Difficulty in Deciding to Keep the Sabbath.
By J. A. Baldwin
One year ago last June, I thought it seemed like mockery to use the Lord's day as a preparation day for the Sunday rest. After considering the subject thoroughly, to count the cost, I saw the great difficulty of following “the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.” But as I was not captain—nothing but a soldier—I determined to leave all, to obey orders. I bought the truth and have not yet sold it. I went through fire and through water. On the Sabbath day, the first day of last March, I was expelled from the church by the almost unanimous vote of the quarterly Conference of the Methodist church, because I taught that Sunday was not the Sabbath, but that Saturday, sometimes called the seventh day, was the Sabbath. They make void the law of God that they may keep their own tradition. But they also deny their own foundation, that the Bible “is the only rule, and the sufficient rule, both of our faith and practice.” This foundation principle I claim for myself. No man or set of men has any authority to annul the observance of this day, or fix any obligation upon any other day. The difficulty of deciding to keep the seventh day does not arise with many from a difficulty of understanding the Bible, but from the idea of coming out from the world, the great and good, and being alone. The great have not the moral power to become little and unpopular, and the good are afraid to commit such a sacrilegious act as to question the foundation of the church, and so they pass on from generation to generation. The substance of the world was created on the first day of the week. The seventh day is the day of God's rest, significant of the week's work. God rested on, blessed, and sanctified, that particular day, and not the first. For these reasons it was commanded to man. “Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you forever, that ye may know that I am the Lord that sanctify you.” The first day has nothing in common with the Sabbath, except that it is a day; and there is no reason for substituting it for the Sabbath—except that man sets up its claim as a rival institution. God has never blessed, sanctified, or rested on it, nor called it the Sabbath, nor commanded it. Jesus was not his Father's rival. He did not abolish the institution nor the day that he was Lord of. He never called any other day but the Sabbath day, and did not set up any rival institution nor rival day. J. A. BALDWIN.