Review the Evidences by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 4, 1873

Review the Evidences.

By R. F. Cottrell

THERE are many persons who have, at some former time, been almost persuaded of the truth of the position held and taught by Seventh-day Adventists. They felt it duty to embrace the Sabbath, being persuaded of the perpetuity and immutability of the moral law, the ten commandments. But after wavering awhile in the balance, convenience and custom prevailed in their minds, and they decided against the truth. They have succeeded in pacifying their mind and conscience in a measure; but still they are not fully satisfied. They still have their convictions, and do not rest in full assurance. To such, I would say, Review the evidences.

If Bible truth had been clearly in favor of the abolition or change of the Sabbath, you never would have had those convictions. Those who hold the truth and obey the plainly revealed commandments of God, never have conscientious convictions that they ought to give up their position and take another course. They may be tempted by convenience or custom to make such a change, hoping that for these things they may be excused; but to feel such a course to be duty is out of the question. Therefore you ought to know assuredly that your convictions were in accordance with truth. Those convictions were not in favor of error; there was strong evidence that produced them; hence you ought to take this as an evidence that the truth is found in the direction of those convictions. Candidly review the evidences in the fear of God, and you will find that those convictions were the fruit of truth bearing on your mind, and which ought certainly to be obeyed.

Could you be persuaded for a moment that circumcision is still binding? By no means. The fact is the Bible is not so blind a book as men would make it. Those who will take its teachings in preference to tradition and custom, can find the path of duty.

To illustrate: The person cannot be found, who, having accepted of, and practiced, immersion as baptism, afterward became dissatisfied with it, and came to the conscientious conviction that he must be sprinkled. But the reverse of this has often been true. So no man ever left the seventh-day Sabbath and embraced the first day instead, from a sense of duty; but thousands have turned from the first to the seventh day, out of the deepest sense of duty.

Do not deceive yourself and procure your everlasting ruin, by thinking that another course is safe, besides the following of those convictions which the word and Spirit of God have made upon your hearts. Choose the path of duty, which is the way of the cross. Look at the evidences fairly, for this is your own interest. If you decide against the truth, you are to be the loser. Your unbelief and unwillingness to obey will not alter the truth; nor will these things change the judgment of God, which will be according to truth.

Do review the evidences, and decide for truth and duty. Follow those convictions which you have been stifling. Choose the path of duty, though it be the way of the cross. Be faithful in this, and an everlasting crown of glory shall be yours. R. F. Cottrell.