“IF THEY COULD BE CONVINCED.”
THIS is the argument which we find among the editorial notes of a Presbyterian paper, the N. Y. Observer, evidently indorsed by it, on the Sunday question:— “‘It has been figured out,’ says the Christian Instructor, ‘that, by making due allowance for the long day of Joshua when the sun stood still, it is clear the Christian world unwittingly came back to the original seventh day appointed as Sabbath in the observance of the so-called first day of the week as Sabbath. It is thus made to appear that God’s calendar was true, while man’s was at fault.’ Could the Seventh-day Baptists be convinced of this they might be induced to accept the present Sunday as their day of rest, and save themselves much annoyance.” “It is thus made to appear” that the so-called change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week was to correct a mistake or change in the calendar which the Lord had let go uncorrected for fourteen centuries! If seventh-day people could be convinced of this, could be convinced that traveling around the round world would bring them into harmony with the rest of the world, could be convinced that the day was changed on account of the resurrection, could be convinced that the Sabbath was abolished at the cross and that the Sunday Lord’s day stands on another basis, could be convinced that the church had power to change the day, could be convinced that a seventh part of time is all that is necessary, could be convinced that time is lost and we do not know the right Sabbath anyway, could be convinced that they ought to obey man rather than God,—if they could be convinced of one and all of these mutually destructive Kilkenny-cats theories, which the Sunday people present before them, how happy they would be! Pitiable, isn’t it, that nothing better is found for Sunday? “It has been figured,” says the above; it seems to us it would be well to figure again according to God’s great rule of moral mathematics, as worked out in the example of Christ Jesus.