THE INFLUENCE OF THE OBSERVANCE OF THE TRUE SABBATH UPON THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
Text: Prov. 22:28: “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”
The cause of the holy Sabbath among both the Seventh-day Baptists and the Seventh-day Adventists in this country has had a peculiar and instructive origin. It has been connected with a special phase of religious life, which has fashioned largely its fundamental ideas, and determined the spirit through which it has thus far been established. An enlightened, sensitive, and vigorous conscience has furnished the seminal principle from which this cause sprang, and by which it is now sustained. It is not the product of any sharp intellectual controversy over mere doctrinal questions, and it is very far from being the outgrowth of an emotional life. It is, in fact, the attitude of the whole soul, with its promptings and choices, under the teachings of the Scriptures, toward a great truth, taught and enforced by the authority of our Divine Master. In this attitude are found those qualifications by which the “mind and the law of Christ,” as our fathers were accustomed to say, can be clearly discerned, accepted, and obeyed.
As you well know, the Sabbath reform began its first operations in this country early in the history of New England. Within fifty years after the landing of the Pilgrims, Sabbath-keepers had embraced the truth, and were protesting cautiously but firmly against the Sunday of the papal hierarchy. Four years ago last December, on the third Sabbath of that month, we were reminded in many of the Sabbath-keeping churches that two centuries before, on that very day, a company of seven Christian men and women formed the first Sabbath-keeping Society in America. On the day previous, the 21st of the month, the descendants of the Puritans of New England celebrated in many villages and cities throughout our land the advent of their fathers to our shores. The little band of Sabbath-keepers at Newport, R. I., and the resolute voyagers on the Mayflower, struggled for ends which have more than an accidental connection. It is not a mere casual circumstance that in this audience, and on this platform, meet the President of your Conference and myself—he, a lineal descendant of Peregrine White, the first-born among the families of the Pilgrim Fathers after they left the Old World, and I, a descendant of the first converts to the Sabbath in this country.
The results which have been achieved by the settlers at Plymouth and the Sabbath-keepers of Rhode Island are widely diverse at the present time; but the spirit and purpose which animated both were similar in many respects. A religious impulse was the underlying and quickening power. In the one, it has applied itself to form and uphold new social customs, civil institutions, and political ideas, as well as reformed churches; in the other, it has withstood the contradiction of the world in maintaining a neglected precept of God.
Robinson, the pastor of the church at Leyden, says in his address to the Pilgrims, on their departure for America, “I am very confident that the Lord has more truth and light yet to break out of his holy word.” Stennett, preaching for a Sabbath-keeping church in London, writes to the “remnant in Rhode Island,” as follows: “We have abundant reason to bless our dear Father, who hath opened our eyes to behold the wonders of his law, while many of his dear servants are in the dark.” The inhabitants at Plymouth and Newport both condemned the idolatrous practices and the unscriptural observances of the church. They called them “anti-christian bondage,” and set up the simplest ceremonies for themselves. The former withdrew from their homes in England to enjoy greater “liberties and privileges”; and the latter demanded that “they be not forced to see with others’ eyes,” and that “they have their liberty to walk by themselves.” Both strove to establish at the beginning civil and ecclesiastical governments which should be just expressions of the Divine will. One party yielded rightful obedience to royal authority, with the provision that “the thing commanded be not against God’s word.” The other “submitted their persons, lives, and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and to all those perfect and absolute laws of his, given us in his holy word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby.” The Bible was the universal statute-book.
The Puritans and the Sabbatarians were also fully imbued with the colonizing spirit—the central impulse of modern civilization. They strengthened themselves, propagated their views, and gained vantage ground, by steadily advancing their settlements westward into the wilderness. Your own movement as Sabbath-keepers, while it began in New England, very soon found its greatest strength in western communities. Both parties maintained most strenuously the principle of religious dissent—the characteristic feature of the Protestant belief; and they secured through it a clearness of conviction, an independence of character, and a manliness of opinion, which may well challenge the admiration of the world.
