OBJECTION ANSWERED by E. F. COTTRELL

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 21, 1868

OBJECTION ANSWERED.

By E. F. COTTRELL

ALL that is required of us in this dispensation, is to love God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves.

That is all that ever was required. Nothing more was ever required of any living man, and nothing less. “And this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” We cannot love God with all the heart, and break his commandments. We cannot love our neighbor as ourself, and kill him, steal from him, lie about him, or defraud him of any of his rights. Neither can you love God with all the heart, while you rob him of his “holy day,” the day which he has reserved to himself, for his own especial honor and worship.

We are commanded to hear Christ.

Then let us hear him. “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled”—to the consummation.

Christ is our example.

So he is. Said he, “I have kept my Father's commandments.” “He did no sin”—he transgressed no commandment of his Father. He lived our perfect pattern of obedience to every precept of the law of God, and then died a sacrifice for our transgressions of it.

But Christ broke the Sabbath.

So said his enemies, the Pharisees. But he showed them that what he did on the Sabbath was “lawful” to be done, that is, it was according to the Sabbath law, the fourth commandment; and thus he vindicated his course, and proved them liars. We take position on the side of Christ.

Paul teaches that the law is abolished.

Paul teaches that the law is holy, just, good, and spiritual; and that the faith of the gospel, so far from abolishing the law, establishes it. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” Does Paul contradict himself? Does he teach that holiness, justice, goodness and spirituality have been abolished? If not, then that which he says is abolished is something else besides the moral law, the law which he establishes. Peter forewarns us that some would wrest Paul's words to their own destruction.

Well, John says he was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.

So he does; and that proves that notwithstanding it is claimed that Paul has done so much to blot out the Sabbath, that the Lord had a day which he claimed as his own, as late as when the book of Revelation was written. Who, since that, has had authority to annul or change it?

E. F. COTTRELL.