NOTES OF THE DISCUSSION IN KANSAS by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 1, 1877

NOTES OF THE DISCUSSION IN KANSAS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

SIXTH SESSION.

Our sixth session was rather a summary of the arguments previously given. I showed the following absurdities which were involved in the position of my opponent, and of the no-law position generally:—

1. According to this position, there was no law given to anybody till the time of Moses.

2. There was never any law given to the Gentiles. Then why should God hold them guilty of violating his laws as he does in Lev. 20:22, 23; 18:25-28?

3. They can give no reason why the ten commandments were especially singled out and so highly honored as they were, because they claim that these commandments were no better than any others.

4. They make no distinction between moral and ceremonial laws.

5. It makes God abolish moral precepts which he had once carefully promulgated. Think of the absurdity of abolishing such precepts as the following: “Thou shalt not kill;” “Thou shalt not commit adultery;” “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;” “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

6. It makes the Lord abolish ten precepts, and immediately re-enact nine, in order to get rid of one.

7. According to my opponent, there was no law of any account binding on anybody from the cross to Pentecost, fifty days after the crucifixion. How absurd!

8. God gave a law in the most solemn manner, and then sent his Son to abolish it.

9. Christ died to kill the law.

10. Christ cannot die for two laws at the same time. For which law, then, did he die? the one that existed before his death, or the one since that time?

11. He died for his own law, according to them, before that law was given, thus making provision for sin before it was committed.

12. They make Jesus the Christian’s law-giver. Hence, when we sin, we sin against Christ, therefore we need an advocate with him. But the Bible says we have an Advocate with the Father, not with Christ. 1 John 2:1.

13. It makes Christ the advocate with himself, over his own law.

14. The world was in rebellion against the Father. He sent the Son to reconcile the world to himself; 2 Cor. 5:19; but the Son abolished the Father’s law, and set up a law of his own, and thus became a rebel himself!

15. No one can be judged by a dead law. This is true in all criminal laws. Those who lived previous to Christ can never be brought into judgment.

16. When a law is repealed, there must be an explicit record of the repeal; but they can show no such record.

17. Eld. Shick claimed that a new law was given, but he utterly failed to show when it was given, where it was given, who gave it, how many precepts it has, which is the first, which is the last, how it differs from the old law, what its penalty is, or upon whom it is binding. The Elder found these very difficult points to settle.

18. When he undertook to find his new law he found some precepts given before the old law was abolished.

19. And some of his new law he could not find till thirty years after the cross. Indeed, he said that the new law was dropped in here and there along, a piece at a time, and the old did not die till the new law was given. Thus he had some of his new law given before the cross, and before some of the old law had died; but most of his new law was not given till many years after the cross, and hence most of the old law was binding for at least thirty years after the resurrection!

20. We showed that the New Testament, of itself alone, is not sufficient for a rule of faith and practice in everything. There are many important moral duties upon which it is entirely silent, duties which are plainly advocated in the Old Testament. For instance, no one can determine by the New Testament whom it is lawful to marry and whom it is not, such as brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, etc. There is no law in the New Testament regulating the observance of any sacred day. We have to go to the old for that. It does not define what idolatry is. It does not forbid the use of images; it does not prohibit the taking of usury; it does not condemn polygamy; but the Old Testament does plainly forbid all these things.

21. We are scores of times in the New Testament

directly referred right back to the Old Testament as authority in doctrine and practice. 2 Tim. 3:15-17; Eph. 6:1-3; Rom. 13:8-10; and in scores of other places.

SECOND QUESTION.

Eld. Shick maintained that Sunday was set apart by divine example as a sacred day. According to our rules, this question was to be discussed three days. It was absolutely amusing to see the Elder endeavor to kill time by talking about everything but the question. He undertook to lug in all sorts of questions which had no bearing upon the subject. He made lengthy remarks upon Jer. 31:31-34; Isa. 2; Joel 2; and Acts 2. In order to bring him to the question, I simply admitted all that he said, as I did not care whether it was so or was not so. It is not a good plan to follow an opponent in all his little technicalities, or dodges here and there, and arguments foreign to the question. Simply notice them, and very briefly show that they do not touch the question, and then omit them. This is what I did with the Elder. By the way, I should remark that we finally consented to allow the Elder to cut down the time on this proposition from three days to a day and a half, which was then one day more than he knew how to use. Then as I had nothing else to do, I made the following points:—

I showed how important was the change that the Elder claimed,—the abolition of the seventh day and the institution of the first. All new institutions should be very plainly and explicitly stated. This is the way the Lord has always given every institution which he has required men to observe. As an illustration of this fact, see the seventh-day Sabbath, the ordinance of baptism, the Lord’s supper, &c., &c. If any new institution is given, we must be able to show the time when it was given, the place where it was given, the person who gave it, and to whom it was given, how it is to be observed, and by whom. But none of these things can be shown with regard to first-day sacredness. Furthermore, we must be able to show a law touching its observance, because the apostle directly says, “Where no law is there is no transgression.” Rom. 4:15. Again, “sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Rom. 5:13. Now if we can produce no law for Sunday observance, then it is no institution at all, it is no sin to disregard it. Sin never will be imputed to anybody for not keeping it. The Elder was not able to answer any of these important positions.

