p. 355 | Sabbath Discussion

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 26, 1868

Sabbath Discussion.

A discussion on the Sabbath is now in progress in the Sabbath Recorder, between N. V. Hull and Wm. Armstrong. The article in the number of May 14, by Eld. Hull, is unusually interesting. We make the following extract:

Seventh Part of Time.

“In criticising my statement that your position made Jehovah ‘the deceiver of the race,’ you say: ‘But suppose God did not design to give the world a special day, but an institution, with a proportionate time for its observance, what harm would there be in commencing a new cycle, and giving another seventh day after six days’ labor, to his elect or separate people?’ But it was the seventh day out of which the ‘institution’ was made. We could have no sabbatical institution without a day to make it out of, and what the Bible says is, that God took the seventh day for this purpose. Now, it is utter folly to say that this seventh day was not a ‘specific’ day. If the seventh day is not a ‘specific’ day, then you are not a specific man. If God did not bless a ‘specific’ day, then your clothes do not cover a ‘specific’ body, nor do you live in a ‘specific’ house. Suppose a man who wanted to leave his wife for a woman, should plead that he was not bound to a ‘specific’ woman in his marriage, but only to a woman, and as this other was equally a woman with the first, therefore he was free to leave the first and take the second—how far would his plea go in law? As untenable is your position that God did not bless a ‘specific’ day, and as fallacious is your reasoning.”

The Day of the Sabbath.

“But how could you abandon the day and keep the Sabbath? How could you have the Sabbath without the day? How could a man part with his coat and keep the cloth, or his hat and keep the material of which it was made, or abandon the material, and still keep his hat or coat? If you abandon God’s Sabbath-day, you have got none, for, neither you, nor all the world, can make a Sabbath more than you can make a universe. God only can make a Sabbath, and he never made but one weekly day of rest. One word more. When God wants us to leave one Sabbath day for another, in all likelihood, he will tell us plainly, and I don’t think we had better move until he gives a command to do so.”

The First Day.

“As yet you have offered no definite reason for keeping the first day of the week. In this, you have doubtless shown skill as a debater; nevertheless, it is a clear confession of the weakness of the first-day cause. The best thing you can say is in these words: ‘I believe the first day of the week is the best, and I might say in the presence of light, the only day for us to keep the Sabbath, is true, but the command only gives us an institution with a proportionate time for its observance.’ But why don’t you quote the passage which says the ‘first day is best.’ How can the first day be best when it was the seventh that was blessed? But when was the blessing transferred from the seventh to the first day? Again, is not the first day a ‘special’ day? And further, if the command does not specify a day, why should you? But you now clearly yield the point as to the first day, and admit that the Bible teaches nothing definitely about it. Then, of course, there is no law for it, and hence it is not the Sabbath day! Of course, then, it is not sinful to work on the first day of the week. And now let me here say, and let the reader note it, that there is not one word in the Bible about keeping the first day of the week. Nor is it once called the Sabbath. Again, you say the work of redemption has nothing to do with the Sabbath question. Then you admit the keeping of the first day of the week is not authorized by redemption. Amen! This, then, settles the question, that the keeping of the first day of the week is not a gospel requirement. Again I say, AMEN! And now, if neither the law nor the gospel requires the keeping of the first day of the week, what have I to do with it?”

The Sabbath Kept by Israel.

To my question why some one did not find out before the 16th century that a new Sabbath day was given the Jews in the wilderness, you make a confused answer, as follows: ‘Simply because no one disputed it till then, and there was no need of affirming it.’ But if it had never been affirmed, how could it be disputed? That it had never been affirmed, you admit. But if it had never been affirmed, how could it be a doctrine? You also admit that the Jews had ‘never noted the change,’ and give this dubious reason for it: ‘If they believed as we do, and as the command teaches, that God had given an institution with a proportionate time for its observance,’ &c. Now, brother, how could you offer any such reason, when it is notorious that the Jews did not so believe? The truth is, this doctrine is an invention of the seventeenth, or at most, the sixteenth century. If you can by credible witness disprove that statement, please do so, or confess you cannot.”