Untitled article by A. H. L.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 12, 1867

SABBATH REFORM—WE MUST GO DEEPER.

By A. H. L.

The present movement in favor of Sunday has not yet reached below the moral and civil elements of the question. It is, mainly, the present interests of the case, and the outward relations of man to man, which are discussed. Sabbath Reform, as related to God, first and most directly, finds no place in the “Excise Law” movement. This more superficial agitation will in time provoke deeper thought and more earnest discussion. The Godward side of the question will gradually come out, even through this agency. Meanwhile, our work is to press the higher view. We are to urge forward, and plead, for Sabbath Reform, not because one man may disturb another man on Sunday, but because the Church, as well as the world, is constantly disturbing and dishonoring God, in Sabbath-breaking. If the leaders in the non-Sabbath-keeping churches did not know the truth, it were not time to condemn them thus. Nor is it now time to condemn all. But so many as know the truth, and still continue to “break the commandment,” and to “teach men so,” are to be assured that they are among those who shall be “called least in the kingdom of Heaven,” if not those who shall be “cast out,” because they have led the people astray. We must realize that our mission is incomparable great and solemn. It was the work of the first Reformation to vindicate man’s right to personal and direct salvation through Christ. It is the work of Sabbath reformers to vindicate the supremacy of God’s law, and his right to receive all praise, and honor, and majesty.

“Revolutions never go backward,” either as regards the people, or the truth, or God, who is the author of the one, and the father of the other. Each reform, as it brings us nearer to God, must necessarily teach us more perfectly what he requires—what is due him. True, it teaches also to obey “in spirit and in truth,” and not in the mere rigidity of the letter. But it also teaches us that the spirit of truth, when clothed in words by its author, is always clothed rightly; and hence, that when we seek to change the “letter,” we repress or destroy the “spirit.”

Thus are we to accept our work as a people. We are to plead for the Sabbath-day, because with it, and with it alone, can the true idea of the Sabbath be preserved. We must plead for it because it is God’s Sabbath, not ours, nor the Jew’s. We are to discriminate between “Sunday desecration” and Sabbath-breaking, and know that our work is to plead, in word and in deed, against all Sabbath-breaking. To this we must come. We are too timid, half-hearted, hesitating. We need no mere feeling, impelling us to momentary rashness or uncharitableness. But we must learn that great missions call for great faith, great earnestness, and great deeds—deeds made great because done in favor of truths so great, far-reaching, and important.

If there be a man among those who read these lines, who yet thinks that this is idle talk, who is so bound to other things that he cannot spring to this our work, so deaf that he cannot hear God’s voice calling us, so blind that he cannot see the “signs” around us, him I pity, him I warn. He ought to seek his God in repentance before he sleeps. I hope there is no one. I pray there may not be. All must be alive. All must work. Officers and laymen, young and old, brethren and sisters. It is time we became a “proselyting people,” proselyting not to ourselves simply, but to truth. I plead for no narrow sectarian effort to gain membership. That is beneath us, unworthy of us. But a noble effort to bring men to the truth is eminently like Christ—in the noblest work of a Christian heart. Brethren, let us go deeper into this work, and by-and-by we shall be called to “come up higher.”

A. H. L.—in Sabbath Recorder.