The Sabbath Question in Raratonga.
The following is from the Boston Sunday Journal of June 17: If it were not for the war in South Africa the strange rebellion in Raratonga would be attracting attention. Raratonga is a Pacific island under the British flag, whose population has been evangelized by the London Missionary Society. Most voyagers are acquainted with the disturbing effects of the 180th degree of longitude, and the first missionaries to Raratonga forgot they had passed that important imaginary line. The consequence was that the first Sunday they announced in Raratonga was in reality a Saturday, and the mistake was perpetuated until quite recently, when the Legislature corrected the blunder and put the calendar right. Then came the trouble. The evangelized natives, furiously Sabbatarian, refused to recognize the change. They deserted the churches of the London Missionary Society and kept the old Sunday (now Saturday) religiously in their homes. In the words of a special correspondent of the New Zealand Herald, who has visited the scene, “the greatest excitement is being experienced over the change. All the business houses and government offices have adopted it, but large numbers of the superstitious natives are in rebellion.” The truth is that these islanders were keeping the very day specified in the divine commandment, which says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Moreover, a goodly number of them were keeping it not as Sunday, the first day of the week, but keeping it intelligently for what it is—the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord. This explains why some at least are unwilling to surrender this day at the behest of the civil authorities. But the scornful tone of the foregoing quotation shows how utterly impossible it is for many to appreciate411what it is to have a genuinely conscientious conviction regarding the keeping of any particular day. It illustrates well the truth of the Scripture which says, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”