HOW DIFFERENTLY MEN ARE CONSTITUTED!
By R. F. Cottrell
From the same premises opposite conclusions are drawn. How strange! To illustrate, I quote a late writer as follows:— “No. 1 [the decalogue], does not contain a single precept that will be needed by the saved in the world to come. Look over the ten commandments. Will these be necessary in the kingdom of Heaven? Does any one believe it? Will a holy man need a commandment telling him he must not murder, steal, swear, lie, or commit adultery? This covenant, No. 1, was applicable to a hard-hearted, blind, and sinful people that needed a curb bit. Such were the Jews.” The argument fully stated stands thus: 1. All in the world to come will be holy persons. 2. No holy person will violate one of these precepts. These are the premises, and so far we are agreed; but how widely different the conclusions! His conclusion is, 3. Therefore the decalogue “was abolished, being ended at the cross.” From the same premises I come to the conclusion that these precepts will be law in the world to come. No one will break them; consequently it will be the law or rule, without an exception, to keep them. To make them the law it is not necessary that any one should violate them. It is possible that the will of God may be done perfectly “in earth as it is in Heaven.” Will not his will then be law? When I read in prophecy that in the new earth all flesh shall come from Sabbath to Sabbath to worship the Lord, I infer that the Sabbath will be observed by all its inhabitants without an exception, and therefore the Sabbath precept will be a universal law. See Isa. 66:22, 23. But for the fact that so many are now violating this precept, and desire to excuse themselves in their disobedience, our writer had never made his raid against the decalogue. But supposing his inference to be sound, that holy men in the world to come will need no such restrictions as are contained in the ten commandments, does he not have them abolished eighteen hundred years too soon? He must admit that there are some men now that need such laws. There are some “hard-hearted, blind, and sinful people” now, that need a curb, as well as the Jews of old. But perhaps the decalogue is abolished only in respect to such good men as he is. He concludes an argument against the Sabbath thus: “As he [Jesus] has nowhere intimated that he wishes us to keep the seventh day observed by the Jews, it is certainly not enjoined upon his disciples. Here we rest, trusting sweetly in Him who keeps us in ‘perfect peace.’” Jesus did affirm the perpetuity of every jot and tittle of his law, till heaven and earth pass. But as he never intimated that he wishes us to keep the first day of the week, instead of the seventh, is not the conclusion full as logical that “it is certainly not enjoined upon his disciples.” He has given a solemn warning to those who break the commandments and teach men so, but some don’t seem to mind it. They think they are so good that they do not need such precepts. “If men but knew it, in their reckless strife,
They’re laboring hard to lose eternal life.” Immediately after deciding that the ten commandments will not be needed in the world to come, because they are not suited to holy men, the writer proceeds to present the two great commandments as every way suitable to that state. He says they “are eternal in their application to all intelligent created beings, in all generations, world without end.” Now following his course of reasoning we ask, “Will a holy man need a commandment telling him he must love the Lord with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself, to prevent his hating God and his neighbor?” “Will these be necessary in the kingdom of Heaven?” But can one love God and his neighbor as required in these great precepts, and at the same time violate one of the ten commandments? “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments;” not as a grievous burden, but as a delightful privilege. The opposers of the law of God give painful evidence of insanity. To say that no two of them are agreed is not telling the whole truth. No one of them can write a small tract in defense of his theory, without taking several contradictory positions. If the fourth commandment has any determinate meaning, it commands those to whom it is addressed to rest from their own labor on the day on which God rested from his. But our author argues that the day the Jews were required to keep did not correspond “with the seventh day of the original week;” but was another day given to commemorate their deliverance from Egypt. On another page he gets time all disarranged, and drives us into an inextricable maze, by a long day when the sun stood still in the time of Joshua. Again he says, “Astronomical calculations give evidence that the Lord’s day, now observed by Christians generally, is the one first kept in Eden. It appears quite plain that the Jews had a new rest-day, not observed by other nations. In Persia, where the patriarchs lived, the people turned away from the worship of the true and living God to the worship of the sun, and called it ‘Sunday.’ They did not lose the original rest-day, but changed the mode of worship.” The original rest-day has not been lost, then, though Joshua did command the sun to stand still. Astronomical calculations and the idolatrous Persians have preserved it. Those who departed from the true God to idols still kept the true Edenic Sabbath; while Abraham and his seed who were separated from idolatry and called to the worship of the true God, had another day to keep, enforced by a commandment which caused them to believe that it was the Sabbath, or rest-day of God, the day on which he rested when he made the world! The writer implies that there was a Sabbath “first kept in Eden,” and that it was “observed by other nations.” If so, this Sabbath-keeping was in accordance with a divine law. If this was a law of God, Abraham kept it; for God testifies of him as follows: “Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” Gen. 26:5. Abraham’s time was certainly more than four hundred and thirty years before the deliverance from Egypt. And God said of Abraham, “I know him, that he will command his children, and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.” Now which kept the true Edenic Sabbath? Abraham and his seed, or the idolatrous nations from which they were separated? Astronomy is a very exact science. It settles the time of historic eclipses. But if you go back of reliable human history, and undertake to tell by astronomy the exact beginning of earthly time and the day of the week on which God rested, you will find as great a lack as Archimedes did when he said that the only thing which hindered him from lifting the world was a fulcrum on which to rest his lever. I prefer to trust in God, in the second of Genesis, in the fourth commandment, and in the concurrent testimony of Christ and his apostles, to inform me of the day on which He rested.