UNDER THE CURSE by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 19, 1877

“UNDER THE CURSE.”

By R. F. Cottrell

An old lady, where I am now laboring, has piously kept the first day of the week as the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and taught her children to do so; but a son of hers has discovered that the fourth commandment, which she had taught him to keep, requires him to keep the seventh, and not the first, day of the week, and accordingly has begun to keep it. And though she cannot gainsay the fact that the seventh day of the week is the day named in the commandment, but acknowledges it, yet she feels very bad that her son has embraced it, and has sent him a special request to read the third chapter of Galatians.

Now it seems quite remarkable that while the old lady kept, and taught her children to keep, the fourth commandment on Sunday, she never discovered that she was of “the works of the law” and “under the curse;” but now, for the first time, she has been led to the discovery, that if any one does really keep that commandment on the true seventh day, he is seeking to be “justified by the law,” and is “fallen from grace.”

The fourth commandment is but one of the ten; and if we shall fall from grace and be under the curse by keeping it, unless we substitute Sunday, the first day of the week, for the seventh day, what change will it be necessary to make in the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth commandments of the same law, to escape being justified by it and falling from grace? Shall we leave the little word, “not,” out of each of them, and keep them accordingly? In that case there will be no danger of our being justified by them as they now read.

R. F. Cottrell.