Report from Bro. Cottrell.
By R. F. Cottrell
THERE is an out-of-the-way place on a high hill some three miles south-east of East Otto Corners, Cattaraugus Co., N. Y., where, in a small school-house, I am trying to instruct the people in Bible truth. Four have embraced the Sabbath since I commenced meetings here, and there is an interest with a few others to hear. And though it is a place away from railroads and thoroughfares, yet it is a place of considerable religious interest. Ministers of different denominations take pains to climb this hill and labor for the people. One of them, however, recently preached from the text—“I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.” He feared that the people were returning to the bondage of observing days, though none are observing more than he has taught them to observe, namely, fifty-two in a year. (Men ought to observe one day in seven, but some are very particular that that one day in seven should always come on the first day of the week. And they are dissatisfied with, and condemn, those who use this acknowledged liberty, by choosing that day which God has appointed and specified in the commandment.) His favorite text-book which he uses in preaching is a New Testament with notes. Under his text is found the following note: “Days, and months, and times, and years; such as were required in the ceremonial law. This has no reference to the weekly Sabbath, which was established at creation, and set apart by God to be observed by men in all ages, and was required in the moral law; but to the feasts, new moons, and sabbaths, required in the ceremonial law, which was never binding except on the Jews and those who embraced their religion, and when Paul wrote, had for many years been done away.”
Did the minister mean to contradict this note, which lay before him as he spoke, and teach that the weekly Sabbath was no more? If he labors to do away the Sabbath of the moral law, then he had some reason to fear that he had labored in vain; and certainly his labor ought to be in vain. But last first-day we had a fresh minister, and an excellent discourse from the text—“By their fruits ye shall know them.” I could see but one deficiency in the subject matter of the discourse, and that was in not pointing out the rule by which to test the fruits—the law of God. In the evening, I preached a supplement to his discourse, to supply this deficiency, from the verse following his text,—“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven.” He did not hold that all in the church, or that professed religion, were true Christians. On the contrary, he observed that if the Master should come into this temple with a scourge of small cords, and should apply it to the backs of the buyers and sellers, there would be a great scattering and thinning of the ranks. But before the close of the discourse, he seemed to go out of the way to express the opinion that the church, and even the world, were growing better, and that there were better Christians in the world at the present time, than ever before. To this he made no exceptions in favor of apostles or martyrs. What use does he make of his eyes and his ears? Where has he been? And what use does he make of the predictions of prophets, apostles, and the Son of God, concerning the apostasies, perils, and abounding iniquities, of the last days, compared by our Saviour to the days that were before the flood, when the earth was filled with violence, as it now is? Truly the wine of Babylon is an intoxicating cup. It makes the strong man weak, and the wise man mad.