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EVERY DAY ALIKE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 52.

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EVERY DAY ALIKE.

By F. D. Starr

More than a score of years ago, when Dakota was opening up to the world its agricultural resources, especially in the line of wheat production, the writer fell in company with a gentleman who was returning over the Grand Trunk railway from this wonderful territory to his home near the northern shore of Lake Ontario. He was eager to tell of the astonishing things he had seen in that vast prairie land of the West, but, said he: “I could not be hired to live there, the people are so wicked.”
“In what respect” inquired I, “are they so wicked? Do they lie, steal, murder, etc.?”
“No, I do not know that I heard of anything of that kind,” said he, “but I will tell you. I went out one Sunday morning and counted eleven threshing machines running. I asked one of the men who was at work if he ever brushed the dust from his Bible, and he said he presumed he did not read it as much as he ought.”
“Supposing he had read the Bible,” said I, “would he have found anything in it about working on Sunday?”
“Yes, indeed he would,” was the reply.
“What would he have found?”
“He would have found that it said: ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’”
“Yes,” said I, “and I believe that same commandment tells which day is the Sabbath, ‘the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.’”
“Well, if you want to keep that old Jewish Sabbath you may, but I keep the first day of the week, the Christian Sabbath.”
“But where in the Bible is the first day called the Sabbath, or any command given for its observance?”
“Good men have settled that question long ago.”
“What authority have good men, or any other men, for substituting human tradition for the commandment of God?”
“The laws of the land require us to keep the first day of the week, and we should be law-abiding citizens.”
“But when it comes to a conflict between the law of God and the requirements of men, we are told, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’” Acts 5:29.
“Well, one-seventh of the time is all that is required, it makes no difference which day we keep, only so that we keep one day in seven.”
“The commandment says we shall rest the same day that God rested, and that day was the seventh. Can you change your birthday from the day on which you were born to any other day in the year, and say it makes no difference, that one day is just as much your birthday as any other day?”
“We can’t keep the seventh day anyhow, the world is round, and it is impossible to observe it at the north pole.”
“But you say you keep the first day regularly, and if the first day can be observed anywhere without difficulty, why may not the seventh day be just as easily observed?”
“The apostle Paul said, ‘One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.’ That’s my doctrine; I stick to that; that’s good enough for me; I’m satisfied with that.”
“My friend,” said I, “is not that exactly what those people in Dakota were doing? Did they not esteem every day alike? Did they not thresh on Sunday, and did they not thresh on Monday, and thresh on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and on every day of the week, and thus regard every day alike? And was it not for this very reason that they did consider all days alike that you thought they were so wicked that you could not live among them? Is that your idea of Sabbath observance?”
Our friend’s argument having thus devoured itself, and the last position in his theory being so directly contradictory to his first, he turned himself about in his seat and had no more to say.
How much more satisfactory to take the plain command of the Lord on this question, and simply obey Him, and thus avoid all the inconsistent and contradictory positions, into which the sophistry of disobedience unavoidably leads its advocate. F. D. STARR.