Test of Loyalty by Roswell F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 28, 1871

Test of Loyalty.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

THERE are two branches of the law of God; the one growing out of our relation to our Creator, teaching us how to love him with all our heart; the other founded upon our relation to our fellow-creatures, teaching us our duty to them, that is, how to show that we love our neighbor as ourselves. The first four commandments of the decalogue constitute the first branch of the moral law; the last six, the second.

Eight of the ten precepts are negative, teaching us not to do certain acts, not to insult God or injure our neighbor; while two of them are affirmative, requiring us actually to show honor to God and to such of our fellow-men as, from our mutual relation to each other, demand our reverence and obedience. One of these belongs to the first branch of the law, namely, the Sabbath commandment; the other is included in the second branch, the one requiring us to honor our parents.

It may be objected that the fourth commandment is negative, forbidding labor on the Sabbath day; but it positively requires us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and then forbids such acts as would profane it.

The Sabbath, being a memorial of the Creator's finished work, and instituted on purpose that his creatures might, by special act, honor him, is better adapted to test man's loyalty, than any other precept of the decalogue. Hence he calls it a sign between him and his Israel, for a perpetual covenant. Ex. 31: 13, 17; Eze. 20: 12, 20. And when he proposed to prove his people in the wilderness, whether they would walk in his law, or not, he chose this very precept as the best calculated for a test of their loyalty. Ex. 16: 4, and onward. The keeping of the Sabbath is an acknowledgment of the only living and true God, and this by a positive act of worship, or obedience; hence it is a better test of loyalty than any one of the precepts which precede it.

The last message of probationary time will test the people upon the commandments of God. Rev. 14: 9-12. But as all professed believers in the religion of the Bible, or at least all Protestants, are agreed in their teachings concerning all the commandments, except the fourth, the test of necessity must come upon the fourth commandment, the Sabbath law. All the poor evasions that have been invented to excuse the almost universal neglect of the only weekly Sabbath of the Bible, only increase the danger of the people in the test that is coming; but he has clearly revealed his purpose of proving this generation, enlightened by all the light of his word and providence, whether they will walk in his law, or not. And so it is not only highly proper, as we have seen, but strictly necessary, that the final test of loyalty to God the Father should be upon this very precept, upon which he tested his people in the wilderness.

It is a remarkable fact, that the only precept of the moral law, instituted as a special sign of our loyalty to the great Creator, and by which alone, by a special act of outward obedience toward him, we can exhibit our reverence to him as such in the sight of our fellow-men, should be esteemed a non-essential, a thing of no importance, an institution that all are at liberty to bend or abolish to suit their own convenience. But so it is. And this is the reason why the fearful warning of the “third angel” is sent before to apprise all of their danger in the last, grand test of loyalty which is before us.

Oh! that men would open their eyes and see that their Creator has a right to be honored by exact obedience to that precept which he instituted as his memorial, and as a test of our loyalty to him.

R. F. COTTRELL.