More Mort by C. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1874

“More Mort.”

By C. S.

In No. 1, present volume of the REVIEW, were presented a few remarks on Eze. 13:10–15, where the prophet speaks of daubing the wall with untempered mortar. It was applied in a general sense to the cry of peace that is raised to quell the fears of the world when danger is impending. This would not forbid its application to particular questions, to anything in fact, by which it is sought to quiet the consciences of the people, while they are pursuing a course contrary to the Scriptures, thus saying peace to the wicked when there is no peace, and that it shall be well with him, when God has said that it shall be ill with him.

We think that in a particular sense it is to be applied to such questions, and that this is especially true as it relates to the Sabbath question. Here is the wall of Sunday-keeping which men have built up, and would fain make us believe that it is established in place of the Sabbath of the Lord. The structure is rudely shaken in these days, and great is the diligence of the master masons in applying the mortar to make it stand. Like a bowing wall it threatens to give out at this point and that, and the cry, “More mort!” is raised all along the line. Those who furnish it seem to be prompt to respond, and here comes another hodful of the untempered mixture:—

“Messrs. Editors:—I observe that one of your correspondents warmly advocates a seventh-day Sabbath. The response in your paper of June 13, offers good arguments for the first day of the week, but hardly sufficient to convince the brother. Allow me to say how the case looks to me. Jehovah created this world in six days, and last of all he made man. He rested on the seventh, and ordained it as a day of rest for man and beast. Of course Adam obeyed, and his descendants. But what day did Adam keep? Certainly that on which God rested. But that was to Adam the first day, the first of the year, the first of his existence. Thus it continued till Moses. Then mankind became separated into Jew and Gentile.”

The foregoing extract is credited to the pen of Howard Malcom, and is quoted from the Baptist paper, the Standard, by the World’s Crisis of June 17, 1874.

If we are now keeping the same day that Adam kept, which is a different day from the one observed by the Jews during their long history, it follows that the Sabbath has been changed twice, once from the first to the seventh day when given to the Jews, and back from the seventh to the first again, when given to Christians. He who undertakes to prove one change of the Sabbath, has undertaken a task difficult enough. What then shall we say of that desperation which attempts to prove two changes to sustain a predetermined theory? Yet this view is entitled to some respect inasmuch as it is a frank acknowledgment that the Sabbath originated at creation, and that the same day that Adam kept is binding on us.

But aside from the double absurdity of two changes of the Sabbath, let us inquire into the fact which is assumed as the basis of this position. Was God’s rest-day Adam’s first day? We say it was not. To say it was, contradicts the most explicit statements of an explicit record. In Genesis 1, the creation of Adam and Eve is placed, it is true, as the last of the creative acts. But it is certain that Eve was created on the sixth day as well as Adam. Now let us see what transpired after Adam was created. The beasts were then in existence, and God called them to Adam that he might name them. One by one they came before him and received their names. Gen. 2:19, 20. How long a time would this take? No inconsiderable portion of the day, certainly. Then none being found as an associate meet for Adam, he was thrown into a deep sleep and from one of his ribs the woman was formed and brought unto the man. Then time was taken to give to the wedded pair the instruction recorded in the closing verses of Gen. 1. Yet all this experience that Adam had on the sixth day, all the instruction he received from God, and all the time occupied in these matters, are to be thrown out of the account, and the seventh day called the first day of his existence, as if he had no consciousness and no part in life’s experiences before that time. How preposterous is such an idea!

But even supposing the seventh day had been Adam’s first day, how would that change the reckoning of time? Was Adam such an independent being that he could bid good-by to God, and say, Here, I care nothing for the days upon which you have previously worked, nor the cycle of time you have established. This is the first day of my existence, and now I will take the matter into my own hands, and establish a reckoning to suit myself. I start a new week, and this is the first day of it, and this first day I will henceforth keep as the Sabbath. No doubt some men now-a-days feel as independent as this; but Adam, just from the hand of his Maker, knew better; and they do him injustice when they represent him as guilty of the same audacity.

The next paragraph to the one above quoted reads:—

“When the Israelites were led up out of Egypt, Moses called all Israel, and said to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, the statutes which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them and keep them.’ He then rehearses the law given at Horeb; but let it be noticed that in regard to the Fourth, he assigns an entirely new reason for the particular day to be kept. See Deut. 5:15.”

