p. 144 | The Sabbath by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 2, 1866

The Sabbath.

By Editor

In connection with the article of Bro. Canright in this number concerning the movement in Maine in behalf of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath, we notice an article from the Wisconsin Puritan on the same subject, copied into the Peninsular Courier of this State. The article thus speaks concerning those who keep, and teach others to keep, the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day of the week:

"The agency of some honest, but, as we believe, misguided friends of Christ is also used by the adversary, in the endeavor to unsettle the convictions of Christians respecting the day of the week which is commonly observed as a day of sacred rest. Documents are published and widely circulated, designed to prove that the seventh day of the week, and not the first, is the Christian Sabbath. The effect of such efforts, so far as they may be successful, will be throwing open the question, to divide and scatter the friends of the Sabbath, and impair public respect and reverence for the day."

The writer then goes on in a nervous style to urge the importance of the Christian Sabbath, and the necessity of all observing it, if we would save our nation from moral destruction and social and civil wreck. He proceeds to exalt in a fervid manner the first day over the seventh, and cry out against the mischief those are doing who are so tenacious for a particular day. We have not room for his arguments, which are of the usual kind, but make a note of the article as an evidence that there is an undercurrent of agitation on this question which is occasionally coming to the surface.

We look for the great appeal to be made in behalf of the first-day Sabbath on the ground of national necessity, and when reason and history and Scripture fail in the support of the institution, the only recourse left, by which to enforce it, is to the strong arm of the law.