A Work of Faith

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 10, 1910

A Work of Faith.— With no money in sight to pay the printer, having spent all his means in sounding the message in the 1844 movement, Captain Bates felt the burden upon him to print the truth. “I am going to write a book,” he declared to his wife; “I am going to circulate it, and spread the Sabbath truth before the world.” And as he went forward in faith, money came in providentially from various persons to pay the printer. It was a forty-eight-page tract, small type, packed full of the evidence that the Sabbath has never been changed. Near the close he summed up the evidence and his own position thus:—

There is but one Christian Sabbath named or established in the Bible, and that individual, whoever he is, that undertakes to abolish or change it is the real Sabbath-breaker. Remember that the keeping of the commandments is the only safe guide through the gates into the city.

My friends and neighbors, and especially my family, know that I have for more than twenty years strictly endeavored to keep the first day of the week for the Sabbath, and I can say that I did it in all good conscience before God, on the ocean, and in foreign countries as well as my own, until about sixteen months since I read an article published in the Hope of Israel, by a worthy brother, T. M. Preble, of Nashua, which, when I read and compared with the Bible, convinced me that there never had been any change; therefore the seventh day was the Sabbath, and God required me as well as him to keep it holy.

Many things now troubled my mind as to how I could make this great change,—family, friends, and brethren, and,—but this one passage of Scripture was, and always will be, as a clear sunbeam: “What is that to thee? follow thou me.” In a few days my mind was made up to begin to keep the fourth commandment, and I bless God for the clear light he has shed upon my mind in answer to prayer and a thorough examination of the Scriptures on this great subject. Contrary views did, after a little, shake my position some, but I feel now that there is no argument nor sophistry that can becloud my mind again this side of the gates of the holy city.