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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 27, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 11

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HOW BLIND!

By J. M. A.

The old adage which declares that “there are none so blind as those who will not see,” is most forcibly illustrated in the case of Eld. T. M. Preble, with respect to the Sabbath question. How can his exceeding blindness on this question be accounted for in any other way, than in the fact that he will not see? for the truth, however plain it may be, he seems determined to avoid. The readers of the Review are not ignorant of his optical derangement on this question.
Recently I had occasion to notice through the Review an article in the “Voice of the West,” in which it was claimed that the Russian territory lately purchased by the United States has “two Sabbaths” each week, occasioned by a derangement in the days of the week, in traveling from one hemisphere to another. Eld. P. thought proper to reply.
While he holds that the “Seventh-day Sabbath” was given to the Jews in Palestine and peculiar only to that people and locality, he still insists that it would be “nonsense” to claim any such thing in regard to the “Sabbath;” for says he, the “Sabbath was made for man—all mankind—in every place and confined to no definite locality.” From such premise he immediately draws a conclusion as follows: “And of course the first-day Sabbath does not get out of place [in going around the world] as well as the seventh-day Sabbath, as J. M. A. asserts.” “Logical, isn’t it!” “Seventh-day Sabbath” given to the Jews,—“Sabbath” made for all men,—hence the first-day Sabbath never gets out of place like the seventh-day Sabbath! But he reasons further on this point: He says, “Seventh-day advocates have claimed that God sanctified the definite seventh day of the week in which God rested in Palestine for the Sabbath, and of necessity such a peculiar definite-space-of-time-Sabbath, confined to a certain definite locality as Palestine, gets out of place in different latitudes and longitudes.” This surely sounds quite logical, for if the seventh-day Sabbath is an institution “confined to Palestine,” it would be very likely to “get out of place” in going around the world, or even in coming over to America! But, Eld. P., you assume too much in your premise, therefore your conclusion is not correct.
It is true that Seventh-day Adventists have claimed, and do claim, that “God sanctified the definite seventh day of the week.” This is a Bible truth so definitely stated that a child cannot fail to discern it. But it does not therefore follow that the seventh-day Sabbath would be “confined” to any “definite locality.” Such conclusion and Eld. P.’s assumption that “God rested in Palestine,” might appropriately originate in the same brain.
“But not so,” he says, “with the first-day Sabbath.” And his reason is this: “The word Sabbath signifies rest; not the seventh, or any other day of the week, but rest. Therefore Christ could say: ‘The Sabbath was made for man.’ Mark it. He does not say that the seventh day of the week was made for man. But the Sabbath, as an institution, was made for man—all mankind—in every place. The seventh day of the week was observed for this ‘rest,’ or Sabbath, under the Jewish dispensation; and the first day of the week is now observed as this ‘rest’ or Sabbath in the Christian dispensation. Hence J. M. A. is wide of the truth when he says ‘the first-day Sabbath sometimes gets out of place as well as the seventh-day Sabbath,’ as we travel east or west, or by a variation of latitude [?] or longitude. The true Sabbath or septennary ‘rest’ never ‘gets out of place’ as the definite seventh-day-of-the-week theory does.”
How conclusive! With all his blindness, I presume Eld. P. thinks he sees clearly. He gives us the authority of Christ that the Sabbath “was made for man—all mankind in every place.” Very good so far. And Eld. P. will also admit that the command, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” applies to “all mankind in every place.” But “the seventh day is the Sabbath (or ‘rest’) of the Lord thy God.” The Lord wrought six days, “and rested the seventh day,” and therefore “blessed the Sabbath day, (or rest day) and hallowed it.” Now if this seventh day on which God rested, and which he blessed and hallowed, was not the seventh day of the week, will Eld. P. be good enough to name the period of which it was the seventh day? If he fail in this, or if he be forced to admit that it was the seventh day of the week, then he must also admit that the command to keep the Sabbath day holy, applies to the seventh day of the week; and all his great cry on this week question, is, to say the least, weak, in a different sense.
But this “rest, or Sabbath,” he says was observed on the “seventh day of the week” under the Jewish dispensation, but in the Christian dispensation on the “first day of the week,” and yet insists that the seventh-day Sabbath “will get out of place in different latitudes and longitudes,” while the first-day Sabbath is entirely free from any such liability! If Eld. P. can reconcile such inconsistencies he will do exceedingly well. Again, if the Sabbath was made for “all mankind,” and “NEVER gets out of place,” as he so emphatically admits, how was it “confined to a certain definite locality as Palestine” when observed as he admits on the seventh day of the week under the Jewish dispensation! If it could be observed then in “different latitudes and longitudes” without suffering derangement, who, but Eld. P., can deny that it may now be observed with the same freedom from the difficulty in question?
Really Eld. P.’s discrimination between the seventh-day Sabbath and first-day Sabbath, is an exhibition of blindness, pitiable to behold, and in fact the whole of his great noise on this question is simply thunder without the lightning.
J. M. A.