GOOD TESTIMONY FOR THE SABBATH.
By M. E. CORNELL
PROF. E. O. HAVEN, D. D., LL. D., President of the University of Michigan, in his series of sermons on the Decalogue, entitled “The Pillars of Truth,” affords us some good testimony against the false positions of those who are trying to put down the Bible Sabbath. On the perpetuity of the Sabbath he says: “Now our belief is that the whole of the Decalogue is binding upon all men, and that, in the words of Christ, “The Sabbath was made for MAN;” not for the Hebrews, but for all men. “Now that Christ and his apostles assumed to nullify a commandment in the Decalogue no man of sound judgment could believe. Repeatedly Christ acknowledged, and asserted the divine authority of the Decalogue. To repeal it would have been to set himself in direct contradiction to what he pronounced the law of God. Such a repeal, if conceivable, must have been open, direct, and formal, or it would not be believed. The facts seem to be, that the Sabbath is an institution founded upon man’s nature and God’s will, and therefore absolutely irrepealable.” pp. 88, 91. In regard to whether time has been lost, Prof. H. remarks: “The Jews claim that their Sabbath, our Saturday, is that day. This claim is generally acknowledged by Christians, though there are some who maintain that it can be chronologically demonstrated that, on account of some confusion, in time of disaster, and revolution, and ignorance, the Jews are themselves mistaken, and that the genuine Sabbath is our Sunday, wrongly called “the first day of the week.” “There is no good reason, however, for denying that the Jewish Sabbath is the true seventh day, reckoning from the creation of man, and that the Christian Sunday is the first day of the Hebrew week, or of the genuine week.” p. 89. This testimony from a Methodist D. D., LL. D., President of so celebrated an institution as the Michigan University, will take back the Methodist clergy that have so generally adopted the new-fangled notion that Sunday is the original seventh day. Many have adopted the new idea, because they could see no other way to escape the cross of the Sabbath reform. Prof. Haven, after examining their arguments, and chronology, has deliberately decided against them. They have been trying to pull down one of the pillars of truth, but, one of their own most eminent men declares it a failure. Truly, as the apostle says, “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” “Their rock is not as our Rock, they themselves being judges!”