Chaff and Wheat by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 25, 1873

Chaff and Wheat.

By R. F. Cottrell

We have before us an article in the Watchman and Reflector by Rev. Justin D. Fulton, D. D., headed, ‘The Sabbath a Day of Rest, which contains a mixture of truth and error strange and rare, we should say, were not such productions so common at the present time. It is not our intention to review the article, but to winnow out the wheat. We will give, however, one specimen of the chaff, the word of men, which, were it the word of God, would greatly relieve our first-day friends who desire a thus saith the Lord for their practice.

He says, “On the first day of the week, Jesus rose from the grave, and finally rested from the work he had done; wherefore the ascended Lord blessed the first day, and sanctified it.”

If this is true, the record of it in the Scriptures is just what is needed to make them perfect, and to thoroughly furnish the man of God to the good work of keeping Sabbath on the first day of the week. See 2 Tim. 3: 16, 17. But enough of the chaff; let us have the wheat, the word of the Lord, “wholesome words,” “sound doctrine,” teaching in harmony with, and based upon, the word of the Lord. As such we give the following extracts:—

‘1. The Sabbath was God’s earliest gift to man. It was made for man. The Sabbath was not first made, and then man made to observe it; but man was first made and the Sabbath was made to be observed by him, and for his benefit. The Sabbath commemorated God’s work of creation. When the law was delivered to Moses, the words, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,’ presupposed its previous existence. From Adam to Moses, weeks had come and weeks had gone, and the Sabbath had been more or less observed, as is shown by the marking of time by seven days, the gathering of manna, &c. Its universal and permanent obligation is apparent from the fact that the divine command was actually delivered at the creation, and was addressed to the whole human species alike; and, as Dr. Paley says: ‘continues, unless repealed by some subsequent revelation, binding upon all who come to the knowledge of it.’

“BINDING ON ALL.

“The observance of the Lord’s day is binding on all. The intimation that it is not, at one blow strikes out the corner-stone from the jurisprudence of the world. Blackstone, Kent, Story, and other distinguished law writers, declare the commands given to the world amid the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai is the foundation of law. To rob the decalogue of one of its brightest and most precious gems, to degrade the fourth commandment from its lofty position as one of the great and immutable laws of God, and to treat the divine statute, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to sanctify it,’ as a mere ceremonial or ritual appointment, the observance of which has passed into desuetude with the types and shadows of the Mosaic dispensation; this has long been the desire of all whose religious sensibilities, not being sufficiently spiritual to discern the true excellency of the design of the Sabbath, and its sanctifying influence wherever faithfully understood and used, have thus encouraged them to lower and dishonor God’s holy day, and by aiding the worldly and the dissolute with their false and specious arguments, have thereby given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.”

“Destroy the binding force of the command to observe the Sabbath ordinance, and you set aside every other part of the decalogue. We are forbidden to lie, to steal, to commit adultery, to blaspheme, no more than we are forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath and give it up to pleasure-seeking and God-defying practices.”

We thought to close this writing with the above extracts, but do not feel free to leave it, without confessing our ignorance of how “the fourth commandment,” “one of the great and immutable laws of God,” could be so changed as to demand the observance of another day, a day blessed and sanctified four thousand years after the Sabbath was instituted, for another reason, and to commemorate another event, and yet the original commandment remain immutable—not a word nor even a letter changed. This is too deep for me. I cannot comprehend it. I cannot see how a law binding us to observe the fourth of July, because our revolutionary fathers signed the declaration of independence on that day, can bind us to observe the eighth of January in its stead, because thirty-eight and a half years afterward, a battle was fought and a victory gained at New Orleans. It is true that the eighth of January is the three hundred and sixty-fifth part of a year; but still it is not the fourth of July. And the declaration of independence and the victory at New Orleans are distinctly two things; but no more so than the creation of the world and the resurrection of Christ. And until I can believe that a law to bind us to the observance of the fourth of July as the day of the declaration, actually binds us to observe the eighth of January instead of the fourth of July, I never can be made to believe that the command to keep holy the seventh day, because it was the rest day of God at creation, binds us to keep the first day in its stead, because Jesus rose from the dead on that day.

Does not such mutation of an immutable law destroy its binding force, and, as our writer says, “set aside every other part of the decalogue?” Is God honored and well pleased with such absurdities perpetrated and palmed off upon the credulous in his name.

R. F. Cottrell.