Untitled article by W. H. Littlejohn

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 13, 1867

THE LAW OF GOD AND THE SABBATH WHICH IT ORDAINS.

By W. H. Littlejohn

BY W. H. LITTLEJOHN.

(Continued.)

Enough has already been said to show that the Israelite must have regarded the seventh-day as occupying, immovably, its proper place in the week. Its boundary lines were perfectly distinct, and the time of its beginning and ending was as manifest to all, as though it had come in with the booming of cannon, and gone out with the tolling of bells. It is this which explains a matter of which we have already made mention, i. e., that though Sabbath-breaking was during their history a crying sin of this nation, and one which brought upon them great calamities, it does not appear that they ever ventured upon an attempt at observing for the Sabbath any other day than that kept by their fathers in the wilderness. But to resume.

Thirty days have elapsed since the events already considered. A period too short to admit of a change in the signification of words. The people are encamped at the foot of Sinai, having witnessed scenes of the most terrible grandeur ever presented to the eye of man. The Lord had come down upon the top of the mountain in awful majesty and visible glory, and with his own finger had written the ten words of his law. The fourth expressed his will respecting the sabbatical institution. We have already seen, that the first words used therein, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” suggest the idea that this precept was designed to enjoin a duty already known, rather than to declare a new one. The second clause contained a permission to labor on the six working days. The third is designed to point out so clearly as to leave no possibility of mistake, the day which is meant in the first clause by the term Sabbath day. It reads as follows: “But

the seventh-day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work.” As it is in reference to the understanding which should be had of these words, that the difference of opinions exists, it will not be necessary to quote the balance of the commandment. If it were done, it would furnish proof which would afford us material aid in this controversy. But we shall not need it.

Let the candid reader remember that what we are searching after now, is the import of the commandment when given. Whatever it then was, it still is. For as it is the intention of the Law-giver that we are seeking for, it will be necessary to give his words the same meaning which attached to them when used by him, or we shall fail to accomplish our object. Whatever it would have been allowable for a Hebrew to do in the wilderness, we may do now. Whatever he was restrained from doing by the ten commandments themselves then, would not be legitimate for us now. The history therefore of the forty years during which the Lord walked with this people and talked with them through his servant, must furnish us with the best light attainable on this subject. Certainly there can be no better commentator found on this, as well as on every other subject, than God himself. No one will be rash enough to insist that there can be any conflict between what he has said and what he has done. His deeds and words are perfectly harmonious. Nor does he ever do through inadvertence, that which would prevent the enjoyment of a liberty which he designed to allow, or the discharge of a duty which he had imposed. Accident, indiscretion, inconsistency, are as much unknown to him in the moral as in the physical world. Any opinion, therefore, which you entertain, that is in conflict with either of these principles, must be wrong, and the sooner discarded the better.

Let us apply this touchstone to the doctrine that the Lord intended to give the Hebrews the privilege of selecting for themselves the particular day of the week which they should observe as the Sabbath. Suppose that, with the majority of modern christendom, they had hit upon the first as a suitable one for this purpose. As they were not allowed to bake or seethe any thing on the Sabbath, having been commanded to do this upon the day before, the seventh-day occupying this position would of necessity have been to them a day of preparation. But we have already seen that as no manna at all fell on that day, it could not be gathered in the fields, and consequently, they would have come to the morning of the first day unprovided with food. They discover in abundance upon the ground, that which they so much need. But they recall the positive injunction of Jehovah, that no man should go out of his tent or gather it on the Sabbath-day. The results of this experiment are very unpleasant; since they, their wives, and little ones, are compelled to spend the whole day without so much as tasting food.

Still determined to make a change of some kind, and stung by the mortification of the first failure, they resolve to attribute it to the fact that no manna had fallen on the seventh day. In order to remedy this evil, they select the second. By this means the first becomes the day of preparation. Forgetting that Moses had instructed them that the bread which should fall on the sixth day only was to be preserved till the one following, busy hands are employed in gathering the requisite amount of the precious food of angels, with which Heaven has provided them, for two days. The sun goes down. The bustle and din of the camp has ceased. The people assembled within their tents indulge the illusion that they are observing an acceptable Sabbath unto the Lord, and give themselves to sleep. The morning dawns, and waking from their slumbers they gather round to break their fast by eating that most palatable food whose taste was like unto wafers mixed with honey. How great their disappointment, how complete their loathing of that which they had before craved, when they find their vessels filled with a mass of corruption, alive with filthy worms. Again hunger becomes their portion, or a disregard of their chosen Sabbath their necessity.

That willing blindness, and dogged obstinacy which always characterizes those who have exalted their own wisdom above that of their Maker, still impels them to further effort. The third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth days are tried in turn, but all with the same results. On the first, they had no food at all. On the remaining five, it was such as to create nausea and disgust to that extent that the thought of eating it could not be entertained for a moment.

