Untitled article by Roswell F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, September 24, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 15

ASHES FOR FOOD.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

Who could live on such diet? It is true that experience has shown that people can live a considerable length of time with some ashes or saleratus mixed with their food; but who could live on ashes alone? It is evident that those who undertake it must die.

But this is the diet of those who openly violate and oppose the holy law of God; and it either induces insanity or else insanity is the cause of their choosing such a diet. It is probably like the unnatural and insane appetite for opium and tobacco: the eating creates the appetite, and the appetite continues the eating.

“He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” Isa xliv, 20.

This was spoken of those who, rejecting the true God, worshiped wooden gods of their own making; and it is equally true of those who reject the Creator’s chosen memorial, and in its stead fall down to the Sunday god—a god that “came newly up,” with the great apostasy of the present dispensation. The insanity of those idolators was manifest from the fact that they would make a fire to cook their food and warm themselves by, from a part of the same tree of which they made a god, perhaps out of some knotty part that is not so easily split into fire-wood. “He falleth down unto it, and worshipeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my God. They have not known nor understood; for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand. And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? Shall I fall down

to the stock of a tree? He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?”.

It is just so in these days. Those who come out in open hostility and take the field against the law of God seem incapable of appreciating the force of an argument. They have a lie in their right hand, but they cannot discover it. If they would try their arguments against the Sabbath, by testing their force upon the other commandments of the decalogue, they might discover their fallacy, and learn that they were deceiving themselves. Not only does God withdraw his Holy Spirit from them, but seemingly deprives them of common sense. One of the latest illustrations of this is the case of Eld. T. M. Preble. He holds that the first-day of the week is the Christian Sabbath. And while he holds that the Seventh-day Sabbath cannot be universally observed, on account of the rotundity and revolution of the earth, so that time is lost or gained in traveling around the world east or west, he has recently made an attempt to prove that this objection does not lie at all against the first-day Sabbath—that that never gets out of place in traveling east or west! He has once seen the light on the Sabbath of the Lord and embraced it; but has since turned away from the “holy commandment;” and the consequence is, he is left to a blindness and want of common sense that is truly marvelous. And he is not an exception to a general rule. All that take the field against the law of God are equally incapable of discovering that they have a lie in their right hand.

And now dear friend, whoever you are, that are searching for arguments to excuse yourself from keeping the Sabbath of the Lord, let me give you an infallible rule by which to test their soundness. When you light upon an argument which you think will answer your purpose, do not at once proclaim it, but try its force by applying it to some other commandment of the ten, such as Honor thy father and mother, Thou shalt not steal, &c., and its fallacy will be so obvious that you will be ashamed of it—you will wish to conceal, rather than reveal it. And when you have disposed of all your arguments and excuses in this way, obey the fourth commandment as it is written in God’s word. In so doing you will find that there is something better for you to feed on than ashes; and a deceived heart will no more prevent you from knowing your right hand from your left, or discerning between truth and falsehood.

But those who reject God’s law will still feed on ashes, and will not have common sense enough to discern that they hold a lie in their right hand.

R. F. COTTRELL.