“A PRESENT-DAY DELUSION.”
By Editor
This is the general title of a pamphlet by Henry Varley, the well-known English preacher. Its special title is “The Seventh-day Adventists and Sabbath Observance. Is the Seventh Day Binding on Christians?” Mr. Varley has rightly named his book “A Present-day Delusion;” for there was never any greater delusion than to suppose that Seventh-day Adventists have anything whatever to do with the binding obligation of the seventh day, or are responsible for the present agitation. They simply go to the Word of God. They find the sacred seventh day in the beginning of the Book; they find it commanded by God’s own voice and written with His own finger on tables of stone in the very heart of His holy, unchangeable law; they find it affirmed and observed by Jesus Christ Himself, than whom there is no other perfect example. All this is in the Word. It is the one Sabbath, the seventh day. All Sabbath commandments and instructions of the Word pertain to that day. There is no record of a change or a contemplated change to any other day. That day speaks of Jesus Christ as the Creator and Redeemer; of His power to redeem because of His power to create. All this Seventh-day Adventists find in the Word of God, and believe; and because they so believe, they do, and find blessing in doing. And because God has commanded it, and because there is blessing in obeying, and because Christ has in that Word commanded them to preach that Word, they do this that others may know the Word, know Christ’s power to create and save, and know the blessings of obedience. It is all in the Word as the Word is in Jesus, and therefore Mr. Varley is mistaken, nay, greatly deluded, in endeavoring to attach any blame of seventh-day observance to Seventh-day Adventists. He is not fighting them; he is fighting against God. Every Seventh-day Adventist in the world might apostatize and go back to the husks of a pago-papal Sunday next week, but that would not affect this Sabbath agitation. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” and the agitation WILL GO ON until every child of God, and every one who wants to be a child of God, knows it, and knows the blessing of observing God’s Sabbath just where the Lord has put it, in the seventh day. It can not be put down. Men may write ten thousand books against it; they may utter with ponderous voice their self-devouring propositions; nations and governments, kings and rulers, may endeavor to crush the Lord’s Sabbath and support the counterfeit by human laws, decrees, and penalties, but the Sabbath of the Lord will still stand. The Word of the Lord endureth forever; and it is the worst of all “present-day delusions” to think that puny man can change it or substitute for it his own. We are sorry that Mr. Henry Varley can not see this blessed truth. “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”