The Sabbath History by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 26, 1871

The Sabbath History.

By Uriah Smith

HAVING returned to the Office, it may gratify a feeling of inquiry in many minds, if I say a word respecting the forth-coming History of the Sabbath, on which I have been endeavoring to assist Bro. Andrews somewhat, during my sojourn East the past summer. The frequency with which the question has been asked by those I have met since I left Boston, “How is the work on the History of the Sabbath prospering?” shows that a wide-spread interest exists in the hearts of our people in reference to this work, and that they are alive to its importance. This is as it should be, and is a good omen for the prospective usefulness of the work, when it shall be completed.

Among the first things to be done in the erection of a building, is the collection of material. The stone, the lumber, the brick, &c., &c., must be procured; and when thus lying promiscuously together, they convey to the mind of the observer but a faint idea of the office of beauty and utility they are to fill, when combined in the stately edifice. In about this condition, the History of the Sabbath, at present stands. Our work has chiefly been the collection of material; and while all has not been searched up that it is designed to procure, some valuable testimony has been found, which is well worth all the time and expense that would be involved in extensive research.

The work, so far as it has been my privilege to share it, has enlisted my deepest interest. Three things, as the result, have been very strongly impressed upon my mind: First, the extent of ground covered by the first edition of Bro. Andrews’ History. Secondly, the utter poverty of the evidence in behalf of Sunday. Thirdly, the vast amount, and contradictory nature, of the efforts put forth to sustain the first-day institution. The strange and unnatural industry with which men have labored in this direction, the invisible hairs they have endeavored to split, the subtle distinctions they have tried to draw, are such as no person would form any adequate conception of, who has not looked upon a collection of their efforts in some large library, or attempted to wade through the ocean of their sophistries. Take the following for a single example:

One old writer drew out at length, and with ludicrous assurance, an argument for Sunday-keeping, based on the following points: 1. The Sabbath commandment requires the observance of the seventh day of the week. 2. There are but two seventh days in a week. These are, first, the last day of the week, which is the seventh day, as related to the six days which precede it, and secondly, the first day of the week, which is the seventh, as related to the six days which follow it! 3. That seventh day which is the last day of the week, was the old Jewish Sabbath, and has gone by the board. The first day of the week is therefore the only seventh day now left; and as the commandment still requires the observance of the seventh day, it now enjoins the keeping of the first day of the week!

If this reasoning can be paralleled on any other subject except that of the Sabbath, it will prove that men have found themselves under the necessity of laboring equally hard to extricate themselves from straits equally desperate, on some theory equally groundless with the first-day Sabbath; which we shall be excused for not believing without some evidence.

However much charity we may have for the rank and file of those who have heretofore believed in the strict observance of Sunday, what we have seen is calculated to lessen somewhat the exercise of that grace toward those who have taken it upon themselves to lead the people in this practice; for it would seem that the very amount of labor they found it necessary to put forth, and the kind of arguments they found themselves driven to use, should have convinced them that they were on the tortuous track of error, and not traveling in company with Truth, who, with unveiled face, and plain and simple claims, never drives her defenders to such distortion of facts, nor to such grimaces of logic. Verily the language penned in “Word for the Sabbath” nearly sixteen years since, was vastly truer than we then dreamed:

O Fourth Command! what trouble hast thou been, Source of vexation to the sons of men! How have they tugged and toiled with various plans, To break thy power and shirk thy just demands! Have chafed and fretted to secure their aim, And render null and void thy obvious claim! Vast circuits they through logic’s fields have run, And found themselves at last where they begun!

The whole arena of the Sabbath controversy is flooded with the light of day. Its advocates may boldly say that they have reached the point of absolute knowledge. They know that it is an institution of Heaven, immovable as Jehovah’s throne. They know that all the theories that are urged against it are shams and shadows, phantasms and fallacies. They know that what the poet says of truth, that the eternal years of God are hers, is especially true of Jehovah’s hallowed Rest-day. To borrow the figure of another, should we take hammer and chisel and engrave the Sabbath argument on the wall of Gibralter, no one could say which would be the more impregnable, the logic or the rock.

My association with Bro. Andrews the past summer has been of the most agreeable character. The privilege I have had of once more meeting old friends, and forming acquaintance with new ones, I have highly prized. During my absence of thirteen weeks, besides my regular work on the Sabbath History, I have spoken twenty-three times. And since my return home, I receive the cheering intelligence that the remaining one of my two brothers, whom I found interested, if not well-nigh convinced, on the Sabbath question, has commenced the observance of the Rest-day of the Lord.

With excellent health, and with a heart full of gratitude to God for his goodness, and full of hope and courage for the future of this blessed cause, I again take up the thread of duty in my wonted sphere of Office labor. U. S.