What evil instinct is it that leads first-day writers to go invariably to Deut. 5:15, instead of to the original enactment of the law in Ex. 20:8–11? God himself, it is there recorded, spoke his commandments from Sinai in such majesty and power that the whole earth was shaken with the voice of the Deity. Heb. 12:26. The record of Deut. 5 was simply a rehearsal to the children of Israel, in a comparatively private manner, forty years AFTER the law was given on Sinai, of the principal facts in their experience during that forty years. Why do people go to this rehearsal for the Sabbath law instead of to the words which God himself uttered from Sinai? We have repeatedly pressed them with this question, but never yet succeeded in getting an answer. If they will not answer, we must answer for them: They know that the original command in Ex. 20 points back to creation for the origin of the Sabbath, and for the facts upon which it is based, and that the day enjoined in the commandment is the identical day of the week upon which God rested in the beginning and which he commanded Adam to keep. But in Deut. 5, they find a reference to the deliverance from Egypt, and the words, “Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day;” and that suits them much better; for they think they can make the duty of Sabbath-keeping rest on the deliverance from Egypt. But God commanded them to deal mercifully and justly for the same reason. Deut. 15:15; 24:18, 22. Does the duty of practicing justice and mercy rest on the deliverance from Egypt? It does just as much as that of Sabbath-keeping rests there. The fact is, all these expressions were simply an appeal to the gratitude of the Israelites, over the great fact of their deliverance from Egypt.

But the present use of Deut. 5:15, looks to us as peculiarly censurable. The writer says: “When the Israelites were led up out of Egypt, Moses called all Israel,” &c. Now this calling together of Israel was forty years after they were led up out of Egypt; yet the language would imply and seems to have been intended to convey the idea, that it was at that time. How would it sound if we should change it to suit the facts thus: “When the Israelites were led up out of Egypt [that is, forty years afterward], Moses called all Israel and said to them,” &c.

After quoting Deut. 5:15, the writer says: “Now here is a plain change of the day, and a reason given for it.” The Sabbath is here enjoined, but is there any intimation that this Sabbath was on a different day from that of the Sabbaths before it? Not a syllable of it. Nothing less than a doctor of divinity’s theological microscope could here discover “a change and the reason for it.”

Again he says: “Mankind up to the exodus had not been divided into Jew and Gentile, but now the Jews were to be a distinct people. We reply that the Jews were already a distinct people, not under the appellation of Jews, which term did not come into general use till after the captivity, but as the descendants of Abraham. Were they not a distinct people during their four hundred years’ sojourn in Egypt? Were they not a distinct people before they went down to Egypt? Was not Abraham separated from his father’s house for this very purpose, that his posterity might be a distinct people? No new distinction was established at the exode. They were just as distinct before as afterward. It is astonishing that men will make such assertions.”

Now we come to his closing paragraph which in some respects surpasses all the rest. He says:—

“But, when Christ came to establish a universal religion, alike for Jew and Gentile, the ceremonial law, and the seventh-day Sabbath which was a part of it, was abolished. The worship-day reverted to its original appointment, the first day of the week.”

Let the reader look at these statements a moment. First, God changed the Sabbath at the exode, so that the only people he then had on earth did not have the Sabbath as originally appointed. Secondly, in making this change, the Sabbath somehow became a part of the ceremonial law. Thirdly, when Christ came, the ceremonial law was abolished; and the seventh-day Sabbath, to which the original worship-day had been changed, and the only one then in existence, was abolished with it. Fourthly, after the worship-day was thus abolished, it then reverted to its original appointment, the first day of the week.

We think this is what Artemas Ward would call a “conglomerated mux.” And if here is not some daubing with untempered mortar, where shall we find it?

Another curious thing about the matter is that the Crisis, which is known to advocate a very different view of the Sabbath from this, hands this out to its readers as light on the Sabbath question. Thus they virtually say, What matters if our views do not agree; if it only makes against this terrible seventh-day theory, that is enough. Anything that will make our tottering wall to stand, no matter what—pass it along. More mort! More mort! C. S.