But in no respect were they more similar than in the careful education of the conscience and the high regard which they paid to its decisions. Early in the non-conformist agitation in England, the Puritan ministers uttered the charge against the prelates of the established church, “We have besought them to convince our consciences by the Scriptures.” Writes Robinson to the members of his former flock, then on their way to America, while speaking of “a man’s conscience being sealed up by the Spirit of the Lord,” that “great shall be his security and peace in all dangers, sweet his comforts in all distresses, and happy deliverance from all evil, whether in life or death.” The freemen of the country were required to subscribe to an oath, before exercising their rights of citizenship and enacting any laws, that “I solemnly bind myself in the sight of God that I will give my vote and suffrage as I shall judge in mine own conscience may best conduce and tend to the public weal.” Hiscox, the leader of the little company at Newport, says with some warmth to those opposing his Sabbath views, “Do you think to judge me out of my conscience?” To them no complaint was more offensive than that they “had not conscience towards God in those matters.” When your own leaders first embraced the doctrine of the third message of the angel, your father Bates declared that it “contained a most solemn warning against the worship of the beast and his image, and presents to notice the commandments of God.” As this thought stirred and strengthened their moral sense, the conviction was established that “before Christ comes his people must observe all of God’s commandments.” One of your oldest Sabbath-keepers tells me that when he embraced the fourth commandment, the subject of the true Sabbath became a question of life or death to him.
The history of all times does not furnish more complete examples of individuals and communities under the control of a high moral nature. The central and inspiring power in the early colonies of New England was this religious conscience. To satisfy it and enjoy peace of mind, they endured the most severe privations. Wealth, position, and honors were cheerfully sacrificed to it. The dangers of settlement in a distant wilderness, in an inhospitable climate, and among implacable savages, were gladly encountered. Their hopes of success in the future were chiefly sustained by their convictions that they were obeying the dictates of duty. Their domestic, social, and religious practices, all assumed the exact, rigid, and uncompromising phases of a thoroughly cultivated and dominant conscience. To its sway and molding influence, they subjected their doctrinal views and questions. When led into error by prejudice or imperfect investigation, they became sternly intolerant, and persecuted with saintly grace. They had no sympathy for any of those forms of spiritual faith which discard or neglect the written word, the divine formulas of religious belief, or the positive precepts of a holy law. The light which guided them came not from a source within themselves, but from the Author of all truth.
The consciences of the New England fathers received their characteristic exhibition in the acceptance and observance of the institution of weekly rest and worship: on the one hand, the Puritan Sunday; and on the other, the holy Sabbath. To make the former binding, or relieve the mind under its sense of moral obligation, a divine authority for it as a sacred day must be discovered, or so ingeniously invented as to deceive or confuse its advocates. A Sabbath resting on human device, or originating in papal arrogance, had the Puritans comprehended the fact, would have been rejected with scorn and contempt. We hardly dare give ourselves the privilege of thinking what might have been the results had they clearly apprehended the truth on this subject, and furnished the grand impulse to sustain the rejected Sabbath of the Lord by their strong, original, and steadfast natures. Alas! they were deceived; and they accepted the fallacy that the New Testament affords the proofs that Christ and his apostles authorized a change of holy rest from the seventh to the first day of the week. From the Old Testament they borrowed the Jewish rules for the manner of keeping the Sabbath, and transferred them to their Sunday, as they found in these the divine directions which would bind their consciences, and best accord with their rigid and serious ways of life. Amid the loose manners and corrupt practices of their age, they sought in the very beginning of their agitation, to establish a stricter observance of their day of worship. The company on the Mayflower, after a tedious voyage, close by the land where they were to make their future home, amid the blasts of winter, deferred their landing for a day, since that day was held by them as the Sabbath.
