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The Sabbath Question

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1875

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 46, No. 3.

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The Sabbath Question.

By Chas. B. Reynolds

TESTIMONY OF THE “FREE METHODIST.”

Very many of our Free Methodist friends admit the necessity of coming out from the world and being separate—of becoming a peculiar people. They lament the errors of the M. E. Church, and deplore its conformity to the fashions and customs of the world. They acknowledge the necessity of exact and implicit compliance with the requirements of God’s word; but when the Sabbath is spoken of, they fall back upon—“All the people keep Sunday”—“custom of the country,” &c. The following extract from the leading article of the Free Methodist, published at Aurora, Ill., Lewis Bailey, editor, dated Aug. 8, 1872, should have weight with our Free Methodist friends, and is certainly interesting as the voluntary testimony of the leading organ of that denomination on the binding obligation of God’s holy Sabbath:—
“What is the voice of God upon this subject? We say, Voice of God, because from him alone emanates, originally and exclusively, moral precepts and commands. There can be but one source of moral law, and the Supreme Being alone can be that source. The will of God concerning the Sabbath is to us made known in his word; and the interpretation of that word in favor of keeping the day holy, as a day of repose and religious devotion, is confirmed by his providences in every age and clime.”
“The original command as given by Moses, although not reiterated in the New Testament, stands as a part of the ten, not one of which has ever been revoked. *
“In view of many considerations, of which a few have been above presented, we discover that God, the great moral Lawgiver, has, in his word, by his providences, and by his Spirit, through his saints in all ages, reiterated the command: ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’”
“With those who walk by faith, the Bible settles all controversy. The word of God is their sufficient rule of faith and practice; but with infidels the voice of reason must dictate whether the Bible is right and consistent. Every argument of those who favor the Continental Sunday is drawn from reason, and not supported by revelation. The whole fabric that they rear rests upon the discriminations of human judgment, and that judgment gives life in this world a pre-eminent position. Herein is to be found the chief cause of such antiscriptural conclusions among wise men and modern divines. *
“If Mr. Beecher, and the preachers and editors that admire and follow his pernicious ways, are determined to be cupbearers to these classes of persons, while Belshazzar-like they desecrate what God sanctified unto himself; if men of influence, skilled in the use of sophistry, are resolved to furnish fuel to feed these fires of hell in fallen human nature; if not all the days of labor only, but the sacred fragment of holy time broken from eternity and thrown into the calendar of human life, must be given to greed and lust by law, it is high time for God’s people to awake and sound the note of faithful warning until unwary souls be fairly put upon their guard, and until evil workers are revealed in all the deformity of their real character.”
May the Lord help us, to whom he has given the clear light of his glorious truth, to realize the need of awaking—of being willing to make cheerful sacrifice, that the warning may be faithfully sounded, and honest hearts may be united in keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.
CHAS. B. REYNOLDS.