p. 108 | The Sabbath Law

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1871

The Sabbath Law.

A WRITER in the Restitution of March 9, 1871, speaking of the law of the Sabbath says:—

“But Sabbatarians now make this law the gospel, or its main feature, thereby annulling what Jesus and the twelve taught. This, to me, if there were no other reason, would be sufficient for its rejection. Whenever any church preaches any commandment, or many, for the gospel of the kingdom, then I know that they are not the people of God. Commandments are to be obeyed, not preached.”

We beg this writer’s pardon, but he is entirely mistaken. We don’t preach law for gospel. No S. D. Adventist can be found who has done such a thing. We understand the distinction between them too well. It is somebody else who thus confounds the law and gospel; and we venture to suggest that if the writer will examine the matter with sufficient thoroughness, he will find the confusion lying nearer his own door than that of any one else.

But how does the giving prominence to this law annul what Jesus and the twelve taught? We are not told. Christ said that he came not to destroy the law, that a jot or tittle should not pass from it so long as the heavens and the earth endured, and that we must exhibit better righteousness than the scribes and Pharisees, who though they strictly kept the law in letter, violated it in spirit; or in other words, that we must keep the commandments of God (the keeping of which is righteousness) not in letter only but in spirit also. And Paul anticipates the cheap logic and self-excusing policy of those who would seek to cover the neglect of duty by loudly crying up the value of faith, when with the authority of Heaven, he rebukes the course of those who “through faith” seek to “make void the law.”

We somehow received the impression when first we read the New Testament, and that impression has been strengthened by every subsequent perusal, that repentance lay, at the foundation of the gospel blessings; that the first step of our return to the favor of God, was repentance. For the apostles taught the people to repent, believe, and be baptized; and Paul declares that he taught publicly to Jews and Greeks, the same law holding the Gentiles in this matter as the Jews, “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” Acts 20:21. But repentance signifies sins committed; and sins committed signify law broken; nothing more nor less. Take out the law and we cannot conceive of the gospel, inasmuch as there could be no such thing as “good news” of pardon to a person who had committed no offense, nor of salvation to those who had never forfeited life.

Another point not a little remarkable is the ground on which our writer proposes to reject this law. Because Sabbatarians make a good deal of it, “this, to me,” says he, “if there were no other reason, would be sufficient for its rejection;” “which, the same,” as Bret Harte would say, we will acknowledge to be good reasoning when he will show us some directions in the Bible requiring us to observe law so long as people do not make anything of it, but instantly to reject it when they do.

But it is not pleasant always to condemn. We prefer to commend whenever we can. Hence we will say that our author in the paragraph before us does manifest some acquaintance with the law of language, by strictly adhering to the figure of climax, and placing his most astounding proposition last: “Commandments,” he says, “are to be obeyed, not preached.” Indeed, indeed! So then, if we should discover that some binding obligation is for some cause disregarded by the people, we must not go forth and urge upon them a reform in regard to the law which they are breaking; all we can do, according to this proposition, is to go about and exhibit ourselves in the act of keeping it. But if we mistake not, Christ said something about doing and teaching those commandments which are a test of our righteousness; and he has attached to that work a very desirable promise, even to be called great in the kingdom of Heaven.

How shall we account for such utterances as are contained in the paragraph quoted at the commencement of this article? Shall it be on the ground that rejection of the law brings down upon men the judgment of God in the form of mental imbecility? or is it that only persons of about that condition of mind take such a position?