The Cause in Cornville, Me.
By Mary Stratton
The Lord has been pleased to look in mercy upon us once more in Cornville, Me. Our hearts have been made glad by seeing strong young men embrace the truth, and take hold of the work in earnest. Likewise the aged and the children have shared in this good work. To God be all the glory; for we truly have been unworthy. About six years ago, Bro. Cornell came here and gave a course of lectures which resulted in bringing out a company of Sabbath-keepers. We have had but few added to our number since that time, till recently. Good, true men from the West have recently visited us, and preached the blessed truths of the Bible, teaching us the way more perfectly, for which we feel very grateful. May the Lord reward them for their labors of love. When we first started out on the Sabbath, some opposition came up in the community as is usual in every place. But when it was seen that we were decided, and kept steadily on, we were given up in despair, and left to ourselves. The seventh-day Sabbath has been preached and talked here in all its clearness for a number of years from the pulpit and the pews; yet no minister of any other denomination has ever attempted to take up the subject in any form more than to give it passing remark, till the present winter. A man from Iowa was here transiently, who seemed to have a great zeal for God and his cause, something like Paul's before the scales fell from his eyes. He gave out an appointment to show that the first day of the week was the Christian Sabbath, and that they were not breaking the fourth commandment by keeping it as such, and working the remaining six days. We withdrew our appointment for prayer-meeting that evening, and all turned out to hear this attempt to make impossibilities possible. He said a succession of weeks from the creation was not necessary in order to keep the true Sabbath, it was only one day in seven to rest after six days of labor; a seventh part of time. Then, by sundry disconnected scriptures, he tried to prove that in the end of the old dispensation, all the Sabbaths merged into one, and went into the grave with Christ at his death, and at his resurrection he brought up the Christian Sabbath which had been kept ever since. He also magnified his Father's law, and it altogether went down with him, though the principles of it were brought over here. To abolish a law and bury it up out of sight is a strange way to magnify it.79 He also labored hard to show that after eight days meant seven days, and that the Lord's day, of Revelation, was the first day of the week. As he drew near the close, he became very enthusiastic in telling us that if we brought the old Sabbath over here, we must bring the sacrifices with it. It was very evident he thought here was a strong point. I thought of the old lady's dictionary. She said no doubt it was a very good book; but she failed to see the connection. He went on to say there was no express command for keeping the first day; for which he seemed very thankful. He saw in it such a wonderful display of the wisdom of God in making it a necessity to search the Scriptures for proof that it was so. He had been greatly blessed in so doing. It was very evident to every one that understood the question, that if he had found the proof, he was very unfortunate in presenting it; for he did not bring any that would stand the test of Bible criticism for a moment. All the positive proof he found, he read from Mosheim. But what does the testimony of one man amount to, if it plainly contradicts the whole tenor of the Bible? I looked around on an intelligent-looking congregation of Sunday-keepers, expecting to see an expression of mortification at the failure of the lecturer. Instead of that, they were congratulating each other on his success. I feel a deep interest for the dear friends in Cornville, and am sad to see them so much more ready to believe an error for which there is no real proof, than the truth, when there is a plain, Thus saith the Lord for it. Why hunt for, and be satisfied with, inferences for the first-day Sabbath, when the great God gave us the fourth commandment in awful grandeur on Mt. Sinai, and then wrote it on a table of stone with his own finger: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” My heart is full of gratitude to God that he has enabled quite a large company of us in this place to take our feet off from the holy Sabbath. We mean to labor faithfully to bring others in to share in the great blessings that the truth always brings to the believer. MARY STRATTON.