Honest Confessions by D. H. Lamson

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 6, 1874

Honest Confessions.

By D. H. Lamson

In “Congregational Lectures,” by Robert Halley, D. D., Eng. Part I., Tenth Series, a work of no small repute in the denomination, are the following ingenious words. It is a pity that the Baptists are in a position in which the blow must be received so squarely. But it is not so much a regret that, in rebounding, it strikes as effectually the doctrine of sprinkling for baptism.

After filing a bill of exceptions to the practice of immersion, the lecturer says:—

“The Christian law of the Sabbath (as our Baptist friends concur with us in interpreting it, and as I honestly believe they rightly interpret it) will carry us a great deal farther than we are required to go in order to justify our mode of administering the rite of baptism. Between the law of the Sabbath, as the Christian church almost universally construes it, and the law of the Sabbath in the letter of its enactment, the difference is far greater than that which exists between the immersion and the sprinkling of proselytes.

“The Sabbath is essentially a rest, a day of cessation from ordinary labor, enjoined, not of Moses, but of the fathers, instituted at the creation of the world, hallowed by the blessing of the Creator on the placid survey of all his works, the only precious relic of the religious institutions of paradise, the only day exempted from the dreadful curse of exhausting toil. Consecrated to rest, it is the memorial of the complacency with which God looked upon the world as complete on the seventh day. The spirit of the law is accredited in the devout obedience of one day in the week; but than the seventh day there is no other Sabbath of positive enactment.”

It is a fallacy to suppose that the spirit of the law can be kept, and we disregard the letter. The letter can be observed and not its spirit; and that obedience will be accredited by the Lord, if in exact conformity with his word.

If God says, The seventh day is the Sabbath, and men observe the first day in preference, knowing the letter of the command, it is will-worship, and cannot be accredited. It would seem that the lesson of Lev. 10: 1, 2, would be sufficient to deter any one from taking any such position. One would suppose that the sons of Aaron, the high priest of God’s appointment, would escape the penalty for presumptuous sin, if any one. “And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he COMMANDED THEM NOT. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.”

They must have reasoned like this: The spirit of the commandment is to burn the incense; any fire will do that, and we will not be particular. But what says the Lord? “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified.”

Let us now see where this advocate of sprinkling and Sunday-keeping again places himself:—

“We commemorate the resurrection of our Lord by the hallowing of the first day of the week instead of commemorating the repose of creation on the seventh; but to commemorate the resurrection of Christ by the religious observance of any day, we have no express command in all the Scriptures. There is no such positive law in the church. The primitive Christians met to break bread on the first day of the week at Corinth [Who says so?], at Troas, and I doubt not in other places; but that they observed the day as a Sabbath we are not told; nor, if they did, that by it they commemorated the resurrection of Christ. Our Baptist friends may have no doubt of the fact, neither have we; but in the New Testament, our only code, there is no enactment, there is not even distinct information. To commemorate the resurrection of Christ by the festival of the Sunday is no more a positive enactment of Scripture than to commemorate his death by the fast of the Friday.”

In considering the above, who can see the difference between the sin of Nadab and Abihu and that which men commit to-day? God commanded them not to offer strange fire, but that which was consecrated. They kept not his commandment, and died. Neither God nor Christ have commanded us to keep the first day of the week as a memorial of anything or for any other purpose; but God did consecrate the seventh day to religious worship. Now, if we do what God has not commanded, and by this means neglect to do what he has commanded, shall we not as surely perish? If we do it wittingly, we cannot escape.

It is a true statement, and we are obliged to Mr. H. for the admission, that the fast of Friday is obligatory for the same reasons that Sunday is considered so; and the Catholic church is right when she says that such holy days as the Sunday, Ash Wednesday, passion day, and good Friday, all rest on the same foundation, viz., the ordinance of the church.

But let us read still further:—

“What then is the law of the Sabbath? By its letter I am commanded to observe the seventh day in commemoration of the creation of the world; but as in its spirit I observe another day in commemoration of another event, in doing so, I can appeal in justification to no positive law respecting the change; for of such a law there is not a shadow in the New Testament. It is true this reasoning will not apply to Seventh-day Baptists.”

God be praised for that! nor S. D. Adventists either. Both know that these twin relics of popery must stand or fall together.

“The Sabbath is not like the passover, Mosaic, not like circumcision, restricted to the family of Abraham, but the law of Adam, the law of his posterity, the law of all the world, founded upon a positive command, more express, as well as far more extensive, than any which enjoined baptism or the Lord’s supper.”

What words are these! but how few will follow their obvious import. The truths of the last quotation are almost self-evident, and scarcely need an argument to prove them so; yet thousands will go directly contrary to an EXPRESS command of God that they may keep their own tradition; and I quote now an apology; it can be called neither a reason nor an argument, but it is the best for the doctrine of sprinkling or the Sunday-Sabbath that can be adduced:—

“Sprinkling is surely as much baptism as observing the first day of the week is hallowing the seventh.”

Conclusion: Sprinkling is baptism. Now let us prove Sunday-keeping the same way. Sunday is as truly the Sabbath, or, in other words, the first day is as surely the seventh day, as sprinkling is baptism. Conclusion: The first day is the seventh day, and Sunday is the Sabbath. If these points are not clear to every one, then the densest fog will not make a clear day, nor the foulest mud, clear water.

I wish the Baptists would get out of the way, and not be stumbling-blocks longer. I feel, like Mr. Halley, to hold them in some degree responsible, which he certainly does, in the following words:—

“The principles of the Baptists led numbers of people into the religious observance of Saturday. Such I think is their proper tendency; and in abandoning Sabbatarianism our Baptist friends appear to me to surrender in practice the whole argument which they painfully elaborate by their philosophy.”

That Baptists do thus stultify themselves is a plain truth, and it is humiliating indeed to have so grave a charge come so close home to them. It is true, and the point cannot be well evaded, that the same process of reasoning that would prove sprinkling of divine appointment, or even admissible as a mode of baptism, would also prove Sunday-keeping the fulfillment of the requirement to keep the seventh day. This Mr. Halley directly says:—

“Their right to substitute the first day for the seventh, in order to commemorate the resurrection of Christ, without a particle of Scripture law, is an authority for substituting sprinkling for immersion, even if they can prove we make the substitution with which we are charged.”

But the right to do either, we deny. No man or body of men, in church capacity or otherwise, have a right to substitute an institution or tradition of their own for an express command of God. No man or body of men ever yet did it without meriting the displeasure of God. It is a presumptuous sin, which they commit at imminent risk. This the Judgment will surely reveal.

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments,” not substitute something in their place, which he has not commanded. This the Pharisees did with the fifth commandment; Matt. 15: 6-9; Mark 7: 13; the Catholics, with the second and fourth; and the Protestant world, almost universally, with the fourth, to keep their own tradition. It is nothing else, as this man candidly admits. To keep God’s commandments “is the whole duty of man.” “For God will bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” As in all the past, so may we not now forget that when God commands, obedience is required. D. H. LAMSON.

Armada, Mich.