On Sunday usually two services were held. A historian says, “Every kind of recreation was forbidden, as well as every kind of labor. Violations of the Sabbath were made penal under various specifications. It was declared to be profaned by children playing in the streets, by youths, maids, and other persons, both strangers and others, uncivilly walking in the streets and fields, traveling from town to town, going on shipboard, frequenting common houses and other places to drink, sport, or otherwise to misspend their precious time. Traveling out of one’s own town, either on horseback or on foot, or by boats, to any unlawful assembly or meeting was legally held to be servile work, and accordingly a desecration of holy time.” Any crime was aggravated by being committed on that day. Sabbath-breaking was classed with intemperance, gambling, theft, and licentiousness. At Plymouth a fine of two shillings was imposed, in the words of the law, on “any person or persons found smoking tobacco on the Lord’s day, going to or coming from the meetings, within two miles of the meeting-house.” Could we enforce such a law now in every place where God is worshiped in this country, what a physical millennium we would enjoy! After their religious services, the families of the Puritans passed the remainder of the day in domestic and solitary devotion and reading. In these ways, their affections gathered around the Sunday, and they attached to it a sacredness which thousands of their descendants still accept. Departing from the views of either Luther or Calvin on this subject, the Puritans are largely responsible for that tenacious grasp with which the American churches reverence and keep the obnoxious day.
Under such causes and such training of the moral sense, the Sabbath reform, which the Seventh-day Adventists and the Seventh-day Baptists represent, had its beginning in New England. Abroad in Great Britain similar influences were in operation at the time, but not in such an intense and positive form. The non-conformists in England held substantially the same ideas in respect to the “sanctified first-day” as the Puritans in America. They had made a profound impression on the English mind by their teachings on this question, by the time the Mayflower reached this country. As an illustration of this fact, shortly afterwards a member of the Lower House of Parliament was expelled for “maintaining in the debate on a bill for the stricter observance of Sunday, that that day was erroneously identified with the Jewish Sabbath, and that relaxations and sports did not profane it.”
Whenever the true Sabbath is intelligently embraced and observed, two conditions of the mind are attained; because they are essential. The conscience must be stimulated and exercised until it becomes strong and acute in a high degree;146and a courage and manliness of soul must be cultivated, so that one will obey his convictions though he stand alone and endure many privations. The events in the early history of Rhode Island conspired to prepare some of its inhabitants to accept the truth of the fourth precept. Richly endowed as were the colonists in other parts of New England with the inestimable traits which a Puritan education had formed, it is altogether probable that in no other place within her borders could a prominent and stable movement in favor of the seventh-day Sabbath have been started two hundred years ago.
From what I know of the origin of your people, I judge that the culture of New England thirty years since furnished the best conditions of any portion of our country for uniting the Sabbath doctrine with your advent views. When the subject of the Sabbath was first agitated in Rhode Island, nearly two hundred families had settled in different localities in the State. They had been drawn together, in some respects, by a similarity of views; but more from the fact that full toleration of all religious opinions and practices was allowed. Many of them had fled or withdrawn from the other colonies because they had been fined, whipped, imprisoned, ostracized, or threatened with punishment on account of their religious views and their bold and persistent avowal of them. Professed historians, even to this day, have followed these earnest, independent, and conscientious people with some of the prejudices felt against them two hundred years since, and have stigmatized them as “uneasy spirits,” with “eccentric humors,” the embodiment of “the spirit of dissent and contradiction,” and as “malcontents.” With such epithets, have you not also become familiar?
