SOMEWHAT CONFLICTING by W. N. G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 15, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 15.

SOMEWHAT CONFLICTING.

By W. N. G.

Two of the resolutions passed by the late Sabbath Convention held in Pittsburg read as follows:—

First. We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s day, made sacred by a law of universal and perpetual obligation, and that it is the will of God that the entire day should be spent in a manner to secure the physical rest and also the moral and spiritual improvement of men.

Fourth. We believe that the fourth commandment is as binding on all men to-day as any other precept of the Decalogue, and that a disregard of it is as much a sin against God and crime against humanity, as the violation of the sixth, seventh, eighth, or any other statute of that divine law, etc.

The practical result of an attempt to carry out these two resolutions must be either a conflict between the first day of the week and the Sabbath of the fourth commandment or a recognition of two days as sacred. The putting into practice of the first resolution is an attempt on the part of man to make a day sacred, and assuming that it is the work of God. God has made only one weekly Sabbath, or sacred day—at least he has not made known to man the sanctification of any other weekly Sabbath. Nor has he ever removed the sanctity which he placed upon that day in the beginning. Then for man to take that which God reckons as common and place it on a level with, or above, that which God has sanctified, is to assume the prerogative of God; it is sheer blasphemy. If the first day of the week has been “made sacred,” then the fourth commandment can not be “binding on all men to-day.” As the sanctity has not been removed from the seventh day, the sanctifying of the first day would give two Sabbath days, and the commandment would be annulled in the matter of its giving six days for secular labor. Viewing the matter from whatever standpoint, there is a conflict between the resolutions.

But the “fourth” resolution contains the truth according to the Scriptures; for Christ positively affirms that “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Matt. 5:18. “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” Luke 16:17. And no man has yet dared to write or print “the first day” into the commandment instead of “the seventh day.” Then if “we believe” the truth set forth in the “fourth” resolution, we must ignore the assumption contained in the “first.” Such a conflict with the law of God can not promote “the moral and spiritual improvement of men.”

W. N. G.