I showed that the proposition itself was an absurdity, that he had undertaken to prove that which no amount of evidence could prove. He affirmed that it was set apart. This is one definition of to sanctify. Hence he must claim that the first day was sanctified. Secondly, He claimed that it was made sacred. Then he claims equally as much for the first day as we do for the seventh, though he persistently denies it. He says all this was done simply by example. Simple example cannot make anything sacred. If he should show that the apostles met together a thousand times upon the first day of the week, it would not prove that that was a sacred day. God himself rested upon the seventh day, and yet that did not make it a sacred day. It had to be sanctified after that. Gen. 2:1-3. If, then, the example of the Almighty himself would not make a day sacred by resting upon it, then certainly the example of men would not do it.

Furthermore, Eld. Shick, on a previous question, forgetting himself, made statements which utterly killed his present proposition. Thus he said, speaking of the seventh day, “If Paul had a powerful meeting on the seventh day, it does not prove that he kept it.” Then, of course, if Eld. Shick now shows that Paul had a “powerful meeting” on the first day, it will not prove that he kept it, according to his own admission.

Again he said, “By example Paul taught them to shave their heads, and yet that did not prove that we should do it.” All right. Suppose, then, that he can show an example of Paul’s resting on the first day, it would not prove that we should do it. Referring to our great Michigan camp-meeting upon Sunday, he said a historian five hundred years in the future might take that to prove that these Adventists kept Sunday, but it would prove no such thing. All right again. But this statement is fatal to his present argument; for all he claims to prove is simply one example of one meeting of the apostles on the first day of the week. This is all the proof he has. Upon this he has to build everything; but by his own argument on the previous question, it does not prove anything.

He claimed that the Lord’s supper was always celebrated on the first day of the week; but here he squarely contradicted the Bible. The first time it was ever celebrated was certainly not upon the first day of the week. It was the day before the crucifixion, Wednesday or Thursday night. Luke 22:14-20. He has only one case where it was celebrated upon the first day of the week. Acts 20. Hence he cannot prove a custom from one example, and particularly as that was an extraordinary occasion. Acts 20:20-25. There are only two cases recorded where the time is given when the Lord’s supper was celebrated, and both of these were in the night. Luke 22; Acts 20. On the last occasion it was not only in the night, but after midnight.

The custom of every Disciple church, that of taking the Lord’s supper every first day of the week, is built upon one single example in the New Testament, and yet they never follow this example in a single instance, at least not one in a thousand, for in that example it was celebrated in the night, not in the daytime, after midnight, and not at noon. Acts 20:7-13. As he built his entire argument upon this chapter, I examined it very carefully, making the following plain points:—

1. In this text the first day of the week is not called the Sabbath, a Sabbath, the Lord’s day, a sacred day; but simply “first day of the week,” as it always had been in the Old Testament.

2. It is never said that they met upon this day before this time, nor after this time.

3. It is not said that it was their custom to meet upon this day, though it is a remarkable fact that Luke is always very particular to mention anything that had been done according to custom. Luke 1:9; 2:27, 42; 4:16; Acts 16:13; 17:2; 18:3, &c.

4. This is the only religious meeting which is mentioned to have occurred upon that day in the entire history of the Christian church.

5. And this was only an evening meeting, as we frequently have a prayer meeting.

6. There is no law given here touching it, no blessing upon the day, no curse for breaking it.

7. The Lord’s supper was always celebrated at night, so far as the record goes. Luke 22; Acts 20.

8. The Lord’s supper does not commemorate the resurrection, but commemorates the death of Christ. 1 Cor. 11:26.

9. The Lord’s supper at one time was celebrated daily. Acts 2:42, 46.

10. This meeting in Acts 20, was not an ordinary one; it was a special farewell meeting. The apostle was never to see them again, was to leave them in the morning forever. Verse 25. It lasted all night; a dead man was raised. This is what gave prominence to the meeting.

11. This meeting was held on Saturday night, not on Sunday night.

12. His whole argument from this scripture is simply an inference from beginning to end.

I showed that the resurrection of Christ was commemorated by baptism, Col. 2:12; Rom. 6:4, 5; hence we do not need another memorial for that event. We do not need Sunday-keeping. He admitted that baptism was a memorial of the resurrection. I pressed him then to show a single case in the Bible where God gave two memorials for the same event. His answer to this was amusing. He turned to Deut. 5:13, and claimed the Sabbath to be a memorial of both the creation and the deliverance from Egypt. Of course his assumption was false. But granting that it was true, what had he found? two memorials to commemorate one event? Just exactly the opposite—one memorial to commemorate two events!

He made but a faint argument upon 1 Cor. 16:2, or Rev. 1:10. He admitted that there was no evidence for Sunday observance till Pentecost, consequently he gave up all the texts in the four Gospels. He did not claim anything with regard to the meeting at Pentecost. If he had, I was prepared to show that that was upon the seventh day, and not upon the first day. A long list of the ablest Sunday authors say this themselves.

Indeed, his whole argument for Sunday was based simply upon Acts 20. Finally, in direct violation of the rules, he managed to lug in history, thus showing that he himself felt that the Bible was not sufficient to sustain him. The Campbellites are always crying, “The Bible, the Bible, the Bible alone,” but here was the “Peer of the west” utterly routed from the Bible and taking refuge in history, the same as the Catholics; but even here we showed that history was against him.

D. M. CANRIGHT.

(To be Continued.)