The majority of the people in that State, and especially their leaders, were rare examples of the sternest integrity and adherence to great principles. To them were given the insight and the wisdom to know that the purposes and the ideas embraced in the Puritan movement both at home and abroad included, in its very nature, as necessary to its success, the conditions of absolute civil and religious liberty. The mind must be free and unembarrassed in its researches to discover the fullest truth, either political or religious. For the most perfect development of conscience, and, therefore, of the highest and most consistent Christian life, there must be no legal interference and no social persecution. The right of private judgment must be carefully respected, even in matters of known error. An established faith, enforced by legal enactments with accompanying threats and penalties, a morality determined by statutes and public opinion, produce always a servile, truckling, hesitating, and compromising spirit. But the founders of the Rhode Island communities have received due honors in forming the first earthly government which is based on the principle of affording equal liberty, civil and religious, to all its subjects; and their views are now very largely recognized and adopted in the systems of national polity in this country and in England.
In such an atmosphere of toleration and stern convictions, it was natural for the mind to turn to its own conscience, and rely upon its guidance in determining its doctrines of belief and its rules of behavior. To reach the highest degree of certainty, investigation and discussion must ensue to attain the truth. These old converts to the Sabbath turned to the Scriptures to find the commands of God and the testimonies of Jesus, by which they might be enlightened, in the most perfect manner, in their judgment of the right and the wrong. In this way their thoughts were quickened and enlarged, and their researches into biblical knowledge became exact and thorough in a remarkable degree. Thrown upon the sacred teachings as the ultimate resort for their guidance, they were strongly predisposed to accept their requirements and principles in their most obvious and literal sense. They strove to test the correctness of the saying, “The entrance in of thy words giveth light.” No mere spiritualizing of the passages of the Scriptures, or interpreting their injunctions to suit personal convenience or public customs, was justified by the genius of the people. The keepers of the Sabbath were led, without doubt, by the controversy on baptism, in which the people of Rhode Island and other communities were involved, and by the bias and culture of thought which it produced, to follow the plain and honest meaning of the statements, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” and, “They rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” The same method of explaining the texts of the Bible, so as to require the form of immersion as the only gospel baptism, and that the administration of this rite must be confined to adult believers, when applied to the understanding of the divine enactments for the Sabbath, they saw with vision as clear as sunlight positively demanded the rest-day sanctified from the beginning, and the rejection of the Sunday. They were not quieted by the subterfuges found in the theories that only the seventh part of time is required, redemption is greater than creation, and the Jewish Sabbath was abolished with the ceremonial laws. Two centuries of training have not enabled their descendants to see more distinctly than they saw the fallacies of these views, which, at the present time, are fast undermining even the doctrine of the Puritan Sunday, and foisting upon us that of no-sabbathism. Your own experience as Adventists in challenging the commonly received interpretation of many portions of the Scriptures led you, also, to discern plainly the unpopular but genuine meaning of the texts on the Sabbath question.
Our fathers embraced the true Sabbath from no cynical hatred of other men’s opinions, nor from any desire for oddity or notoriety. Slowly and with regret they withdrew from their first-day brethren, whether in Rhode Island, Maine, or elsewhere, with whom they had sustained the most pleasant relations. Nothing was more painful to them, because nothing could be more untrue, than the charge preferred against them by those too shallow or perverse to understand their motives or arguments,—that “they had no conscience in these matters.” In the most patient and loving temper, they cited the scriptural evidences for the correctness and authority of their opinions, and with a boldness we may all well imitate they invited refutation. The necessity was upon them to uphold the despised truth. As they valued the peace of their souls, they durst not utter a thought contrary to the law and the testimony. Set apart and honored in receiving the light upon the Sabbath truth, which they felt had been denied to others as worthy as themselves, they began their work of protest and reform in obscurity and amid many sacrifices, but with the most certain assurances that it would be successful. They strengthened themselves with the conviction that there would be granted to the people of God who accepted his Sabbath great rewards.
Some observers of the Sabbath in England wrote two hundred years ago to their brethren in America that the time would come “when we shall be exalted to ride upon the high places of the earth, and have dignity and prosperity, temporal and spiritual.” They constantly saw that the preservation of the decalogue in its original force and grandeur was clearly connected with the maintenance of the fourth precept. They emphasized the declaration that “the ten commandments continue to be the rule of righteousness unto all men.” They believed the observance of the Sabbath, resting upon the appointment and authority of the Lord, indispensable to securing that purity of character which the reformed churches in their day were attempting to realize.
