of Dan. vii, who should think to change God's times and laws, has made the current change in the law of God; but how perfectly easy and natural to believe that Christ has done this work of Antichrist.

How perfectly easy to believe that the warning message God has prepared for the last generation, Rev. xiv, 2–12, concerning the keeping of his commandments, is entirely unnecessary, since no change on the part of the people is demanded; but how difficult to entertain the thought that the people were wrong in their practice.

How credulous, how skeptical is man! How ready to believe, and yet how slow! E'en to believe without a shade of proof, And disbelieve against all proof divine! In spite of reason, spite of common sense, To swallow lies and still reject the truth! How worthy of all praise is such an one! How just his claim to immortality!

R. F. COTFRELL.

Sabbath Recorder, Please copy.