BROWN'S REPLY TO GILFILLAN by N. V. Hull

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 22, 1869

BROWN'S REPLY TO GILFILLAN.

By N. V. Hull

The Review has recently given its readers several extracts from this valuable work. It seems that a copy of the work has reached the editor of the Independent. Were that paper really worthy of its name, it would give a candid notice of this work, if it said anything respecting it. Yet this influential religious journal gives a notice of the work that is utterly uncandid and misleading. If the Seventh-day people have not the genuine Sabbath, they ask those who have this precious treasure, to produce it, and they will gladly accept it in exchange for their own. The genuine and the counterfeit, when compared, will certainly exhibit a marked difference. But our friends seem disposed to speak disparagingly of the Sabbath which we observe, and to assert that theirs is as good as ours; but they are not at all anxious to compare the two together. We say that ours is genuine, because God instituted it; we also say that theirs is a counterfeit because it never was ordained by divine authority. And therefore they reply that the Sabbath is one day in seven, and no day in particular, a very certain proof that they have no Sabbath which they can recommend to others. Nor do they all stop here. Some even deny all divine authority for Sabbatic observance. The Independent does not fall very far short of this, as the following notice of Mr. Brown's work clearly indicates:

“Thoughts Suggested by the Perusal of Gilfillan and other Authors on the Sabbath, by Rev. Thomas B. Brown, pastor of the Seventh-day Baptist Church at Little Genesee, N. Y., (American Sabbath Tract Society,) is a plea, as its title-page indicates, for a literal observance of the Jewish Sabbath. It rests throughout upon the assumption that ‘days and months and times and years’ are of the essence of Christianity. Its arguments are at least self-consistent, and ought to have weight with those Galatian Christians who have returned to ‘the weak and beggarly elements whereunto they desire to be in bondage.’ To him who fears not freedom for himself or his companions in Christ, and who stands fast in the liberty wherewith Christ makes free, they will seem puerile; appropriate, possibly, to the childhood of the race, but not to this hour of its developed manhood.”

Such a style of reply is utterly unworthy of so respectable a journal as the N. Y. Independent. It meets a fitting exposure in the Sabbath Recorder, as follows:

The above notice, or criticism, is from the Independent, a paper of wide circulation, and one that claims the confidence of the public on account of its fairness and reliability of statement. It specially professes to rise above party prejudice and sectarian bigotry. That the conductors of that journal are well-informed gentlemen, is not denied. How then shall we account for the one-sided and unjust representations contained in the above criticism?

1. The book noticed is not a “plea” for “a literal observance of the Jewish Sabbath.” The question of a “literal” observance is not raised, nor does the book contain an argument in the interest of the “Jewish” Sabbath, but is a “plea” for the observance of Jehovah's holy day, the day upon which he rested, and which he blessed and sanctified; and in opposition to the Sunday festival of human appointment.

2. The argument does not rest on the “assumption” that “days and months and times and years are the essence of Christianity,” but that the seventh day of the week is the day of weekly rest according to the Scriptures. The writer does not advocate the observance of “days and months and times and years” as the “essence of Christianity,” but, on the other hand, believes that Christianity has appointed no sacred season or days. He argues for the Sabbath as a divinely appointed institution in the interest of humanity, and therefore neither “Jewish” nor “Christian.”

3. The writer believes that the Christian system has abolished every Jewish ordinance, and, of its own, has only two: Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Nor has he said one word in the interest of the false doctrine of justification by works of law, whether moral or ceremonial. He believes unqualifiedly in the atonement of Christ as the ground of salvation, which salvation is the gift of God, received by faith.

4. Gospel freedom is that state into which the sinner is brought by the power of God in Christ, wherein he is delivered both from the guilt and dominion of sin, and whereby, also, is given him the disposition of love to God and delight in obeying his most holy law. As the “essence” of the new covenant is the transferring of the law written on tables of stone, by the finger of God, to the heart of the saved by the Spirit of God, the necessary result is the rendering of a loving and free obedience to the divine will, and not a freedom from obedience to that law which is “holy, spiritual, just, and good.”

Will the Independent be just, and retract its erroneous statement, and thereby give freedom to a people brought into bondage by its false representation?—N. V. Hull.