The Sabbath Question Plainly Stated

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 19, 1870

The Sabbath Question Plainly Stated

Bro. Cottrell has sent us an extract from a pamphlet published by W. F. Horner, Disciple, of Buffalo, N. Y., in which the popular fallacy of a particular, indefinite, changed, seventh-part-of-time and no-day-in-particular, Christian Sabbath, is taken to task in the following uncompromising style:—

“In the style of the apostasy, we have Sabbath Schools: that is, ‘seventh-day’ schools upon the ‘first day!’ A precept for keeping the seventh day is deemed good authority for keeping the first! . . . They tell us that the Sabbath is a moral precept, and yet that it has been changed. It is difficult to understand how a moral precept can be changed. I had supposed moral law to be as immutable as the throne of God. But we are just here informed that it is the seventh part of time that is moral, and not the seventh day. This bit of news, about the seventh part of time, the sacred writers forgot to tell us. If the day was changed from the seventh to the first, it did not happen to be a seventh part of time; for they must have broken one Sabbath, or two Sabbaths must certainly have come together—and all this by divine authority—so that in either case, it was not a seventh part of time. A moral law changed by divine authority!! Who can tell but the precept to love God may yet be changed?”

The foregoing extract is in point not only on account of its withering exposure of error, but also as showing that this question of the Sabbath is so plain that a wayfaring man, &c., need not err therein; else we had never had such declarations from such a source.