Editorial by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 6, 1911

Editorial

By Editor

THERE is one straightforward testimony for the Sabbath truth throughout the Scriptures. And in whatever part of the world one meets Sabbath-keepers, one hears the same reason for keeping the day: God himself commands it. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”

WITH Sunday observance it is different. There is no testimony for it in Scripture; and one may hear for it all manner of reasons, confusing and contradictory. It is because there is no reason for rejecting the day that God has blessed and made holy, and no Bible foundation for the keeping of the first day.

YEARS ago a man who left us wrote a book, into which he put a number of the various arguments against the Sabbath. His book was quite a large one, and so the contradictory statements were not closely crowded together. But a certain minister in a foreign land got hold of the book, and issued a small tract in which these self-contradictory arguments were grouped together in a way that led some of his friends to say he had made a great mistake. It was too apparent that the arguments for Sunday “agreed not together.”

IN the REVIEW of November 7, 1854, Elder J. N. Andrews printed the following “creed,” illustrative of the reasons often given for rejecting the Sabbath and keeping Sunday:—

Article 1. I believe that the Sabbath has been changed to the first day of the week.

Art. 2. I believe that Sunday is the true seventh day, and that it should be observed.

Art. 3. I believe that we can not tell what day the seventh day is.

Art. 4. I believe that we are only required to keep one-seventh part of time.

Art. 5. I believe that the commandment to keep the seventh day is abolished.

Art. 6. I believe that those who keep the Sabbath of the fourth commandment will fall from grace.

Art. 7. I believe that every one should be fully persuaded in his own mind whether to keep the Sabbath or not.

CONCERNING this statement, Elder Andrews added:—

Reader, the foregoing is not a mere fancy sketch; I have met with a large number who, in course of a single conversation, have avowed their faith in all the articles of the above creed. There are plenty of such all around you. Is this your creed? If so, permit me to point you to a better one. It consists of ten articles that may be found in Exodus 20. Allow me to recommend this creed to you as infallible, it having been given by Jehovah in person, and written with his own finger on stone. You will find in its fourth article all the errors of the foregoing creed pointed out.