ENTERING INTO REST by Mrs. E. W. Jones

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1879

ENTERING INTO REST.

By Mrs. E. W. Jones

When the week's work is nearly done, and preparation day dawns, it is with almost joyful exultation that I hasten through the details of this day. What lover of God's holy Sabbath but has a peculiar feeling of anxiety that every thing should be done, the week's work neatly rounded off on this day, and the Sabbath met with clean hands and a clean heart.

We are entering on sacred time, when worldly labor and cares, and the profit or loss of business matters should be gladly laid aside. I have often wondered where was the bondage of this blessed day. To a certain extent, we enter upon a sweet rest from worldly cares wherein we can commune with God, study his blessed word more carefully, read and study upon the beautiful truths presented in these last days, in reference to which God has said, “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words.” Isa. 58:13.

Now what is the promise to those who do this? The next verse tells us: “Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

Is this not a blessed promise? “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” How well we know that promise is kept to those who fear his name.

When I first turned away from the first-day observance and the commandments of men, it was with fear and trembling; fear of God, and trembling and despair at my own desires. For, thought I, I shall never love the seventh day as I have the first. How many pleasant recollections from childhood are connected with one, and how few, in fact not any, with the other. But blessed be the name of Him who helps every trembling child that walks out by faith, God's Sabbath now far exceeds the man-made day. I look forward to it with joy, and part with it in sadness. By the grace of God, nothing shall wrest it from my grasp, while life remains; and if death overtakes me ere our blessed Lord, the Lord of the Sabbath, shall come, I will close my eyes fondly hoping to open them in the new earth, to welcome God's hallowed day again. For on every Sabbath, I expect to come up to worship the Lord in the Eternal City.

Blessed be God, the maker of Heaven and earth, who has given us a slight foretaste of that eternal rest in the day that he has blessed and hallowed for us on the earth—the only green spot left after the expulsion from the garden of Eden—to remind us that there is still an eternal Godhead mindful of fallen man's needs, an oasis in the desert of life wherein we can stop and rest, and go on refreshed in our pilgrimage.

I smile now at the sneers, “under bondage again,” “under the law,” “Jews,” &c. If striving to keep God's commandments and the faith of Jesus is bondage, then I am happy under such bondage. If obeying the God of the Jews makes me a Jew, happier still am I to be nearer to my blessed Lord, who was himself a Jew. In obedience to God I have found sweeter peace than when in the freedom of the world. I am happy in the bondage with which good angels have encircled me. God grant that all who “lay hold” of the Sabbath, may hold on to it with other truths, cling fast to God's promises, and be enabled to experience the blessed assurance referred to by the prophet, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee.” Mrs. E. W. JONES.