One more effort, and they have completed the circuit, and reached the point from which they started. Once more they agree to try the seventh day. On the sixth they gather the food of two days. The camp fires burn brightly, and with minds chastened and made wiser by the lessons which experience has taught them, they enter cheerfully upon the labor of cooking that which is to be used on the morrow. This time there is no failure; the dawn reveals to every person in all that vast congregation, the unmistakable proof that God puts a distinction between days. That on the sixth he gave them the food of two days, and worked a miracle in its preservation in order to give this fact such emphasis that none could fail to be impressed with it.

Reader, if your doctrine of one seventh part of time would have been thus condemned when espoused in the earlier ages of revelation, it is equally liable to God’s displeasure now. The lapse of centuries has neither increased nor diminished the fourth commandment. It reads the same, and consequently means the same now, as then. God never changes. He is no respecter of persons. Race never secures any relaxation of the vigorous exactness of the obedience which he demands. If, therefore it has been made to appear that you have hitherto been in error respecting the import of the sabbath law, do not delude yourself into the supposition that there is to be a discrimination made in your favor. Your only hope lies in a complete renunciation of your past mistakes, and an earnest endeavor for the future to make your life conform in all things to the will of God as portrayed in his word.

We turn our attention now to the third and last defense of those who find themselves keeping a day other than the one originally pointed out; i. e., The first day of the week has now by divine appointment supplanted the seventh, and should be observed as the Sabbath.

If the premise contained in the above be sound, the conclusion is undeniably correct. That is, if God has really signified his desire that the ancient Sabbath should be discarded and a new one take its place, it becomes us to conform with alacrity to that which he requires at our hands. But before we can consent to depart from the old land-marks, and trample under foot a precept which was considered of sufficient importance to be placed in the decalogue, and when there, guarded with most jealous care, we should insist upon the clearest and most irrefragable proof that we are not exchanging a plain “thus saith the Lord” for a doubtful inference of man. He has read in vain the fearful story of apostasy and retributive judgment brought to light in the history of the Church, as written thus far, who has not discovered among the most prominent causes of her calamities a disposition to accept for doctrines the traditions of men. Again and again has it become necessary to warn men of the fatal consequences which flow from this overweening propensity of theirs, until mercy, weary of her fruitless labors, and still anxious to reclaim, has been compelled to wear the visage and robes of vengeance, and wield a borrowed rod till she could compel that obedience which she could not win. In the days of our Saviour, notwithstanding the fact that the Jews were in possession of a written Revelation, and that inspired men had been raised up at brief intervals to lead them in the path of knowledge, so completely had they perverted the ways of truth, that the little light which remained served merely to disclose the density of that gloom which had taken possession of their minds. Hardly had the corridors of the great temple ceased to echo the scathing rebuke which he had administered to the blind leaders of the blind who were vainly endeavoring to worship God while “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,” when it was made apparent that the seeds of the old error, having found lodgment in the newly-organized church, gave marked signs of an early and vigorous growth. In vain did the apostle warn against those who should “bring in damnable heresies,” in vain did he declare that the mystery of iniquity had already begun to work. Neither prayers nor threats, hope of reward nor fear of punishment, could avert the impending ruin. One by one the fundamental doctrines of a pure religion were either explained away altogether, or so far modified as to render their recognition almost impossible. The work was begun by an artful use of sophistical arguments. It was then followed up by an appeal to the opinions and practices of those who had been deluded by them. Until finally, the Catholic priesthood, who were first the children and then the defenders of these wicked practices, while using the former as a weapon of offense, and the latter as a shield of defense, found themselves in a situation where they could shape and mould the theology of their time at will. It was while contending with such, that Luther, wearied with the useless labor of presenting solid Scripture arguments to those who invariably met them with a citation from the works of one or more of those whom the Church had canonized as saints, forged those bolts of logic, which, pointed with a sarcasm that was tempered with truth, pierced them through and through. On one occasion when alluding to this practice he made use of the following language:

“When God’s word is by the fathers expounded, construed and glossed, then in my judgment it is even like unto one that straineth milk through a coal-sack, which must needs spoil the milk, and make it black; even so likewise God’s word of itself is sufficiently pure, clean, bright and clear, but through the doctrines, books and writings of the fathers, it is very surely darkened, falsified and spoiled.”

But who were these fathers, whose authority in matters of faith this bold champion of infant Protestantism thus unhesitatingly repudiates? They were the men who had been the companions, and the companions of the companions, and so on, of the apostles. Was the sentiment which was thus nobly uttered, and fully endorsed by the reformers of that age, a truthful one? Or are they the words of a moral trickster? the miserable make-shift of one who, finding himself worsted in argument, sought relief from the mortification of defeat, by dishonestly denying the competency of those witnesses who had been successfully appealed to, to establish the heretical character of his notions? If so, let us confess the errors of the last three hundred years, crave the pardon of the much-abused Pope, and consider ourselves happy, if, through his magnanimity, we are permitted to occupy some humble place in the now faltering columns of his bewildered followers. But if on the contrary they are the language of truth and soberness; if it is indeed true that it is the chief glory of Protestantism that there is found among the first utterances of her young life, “the Bible and the Bible only,” as a rule of faith, let her maturer years, and riper experience, never give the lie to this, her first and noblest rule for determining the character of every doctrine.

(To be continued.)