Mutations of Dr. Aker by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1875

Mutations of Dr. Aker.

By Jos. Clarke

The Sabbath is a fixed fact in Bible history. It ended creation week, with the acclamations of the universe, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Here was only its inauguration. In the desert, by fall of double rations of manna on the sixth day, and none on the seventh for forty years, in the presence of three millions of people, and of Moses and Joshua, men of renown, the Sabbath of paradise was attested on (52x40 =2080) two thousand and eighty different occasions, at intervals of a week each, consecutively.

In the midst of this mighty and long continued miracle, the moral law of ten precepts was proclaimed by the mouth of our much-profaned and insulted Jehovah. Earth trembled and shook at his voice, as he said, “Remember the Sabbath day,” the very day he pointed out, by the failure of the fall of the manna, and the seventh of the week of creation.

Again, Luke says by the word of inspiration that they (the holy women) rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.

In the face of such evidence the learned Aker stands up, and gravely tells people that somewhere on the way a day is lost and that a day is gained, or to that effect. It makes no matter; a day is slipped out of the calendar; Moses lost the count somehow or other. Of course it is now by accident all right again.

It really makes one's heart ache to think that such a theory could find adherents. It could not, if it were not for its being a lame apology for a custom which has become stale because of its origin and its age—that is, Sunday Sabbatizing—having Paganism for its mother, and Rome for its godmother, and Protestantism for its sponsor and guardian.

This institution, like all the institutions of papacy, is becoming gray with age, and is bound to fall with its authors, abettors, and apologists. All sorts of arguments are adduced; and among them, this one of Dr. Aker, of the loss of a day, somewhere on the way from Egypt to Canaan. Dunces indeed, he would make the people of God. He would make them all at once, and at the same time, leap over a day in the calendar, and then all at once and at the same time, agree upon the next succeeding day. If such a thing were possible, it is truly an interesting possibility, a curious possibility. Were they so frightened on that lost day that they lost their individuality, as a people, for twenty-four mortal hours, and then regained it. Did all of these Israelites, with Moses and Joshua, from the child to the chief, lie on the cold ground unconscious, with no one to keep count of the days of the week?

Truly, this last dodge of the cunning fox of error is one of a thousand; and one is at a loss to know which is the greater, the audacity of its author, or the credulity of its adherents.

JOS. CLARKE.