Under Bondage | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 2, 1875

Under Bondage.

Bro. Waggoner, in his Review of Baird, pp. 8, 9, speaks as follows upon this point:—

On this subject, referring to the Saviour’s words in Mark 2:27, he says:—

“I think this principle laid down by Christ is the clue by which we may unwind all the difficulties that have been ingeniously or stupidly wound around this Sabbath question, whether by Jews or Adventists, who seek to lure us away from the glorious liberty of the Spirit of Christ, and place us under the bondage of the letter, to which beggarly elements they themselves are in bondage.”

It is no excuse for Mr. Baird that the substance of the above paragraph was drawn from Mr. Robertson; the real author did not clothe it in such exceptionable language. By this we are to understand that Mr. B. thinks if we keep the law just as God spoke it, we are in bondage! Can anything exceed this in impiety? It may, indeed, appear like bondage to the carnal mind, which, Paul says, “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” The carnal mind ever rebels against God’s law; it cannot bear just restraint. And when it cannot justify open rebellion it takes refuge in evasions. Something different from that which God has commanded will suit it better. And it will be content with just difference enough to let self triumph; to evade the cross, and to choose some other way than God’s way.

Reader, is it possible that they who keep God’s law exactly as he spoke it with his own voice—just as he wrote it with his own finger—are “under the bondage of the letter!”? that they are in bondage to “beggarly elements”? How far, judge ye, must we depart from the plain literal reading of God’s holy law to reach that “liberty” of which Mr. Baird boasts? Is it possible that these are the words of a Christian minister? Had they proceeded from one who never learned the distinction between liberty and licentiousness we should not be surprised.