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A DIALOGUE

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 9, 1869

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 33, No. 11.

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A DIALOGUE

By R. F. Cottrell

Between a First-day-keeper, and a Seventh-day-keeper,

First-day-keeper. You who keep Saturday for the Sabbath are great sticklers for a particular day.
Seventh-day-keeper. Yes; the commandment says, The seventh day is the Sabbath, and from this we think it a logical conclusion that the Sabbath is the seventh day.
F. But here is a difficulty. The world is round; and the day begins at different times in different places. The sun enlightens only one half of the world at one time, and this enlightened half is gradually and constantly changing, so that at any moment it is all times of day in different parts of the world.
S. I presume that God who made the world, made man to live upon it, and made the Sabbath for man, knew this as well as you, some time before you discovered it. What is your object in these remarks? Do you object to the Sabbatic institution, and hold that the Lord did wrong in commanding man to keep a Sabbath on such a rolling world as this?
F. No; it is right we should have a Sabbath; but as the day is constantly revolving, continually sliding, as it were, from under our feet, it is impossible for all to keep the same time, and consequently it was only intended that we should keep one seventh part of the time. Hence any one day of rest after six of labor is the Sabbath. All days are alike. Any day of the seven, kept as a day of rest and worship, is acceptable to God, and answers the letter and spirit of the Sabbath law.
S. God blessed and sanctified (set apart) a particular day, or he did not. The record says he blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Now he either blessed and sanctified a particular day of the seven, or he blessed and sanctified equally each day of the seven.
F. His blessing is upon any day of the seven which we choose to keep holy to him.
S. But here is a slight difficulty. He blessed and sanctified the day, because that in it he had rested. Did he rest equally on each day of the seven? or did he labor six days of the seven in making the world, and rest only on the seventh? Did he rest on a particular day of the seven, or not?
F. We know that the Jewish Sabbath was kept on Saturday; but the Christian Sabbath answers the commandment just as well, and is just as acceptable to God.
S. Why talk about a Jewish and a Christian Sabbath? Are these two distinct Sabbaths? or are they one and the same? You make the Sabbath law require only the keeping of one day in seven; consequently this is all it requires of the Jews as well as of us Christians. So whatever day we keep, it is the same Sabbath the Jews were required to keep. Then there are not two Sabbaths, one of them Jewish and the other Christian. These two are one.
F. That is very true. And the Bible says nothing about a Jewish and a Christian Sabbath. It is one Sabbath throughout the Bible; and any day of rest after six days of labor is that one Sabbath. The Jews might have changed the day, and it would have beenthe same Sabbath still. Another day would have answered the commandment just as well.
S. There was one difficulty in the way of their changing the day. God, who gave them the Sabbath, gave them also a civil, national law which required that the man who should do his own work, of whatever kind, on that day, should be put to death. Would that law have taken a man's life for laboring on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth day of the week? If not, neither of these days was the Sabbath. The Sabbath law then was just what it is now; and if it applies equally to any and every day of the week, as you assert, then the civil law referred to, enforced, would have put a man to death for working on any one day of the seven; for according to your position all days are alike—all equally blessed and sanctified—all equally the holy Sabbath or rest day. These considerations force the conclusion that the Sabbath law bound the Jews to a definite day; and if it bound them to a definite day, is it not possible at least that the Sabbatic law, unaltered as it is, binds us to a definite day?
God's government on earth now is not connected with any particular nation. Christ's kingdom is not of this world, but of the future. Consequently no civil penalty is required to be executed in the church against the Sabbath-breaker, or the violator of any other precept of the moral law. But you believe that the law of God has a penalty, and that it will be executed in the future against every one that shall, at the close of his probation, be found in sin. You admit the existence of the Sabbath law. Then you believe that, at the execution of the Judgment, the unpardoned Sabbath-breaker will suffer the penalty of the divine law. Now is it not possible that the same law, that required the observance of a definite day of the Jews, and was enforced on pain of death, requires the observance of the same definite day of you?
F. It must be admitted that the Jews were bound to one definite day; and they could keep it there in that one locality; but we cannot keep the same day here.
S. The day moves there, as well as here. The Sabbath glides right along over Palestine without stopping a moment for any one to keep it. It comes later to the western boundary of that land than to the eastern. Consequently if the same definite day could be kept throughout Palestine, by the same rule it could be kept by the Jews at Rome; and so it was. Now if you really want to keep the same seventh day that the Jews kept in that country, just get your eye on the day over there, and when it gets along here keep it. And having kept one Sabbath fresh from the holy land, you need have no trouble about where the next is coming from; it will come again in just seven days as true as clock-work. But if you object that you cannot see the day in that far-off land, and cannot go there to get it (though many would circumnavigate the globe both ways to find an objection against it), I will tell you that there are a multitude of Jews in this country that have brought the Sabbath with them all the way from that land to this. Traveling with the sun they have not lost the day. And besides this, a host of Christians have come in company with them, at least as far as from Rome, bringing with them the first day of the same original week, which they call the Christian Sabbath. Their testimonies as to the numbering of the days of the week agree. In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word and every day of the week is established.
F. Well, I believe we ought to keep the Christian Sabbath, the day of Christ's resurrection.
S. Do you then abandon your one-day-in-seven theory, and take the ground of an actual change of the Sabbath from the definite seventh day to the definite first? If so, I shall have to ask you for your Bible proof, the want of which gave birth to the indefinite-day theory.
F. It is according to the law of the land to keep Sunday; and we are bound to obey our rulers. All ought to be agreed in the day; and I think no one has a right to disturb the peace and order of community by introducing the observance of another day.
S. You finally take ground then upon a definite day. The seventh day and the first are two distinct days after all; and they are rivals too, as their claims conflict with each other. Your first position gave us full liberty to keep any day of the seven we might choose. Accordingly we choose to keep the seventh, the day named in the commandment, which is as truly one seventh part of the week as any other day. Holding your first position, you cannot find fault with us for this. But from what you now say, it would seem that, although we may bend and twist and stretch the Divine law to suit our taste or convenience, yet it will not do thus to trifle with human laws. When the State demands of us a certain day, we must not offer another in its stead.
F. Well I would like to have the subject discussed; and I will bring you a minister that will defend the Christian Sabbath.
S. What is the Christian Sabbath? Is it not any one day of the seven? Then we are keeping it; for the seventh day is as truly one seventh part of the week as any other. So you have nothing to defend, till you settle upon a definite day; and when you do this, you abandon the fundamental argument by which you defend it. And if you will read the history of the discussions on the claims of the Sabbath and the Sunday, you will find that they ever have been considered two distinct days. And as there is confessedly “no scriptural direction for the change,” your only consistent position is that of the Roman Catholic church, namely, that the church has substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day; and if you are as frank to own the truth as they, you will freely acknowledge, with them, that it is “a change for which there is no scriptural authority.”
R. F. COTTRELL.