How They Became Convinced
[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the Signs of the Times has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.] HOW DID the Sabbath come to me? And what induced me to observe the seventh day? What questions to present to one whose parents, grandparents and great grandparents were Seventh-day Baptists, and thus observers of the true Sabbath! Someone will then say, “The Sabbath never really came to you; you were brought up in it.” Be not too hasty, friend, in your conclusion. Do you consider that the carnal heart of a Sabbath-keeper’s child is no more in harmony with a spiritual law than the unregenerate heart of a Sabbath-breaker’s child? If so, imagine a boy, full of life and activity, residing in a large village, surrounded by every allurement imaginable; while every sport so enjoyable to boyhood was practised, and he often shut away from it by the apparent “whim” of his parents. I imagine his being compelled to run the gauntlet of the jeers of his daily companions because of his “Jewish” peculiarities. Think you those things increase one’s love for spiritual things? Let me tell you, Nay. More than once I longed for the day to come when I might forever cast aside this, to me, “yoke of bondage,” and go with the world. But a change of heart brought a change of desire. What should I do now? I could not blindly follow my parents; I must settle for myself my own personal relation to my Maker. Then began an earnest searching of the law of God, as given in the Ten Commandments. The commandment was plain, and “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God” rang in my ears, till I was nearly sick. “But,” I asked, “has not the law been changed?” This was answered by the fact that the law was a transcript of God’s character; a statement of His will; a pen-picture of His way. As His character, His will, and His mode of action never change, there could be no change in the expression of those principles. The reason assigned in the Sabbath command for our observance of it is “because” He had just observed that day Himself; He had set the example. That command was, then, a picture of His own course of action. That He would do precisely the same thing to-day, were He to reside in this world, was shown by the fact that in the person of Jesus Christ He did spend an entire life among men as the perfect Example for man, and, during that life, never once observed any other day as the Sabbath, but always and everywhere observed His own divine law. Thus I found that twice, once amid the beauties of Paradise, and once in the shadow of Calvary, we have God’s own example for the observance of the seventh day. Thus, with no other example presented to us, and no other command given for obedience, what was an honest, sincere heart to do? Before me, like the lightning’s flash, came the plain declaration: “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.” And in Him the Sabbath first came to me. Hence I took up the cross, lightened by the love of reverent obedience, and have followed the heavenly pathway nearly twenty years. C. H. EDWARDS. I AM one of the “home-born” ones, my parents having been Sabbath-keepers many years before I was born. My youth was spent on the farm under the Christian influences of my parents. Owing to these influences there was early begotten in me an intense desire to know the Lord. While my father was a man of undoubted piety, I felt that I could not go to him when I longed for his advice and confidence. One Sabbath evening in Jackson, Mich., after having spent the afternoon with some companions in playing ball at the back of the fairground occupied by the camp-meeting, I sought, in company with a very dear friend, the tent of Pastor O. A. Olsen, and told him all about it. There I gave my heart to God. While my subsequent life has been marked by many mistakes, I do praise God that— “He gathers in His bosom
Witless, worthless lambs like me,
And He carries them Himself,
To His own country.”
I write these things that some loving father who is yearning over a wayward son may, without delay, go to him; let heart meet heart, and know that the yearning of his own heart is but the answering chord to the longing of his lonely boy. J. A. LELAND.