p. 61 | Difficult Problems by Roswell F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 7, 1871

Difficult Problems.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

We find men who will acknowledge the entire moral law—every jot and tittle—to be binding, who will still argue that, since we cannot be justified and saved by the law, we need not keep the Sabbath of that law. And they find it a very difficult problem to demonstrate how the law can be binding and not binding at the same time; how it can be in force and yet abolished; and how the Sabbath can be abrogated, as a Jewish institution, and yet the same commandment bind us to keep another day, as a Christian institution.

When I witness their undertaking such tasks, I wonder if the Creator has given them minds so illogical and obtuse that they cannot see the falseness of their position. If so, they cannot be accountable. But if their willfulness thus perverts their understanding, then they are justly the objects of God's displeasure and fit subjects of divine wrath.

My mind has been led to these reflections by what occurred at a meeting lately. I had been speaking of the respective claims of the seventh, and of the first, day, to our observance. A man arose and made some remarks in which he admitted that the ten commandments were binding in every jot and tittle; but claimed that we could not be justified by keeping them; and therefore he thought it was not necessary for us to keep the Sabbath of that law. 1. They are all binding. 2. They cannot pardon their transgressor. 3. Therefore we are not required to keep them, at least the one that happens to be unpopular. How do men come by such intellectual faculties? Is such reasoning natural and necessary, or acquired? The true solution of this question will fix the responsibility where it belongs.

R. F. COTTRELL.