The attainment of an earnest and serious state of mind conduces to our highest culture in religion; and this can be best acquired only by frequent and profound meditation upon the nature and works of Deity. The Sabbath of the creation, recurring with its stated days of rest from all secular cares and employments, and hallowed by the interesting and sacred events of its long history, furnishes the opportunity for this meditation. Our fathers saw that their vindication of the seventh day as the only Sabbath was the true ground of dissent and opposition to the Papal Church. Her traditions and assumptions they loathed and totally rejected. They held that the legal elements of the gospel would, in the end, have to depend in a great measure upon the influence of the Sabbatic law for their support. While they rejoiced at the inworkings of the Spirit in their hearts—as a divine force imparted to their lives—they demanded outward acts, services, and exact conformity to the divine and written law, as through these the Spirit manifestly operates and blesses our souls. This is the mode of the divine procedure in all other spheres of activity; and must be in the moral realm. God has impressed upon every distinct power, whether physical, vital, or rational, a given form through which it operates most freely and successfully. Then in the religious life certain practices, customs, ordinances, and fixed rules become essential to the growth and even to the continuance of the divine energy in man’s spirit.
Among those who have embraced the Sabbath from an ardent love of the holy law, and have influenced others the most powerfully on this subject, there has prevailed a remarkable uniformity of views on the nature of the Sabbath and the mode of its observance. In the main, they have been as austere in their practices as the Pilgrim Fathers; but more exact and confident in their ideas. Still with their certainty and assurance, they have been more tolerant, perhaps too highly so, of the widespread convictions of their opponents. The day has been observed as a season for the improvement of the heart and the intellect in divine things. Times for worship and religious instruction have been carefully kept. Usually the evening before the day has been devoted to meetings for prayer and conference. At an early date, gatherings, in some form, of the old and the young, for the study of the Bible, were conducted. No class of believers have labored more strenuously against recreations and amusements on the Sabbath. Religious reading and holy thoughts have been urged with becoming firmness. Propriety of demeanor, as in the presence of the Lord on his sacred day, has been taught and exemplified. In these ways we have been educating a sound, forcible, and lively conscience, on which our enterprises as Sabbath reformers have depended for the progress which they have made, and by which they must be sustained to reach a final triumph.
As we note the origin and the gradual development of the Sabbath cause in this country, instructive lessons are impressed upon our minds in respect to the authoritative power of conscience, and the peculiar rewards which it confers.
1. As might be expected, the pioneers and the leaders of our work were upheld by a strong sense of personal satisfaction in the discharge of imperative and self-sacrificing duties. The first convert to the Sabbath in America, Tacy Hubbard, replied to the cruel charge that they made the ten commandments oppressive, preferred against the small company with whom she was numbered, “They are no yoke of bondage to us, but are a good and spiritual law.” Says Hiscox, their first pastor, “They are to be delighted in after the inner man.” A young woman writes nearly two hundred years ago, just previous to the organization of a new church, “Pray for me that I may have more strength to own the ways of his holy commandments, with more delight and largeness of heart.” A Sabbath-keeper in England, imprisoned on account of his views, records about the same time, “It is my lot to sit here alone in the observation of God’s holy Sabbath, yet not without some precious tokens of his presence, which makes a wilderness like an Eden, and a desert like a garden of the Lord.” Joseph Bates among your people says that he “gladly embraced the truth and commenced keeping the Sabbath of the Lord.” In your first meetings he would often exclaim, “Oh, how I love this Sabbath!”
