TO WHAT PROFIT? by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 14, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 27.

TO WHAT PROFIT?

By Editor

SPEAKING of the study of the Sunday-school scholars and teachers, during the past six months, the Congregationalist says:—

"We doubt if the Old Testament has ever been studied with more eager interest, or with greater profit and delight."

And yet the lesson for June 5, on the falling of the manna, a copy of which now lies before us, has the following questions and answers, exactly as we here insert them:—

Question—"How often did they gather it?" Answer—"Every day except Sunday." Q.—"Could they keep it overnight?" A.—"Only Saturday nights." Q.—"Why was this?" A.—"So they need not break the Sabbath."

So ho! The children of Israel kept Sunday for Sabbath did they? We know that there has never been a more "eager interest" to make out that Sunday is the Sabbath than there is now, and it may have been a source of great "delight" for the lesson writers to corrupt the word of God that it might be made to appear so to the Sunday-school scholars; but when the day of reckoning comes, we think that they will not find it so profitable as they now imagine it to be. With what eager interest indeed the Scriptures must have been studied, especially by those who wrote the lesson helps, to learn from it no better than to teach that the manna did not fall on Sunday, and that it would keep only on Saturday night. It is hard to see how the writers of these lessons can escape the just imputation of turning the truth of God into a lie. For how else shall the shameful thing be characterized? If that is not the proper charge, we wish somebody would tell what would be proper in the premises.