THE UNCHANGEABLE LAW

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 50.

THE UNCHANGEABLE LAW.

What Methodist Authorities Say.

WHILE studying the Sunday-school lesson from the Quarterly issued by the Methodist Episcopal Church, and looking over their other books, this question has frequently impressed me: Why do they not keep the seventh-day Sabbath? I quote from the Senior Berean Lesson Quarterly, third quarter, July to September, 1902, page 103, article 8:—

Remember.— In Eden the command was to keep the seventh day as a day which God had made holy; that law was not abrogated; the Israelites were to remember that original injunction. The Sabbath day.— A day which, in its origin and history, has been and is still the sign between God and man; profaning this day is a breach of the whole moral law. The observance of one day in seven as a holy day in which no work shall be done, is so old that no man can say when men first began to observe it. Art. 10. Thou shalt not do any work.— The only external duty which is clearly and specifically commanded is cessation from all labor; the method of keeping it holy unto the Lord must be determined by the end for which it was set apart, namely, that man should draw near to his God in worship. The purpose of the day is a specifically religious one.

Lesson Applied.

The Lord delivers His people from the bondage of sin, and then guides them by His law; redemption is followed by subjection to the law of God. P. 103.
The Christian Sabbath is a divine institution, and can be abrogated by God alone. P. 104.

From the July, 1902, Sunday-school Journal and Bible Student’s Magazine, edited by Thomas B. Neely, D.D., L.L.D.:—

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.— The word “remember” has the same meaning as our colloquial word “mind.” It does not mean, recall to memory, but rather, keep, respect. Nevertheless the institution of the Sabbath is much older than the Ten Commandments, as verse 11 shows and gives reason for. . . . The words, “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work,” are as mandatory as the command to rest. No one able to do a man’s work is excusable by God, if it is not done. Both activity and rest are needed, and both should be consecrated to God.

The words, “Thou shalt not do any work,” with the specification of the different classes, led later Jews to lay some cruel and preposterous restrictions on the Sabbath day. Divinely directed, they began by avoiding the gathering of manna, and gradually one feature of active, social life after another was dropped—kindling fires, selling commodities, bearing burdens, collecting wood, treading the wine-press, carrying on traffic. God’s idea of the Sabbath day is beautifully expressed in Isa. 58:13. Another argument for the rest on the seventh day is given in verse 11.

The ancient Babylonians and Assyrians religiously observed one day in seven, and Christ has shown that what is called in modern times natural law as positively requires the Sabbath for man as does the divine law. P. 487.

There is an interesting rabbinical tradition that the language of Jehovah on this occasion divided, and subdivided, and interpreted itself to every individual of all the seventy nations of the earth, so that every man heard the Ten Commandments in his own language as plainly as if spoken to him alone. This, of course, is mere tradition, and yet there is in it a very suggestive truth. In a certain very practical sense every man’s inward, moral self or conscience does at least echo their truth when once spoken. The voice of God in the soul may not be audible, but there is a fundamental truth in Paul’s statement: “These having not the law are a law unto themselves which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.” When God speaks, man may well listen. P. 488.

It has sometimes been asked, “Does the law of the Sabbath belong properly to the moral code?” It was certainly lifted out of the category of the mere ceremonial by the circumstances connected with the supply of manna. P. 489.

These commandments [in both tables] offer life to him who keeps them, but death to him who fails. Every Christian is bound by each regulation of the moral law. We can not earn heaven by keeping the commandments, neither can we break them without penalty and remorse. The law marks a path for us to walk in, but it can not help a sin-paralyzed soul to make progress in it. . . . The sacred ceremonies of the Jews were all intended for law breakers, not for law keepers. The law is an organic whole, and must either be kept in its entirety or broken in its entirety. . . . He who keeps one law and breaks another has still broken the law. But the law is not therefore a failure. It was not intended to make men pure, but to challenge men to purity; to show our unfitness to come to God, except by the help of a sinless High Priest. Thus the law became a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. Moses showed his wisdom in his choice of a name for it. He called it the testimony. It was God’s testimony of the sinfulness and wickedness of the human race. P. 490.

The blasting away of rock in the subway tunnel in New York was followed by wreck and ruin. The people fled in terror from their houses where they had long lived in security, while walls fell, and what seemed solid earth slipped into uncertain depths. The rock gone, the foundations were destroyed; what was left was a spongy substance, which the pressure of a child’s hand could crumble, liable to fall at any time. The Ten Commandments are the solid rock of eternal truth. Blasted away by indifference, by disregard of divine authority, by selfishness, by sin of any kind, the very foundations of character fall, and the soul is morally wrecked. “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, is like a wise man who built his house upon a rock. . . .” The residents on Park Avenue would have been very glad to have the old-fashioned rock underneath their property left solid and unbroken; and so will we be glad at the last to find ourselves secure upon the righteousness of the ten words of the moral law. But must we keep the whole ten to the very letter? If we keep them in the spirit, is not that enough? Well, I do not think we can keep them in the spirit without the letter, altho we can keep them in the letter without the spirit. The God who spoke them with His own voice, and wrote them with His own hand upon tables of stone in the midst of awful displays of majesty and power, made no mistake in the expression of what He wished to say. He wrote the Ten Commandments for all time, all people, all governments, all individuals, and He wrote them in language so simple it does not have to be explained, even to a little child.

Moses tells us in Deuteronomy how every one of these commandments came from the very heart of God for our good. They are not arbitrary commands laid down by a high authority without reason. They are based upon fundamental principles upon which our prosperity and our happiness depend; and when God gave them to Moses for the people, He showed how greatly He loves us and longs to have us be and do the very best possible, when He said, “O that there were such a heart in them that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them and

with their children forever.” You see God speaks of a heart to keep His commandments.

That is all He cares for. Just to keep them with our lips, or in the outward observance of them, is not true obedience. He wants us to love Him so truly that He will be the first in our hearts; and when we do love Him above everybody and everything else, it is just as natural and easy to keep all the commands which follow the first as it is to be obedient to father and mother because we love them; and kind to brothers and sisters for the same reason. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” P. 493.

(Concluded next week.)