Few pleasures are more gratifying and delightful than the approval of one’s heart in the performance of duty amid the enmity, scorn, and persecution of others. There is a tendency in our religious natures to rejoice in self-sacrifices for the maintenance of a priceless truth. This tendency sustains the heart, which might otherwise falter amid the obstacles encountered in a life devoted to holy endeavors. As the notes of laughter are half hidden in the expressions of weeping, so some of the profoundest joys of the soul are experienced in the severest trials. In such experiences, the holiest and most heroic impulses of our beings are awakened and cultivated. The founders of the Sabbath cause among yourselves, as among my own people, felt that happiness of soul which privations and self-denials in a holy work always create. This happiness seemed to interpret in their minds the great Sabbatic truth, and to endear the holy day to their hearts. They were led, as a consequence, to advocate more ardently, and to observe more strenuously, the fourth commandment. They discovered, as we have, that the law of the Sabbath is preeminently spiritual in its nature, next to that of the precept to love the Lord thy God. When it is accepted in our deepest convictions, it feeds, invigorates, and purifies our religious being. The mind is not disturbed with the distrust that there is no divine authority for the day of weekly rest which we observe.
2. As advocates of the true Sabbath, we have been the most successful in impressing our views upon others, and in securing converts to these views, when we have worked as earnest and aggressive reformers. With all Christian believers, we are under obligations to seek the conversion of men from their sins. But a special and imperative duty rests upon us to show the members of first-day churches, as well as impenitent men, that they violate a commandment of God. The consciences of both classes must be moved, instructed, and strengthened. We cannot wait to be invited to do this work. The impulse from the Spirit is to warn and convince at once. Opposition must not be dreaded, but must be expected. The judgments of God upon commandment-breakers must be proclaimed. The great evils inflicted upon the cause of Christ by Sunday-keeping must be portrayed. When such a course has been thoroughly pursued, thousands of men indifferent to our cause, or ignorant of its requirements, have been strangely agitated.
The first observers of the Sabbath in this country believed that the Christian world would, in a short time, accept God’s holy day. They did not expect that this result would be reached through their labors. The teachings of the Bible are so plain on the Sabbath question, and God is so interested in sustaining the decalogue, so they thought, that this end would be secured without any extensive agitation. My people acted on this theory for one hundred and fifty years. Occasionally some bold preacher would challenge a community, and a Sabbath discussion would be held. At last the conviction dawned upon us that sharp, persistent, and well-planned attacks must be made upon Sunday-keepers. For fifty years we have used many of the agencies which belong distinctively to reform movements. In that time we have seen our greatest prosperity in all departments of our work. We are gathering our forces and are carefully training them for a severe conflict in the near future.
In your short history, your remarkable success in converting men to the Sabbath is due to your active, courageous, and uncompromising efforts in teaching the law of God. You began with the view that very many believers in Christ must be informed of their mistakes and their sins. The time for work was deemed short by you. The message has passed, in a quarter of a century, from ocean to ocean; and thousands among you now rejoice in keeping the commandments of God.
3. Our cause will triumph. Already do we see excellent fruits of the contest. Old arguments are abandoned, and new but untenable positions are assumed by our opponents. A vast number of the non-religious people declare that we have the truth. Thousands of first-day keepers are so disturbed in their consciences that they are timid and silent, or uncertain and restless. Vast numbers fear to touch the dangerous question, and condemn all discussion upon it. They dread the impending changes, as do the inhabitants in the valleys of Switzerland the overhanging masses of snow and ice upon the mountains. They dare not clap their hands, lest the noise bring the avalanche upon them.
Here and there isolated believers and small companies of converts are coming into the light. The tendencies of our times are sharpening and correcting men’s consciences. An undercurrent in the opinions and feelings of many communities is favorable to our reformatory work. Notices of your gatherings and articles on the Sabbath doctrines are welcomed in the leading secular papers of the Northwest. Our duty is to build the fires all around the horizon. God’s help is pledged in this controversy.
“Get but the truth once uttered, and ’tis like
A star new-born, that drops into its place,
And which, once circling in its placid round,
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.”