SABBATH DESECRATION by Roswell F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 18, 1877

SABBATH DESECRATION.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

In the correspondence of the New York Evangelist, of Aug. 16, is a letter from P. H. Burghardt on the conflict between labor and capital, which speaks as follows:—

“But as we are led to think, with an open Bible in our hands, as the immutable and eternal statute book of Jehovah, the great trouble now so universally pressing itself upon us as a people and nation, as everywhere to be witnessed throughout our country in the very great depreciation of all property values, the want of monetary confidence, and the very general stagnation of business, is not by any means attributable to any conflict between labor and capital, but to the conflict of both labor and capital with the laws of God. For the last twenty or twenty-five years in our country there has been a growing—and a most fearful—recklessness upon the part of both capital and labor, in trampling upon the laws of God, and more especially that law both plain and positive in regard to the sanctity of the Sabbath. Our capitalists, railroad and express companies, and the host of laborers that have willingly worked with them, are now, as we most fully believe, cursed and crippled, stricken as with a perfect paralysis by the direct hand of God, for the open profanation of this sacred day of rest, a day that he himself, as if to call the attention of the human race more directly to its very great importance, ceremoniously set apart, and hallowed as a portion of time to be conscientiously kept as needful for the highest and the noblest purposes and possibilities of man’s nature in helping to develop the greatest good of his physical, mental, and moral manhood.

“The Heaven-daring and defying sin of Sabbath desecration, a sin that will ever carry with it sooner or later every form of the violation of the laws of God, was the great central sin that called down the just judgments of Jehovah upon the nation of Israel. So now, we, too, as a people and nation, are most fearfully guilty of the sin of Sabbath-breaking. Our only hope and only remedy can come by ceasing from sin. Let our Sabbath mails and our Sabbath running railroads, with all their laborers, rest on this God-given day, and then we may expect God’s blessing upon us, and once more peace and prosperity throughout the length and breadth of our land.”

With the writer we too accept the Bible “as the immutable and eternal statute book of Jehovah.” But if these laws are truly immutable—unchangeable—the writer might have said that “we,” not only “as a people and nation,” but as churches, “are most fearfully guilty of the sin of Sabbath-breaking;” for it is a fact that the churches generally throughout the country, ministers, priests, deacons, and congregations, pay no regard at all to the day that was “ceremoniously set apart and hallowed” by the Creator. It was not two days that were set apart or appointed. There is no law in the Bible for keeping Sunday, the first day of the week, as the Sabbath. Which, then, is the “God-given day”? God gave but one in each week, not two.

The difficulty is that another day, a day Jehovah did not rest upon, set apart, nor hallow, has been foisted into the place of the God-given day; and every honest and well-informed clergyman will acknowledge that there is no command or direct revelation in the New Testament making the first day the Sabbath instead of the seventh, which is Saturday. And yet they appeal to the eternal and immutable statute law of the Bible to enforce the observance of a day not mentioned therein as a sacred day—not made God’s Sabbath by his resting upon it, not blessed by him nor sanctified. And this fact is becoming so well understood by the people generally, that they attach but very little, if any, sacredness to the day. “How can the people be impressed with the duty conscientiously and religiously to keep sacred to the Lord the first day of the week, or Sunday, by the commandment of God which requires the holy observance of another day, the seventh day or Saturday, the day on which he rested from his work, and which he sanctified, that is, appointed, to a sacred use, because that on it he did rest?” He rested only on one day of the seven. How can another day, a day on which he did not rest, become his rest, or Sabbath, day? R. F. COTTRELL.