A Letter to the Disciples of the Lord.
By Roswell F. Cottrell
DEAR BRETHREN: The subject on which I address you is truly important. It is a subject involving a part of our duty to God—a subject on which all lovers of the truth should be agreed. Either myself or you are in the habit, through ignorance, of sinning against our Creator every week we live. It was long held, that the seventh day of the week was the Sabbath from the creation of the world to the resurrection of Christ; after which the first day was the Sabbath to the end of the world. At length the advocates of this doctrine discovered that it could not be maintained from the Scriptures. What was to be done? To return to the Bible Sabbath, would be too humiliating; and all christendom would be against them. Could they abandon their favorite Sunday? By no means! Well, what was the result? A first-day Sabbath could not be found between the two lids of the Bible. What could be done to save this darling offspring of human invention? What did they do? They just dropped the name, Sabbath, and christened the pet Lord's Day, and now observe the same thing in the same way, abstaining from labor and doing the same things they formerly did on the so-called "Christian Sabbath," but the name is changed! It puts me in mind of an anecdote I have heard. It was said of the Catholics, that in their proselyting among pagans, they found, in a certain place, a people who worshiped a goddess of the name of Minerva. The Catholics persuaded them to expunge the name Minerva, and inscribe that of the Virgin Mary. So they became good Catholics, worshiping the same image, but by another name! I need not make the application. Brethren, I write not to condemn you, but it is the hope that you may be convinced of your error, and that God may be honored by your turning to the truth, which has stimulated me to this undertaking. Hear me, then, while I examine the Scriptures on this subject. FOR WHOM WAS THE SABBATH MADE?
For the Jews, do you say? Stop a moment. Our blessed Saviour, who never spoke amiss, and who meant all that he said, declares that "the Sabbath was made for man." Mark 2:27. The word man in this passage is not qualified or restricted in any way; consequently it means mankind, or the human race. Now, brethren, be careful that you do not call the Sabbath the Jewish Sabbath, for Christ has told you better. If the Sabbath was made for man, it must, of necessity, be made at a time sufficiently early, that the first man of the race might enjoy it. Accordingly Jehovah has informed us that he made the world in six days, and rested on the seventh, and that he blessed and sanctified it. Now do not cavil because there is no commandment on record before it was given on Sinai. Jehovah has told us when it was made, and Christ has told us for whom it was made. Brethren, the conclusion is irresistible to my mind, that the Sabbath was made for us, or, that the Lord, inadvertently, said more than he meant! Again, if the Sabbath was made for man, it is, undoubtedly, of some use and benefit to him. How then can it be classed with the "handwriting of ordinances which was against us, which was contrary to us"? No requirement of Jehovah was ever against us, unless it was caused by sin. It was against us to see the innocent lamb bleed away his life, figuratively in our stead; it was contrary to our feelings of benevolence and justice. This was caused by sin. But before sin was, was the Sabbath. When God gave the law at Sinai, he spoke ten precepts to all the people, "with a great voice; and he added no more; and he wrote them in two tables of stone," and delivered them to Moses. Deut. 5:22. This is pre-eminently and emphatically THE LAW OF GOD. This is the supreme law of right—a law founded in the nature of things, and naturally binding, with the exception, if you please, of the fourth commandment, on the whole human race. This law embodies every principle of right between man and man, and between man and his Maker, and yet it may be resolved again into two principles—love to God, and love to man—and on these two hang all the law and the prophets. This law, being the basis of every law of right, might be called the constitution by which God governs the world. And yet Christians of the nineteenth century impiously talk of God's revised constitution—comparing the ways of God to those of men! Christians, I say, for if God had no people in Babylon, he could not say, come out of her my people. This is the law of which Christ spoke when he said, Matt. 5:17, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall by no means pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." All what? All that the prophets had said. It was the prophecies which were to be fulfilled. I know of no way to fulfill a law, but to keep it inviolate; and to keep a law does not put an end to it. 147It was this law of which Paul spoke, Anno Domini 60, when he said, "By the law is (not was) the knowledge of sin;" and "I had not known sin, but by the law; for I had not known unlawful desire, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." Rom. 3:20 and 7:7. It was this law of which James spoke, about the sixtieth year of the Christian era, when he said, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty (not was guilty) in respect to all. For he who said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill." And it may be truly added, He who said do not kill, said also, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. John referred to the same law when he said, A. D. 90, "Sin is (not was) the transgression of the law." If transgression of the law was sin, Anno Domini 90, what is it now? The truth is, my dear brethren, Jehovah has always had one standard of morality and only one; and a violation of this standard of right, always was, and always will be, sin. What change then took place at the introduction of the new dispensation? Not a change of that law by the transgression of which all men are sinners; but a change in the outward acts by which we come to God for remission of sins. For example: From the days of Abel to the coming of the Lord, men were required to acknowledge their faith in the promised Messiah by the shedding of blood, which pointed forward to the sacrifice of Christ. Now we are required to show our faith in a crucified and risen Saviour, by being baptized into his death. Changes similar to this are all that Jehovah made; man has made the rest. The first four of the ten commandments contain our duty to God alone—duties which naturally grow out of our relation to God, the universal Father. 1. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." 2. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them." We are not, in deed, to admit the existence of another god. 3. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." We must not speak the name of Jehovah but with the utmost reverence. 4. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." We must acknowledge, in deed, that God is the Maker of the world and all its inhabitants. "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Here, then, at the creation, God erected a monument sacred to the memory of the Creator. We talk of moral and positive precepts; but who, brethren, shall decide which of the above four has the most morality about it?