Untitled article by Roswell Fenner Cottrell

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

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

WONDERFUL THEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY.

By Roswell Fenner Cottrell

IN reading “Report from Iowa” in No. 12 (which I hope all the readers of the Review will study carefully,) I was led to reflect upon and wonder at the remarkable discoveries of the nineteenth century, in regard to a question which men of strong minds and inventive genius, for a few centuries in the past, have exhausted their skill upon in vain; I mean the Sabbath question.

It seems that after so much time and toil have been wasted to prove that Christians ought to keep the first day of the week, and not the original seventh, Mr. Aker has recently opened the only “door of hope,” to the Sunday cause, by a grand mathematical, astronomical, chronological argument to prove that they ought to keep and are keeping the true, original seventh day. We have heard individuals when run ashore on every other argument they could think of to sustain the first day, as a last resort say, “Well, I believe Sunday is the true seventh day, and we ought to keep it.” But none could give any better reason for it than, that if we call Monday the first day, Sunday will be the seventh. But Mr. Aker has supplied the deficiency of the argument by proving, as he claims, just how old the world is to a day. What a pity it had not been discovered in the apostles’ days, or at least some hundreds of years ago, before so much breath had been wasted and ink needlessly shed to prove that the first day is the Christian Sabbath! But better late than never; and see with what avidity the idea is received and acted upon, and all the ministers of a large and popular denomination are being instructed in the new Akerian tactics, founded upon this wonderful discovery of the nineteenth century!

Of course the geological argument which makes the days of creation long, indefinite periods of time, will have to step aside and give place to this so minutely exact chronological discovery, in the demonstrating of which an error of one day would spoil the whole theory. And what will you and I, my unlearned friends, do? we want to be saved as well as others. The question involves a duty to God—obedience to one of the precepts of the Decalogue. By our Protestant education we have got the idea that we ought not to take our faith in matters of duty to God at second hand. But we cannot tell just how old the world is to a day. And even if we had the learning and ability to test the ground of our faith in Mr. Aker’s theory, it would take us eighteen years to go through with the figures and ascertain the truth, and find out whether we ought to keep Sunday or not! And what day shall we keep during that eighteen years? Do you say, Keep the day the majority keep; for the commandment only requires a seventh part of time? Then Mr. Aker’s eighteen years of toil and perplexity to prove that Sunday is the seventh-part-of-time theory is true, it makes no difference whether Sunday is the seventh, first, second, or any other day of the week. This very forcibly reminds me of “The mountain that labored and brought forth a mouse.”

But if it is really an essential thing that we should believe that Sunday is the original seventh day, then we must take it upon Mr. Aker’s word, trusting that in eighteen years figuring he did not make an error of so much as a single unit! What a pity that the apostles, saints and martyrs should have lived and died without this precious information!?

But has Mr. Aker really aided the Sunday cause? Is it any help to its advocates, after having labored in vain for three hundred years to prove one change of the Sabbath from the Scriptures, now to have the double task imposed on them of proving two changes? While we have the word of God in the fourth commandment requiring the Jews to remember his Rest day to keep it holy; explicitly testifying that the seventh day is that Rest day, and that he blessed and sanctified it, because that on it he had rested when he had made the world in six days; it is difficult to believe, on the infallibility of Mr. Aker’s figures, that this commandment required them to keep the sixth day of that identical, original week to which it expressly refers for the reason of the sanctification of the day. To make this matter clear will be found as difficult a task as it has already proved to be, to prove that the same commandment which required the ancients to keep the seventh day, now required us to keep the first day. So the task of Sunday advocates has been doubled by the extraordinary efforts of Mr. Aker, and they have now two absurdities to defend instead of one.

What pains men will take to sustain the errors they have received through false traditions, rather than to cast them away and accept of the truth as clearly expressed in the word of the Lord! The truth is plain and easily told; but each lie that is uttered wants another one to make it good; and still they come, but yet there is not enough to supply the demand. The fourth commandment of Jehovah is more than a match for all the opposing theories that have been, or can be, framed to make that commandment void, or bend it to the will of men. R. F. COTTRELL.