DISCUSSIONS IN VIRGINIA.
By E. B. Lane
Like those in some other new fields, the people of Virginia demand public discussion whenever differences exist in religious belief. We had been in the Shenandoah Valley but a short time before we received and accepted a challenge to debate the Sabbath question. This challenge came from our Disciple friends. They not feeling satisfied with the results, about seven months after we received a second challenge from this denomination to discuss the same question with the same man. This debate, like the former, we think resulted in some good. A few months after, we received a challenge from a man in Indiana, a member of the old Christian Church, which we accepted. We gained another victory, the man returning to Indiana and refusing to debate other questions, one of which he had challenged us to discuss. The following summer, while laboring in Pendleton Co., West Virginia, we received from a Lutheran minister a public challenge to debate the subject of baptism. We held five sessions, when our arguments proved too strong for him, and he refused to discuss longer, although only about half our appointed time had been used. About four weeks after, Eld. Wm. C. Thurman sought us out, with the design of overthrowing our positions on the law and Sabbath. We immediately entered upon a public debate; but feeling dissatisfied, about two months after he made a public stand against us at Dayton, Rockingham Co. He first published a tirade of abuse and falsehood against us and “Ellen White,” with a challenge warning “Eld. Lane” to “send for his most learned divines;” for his Saturday Sabbath was in danger. Knowing the strength of Bible arguments for the seventh-day Sabbath and the weakness of Eld. Thurman’s positions, I concluded that it was but little the Sabbath cause would suffer at his hands; so I paid no attention to him. But on returning to Dayton, I found he had given a series of opposition discourses, putting up numbers and challenging all present to take them down; and that these lectures had awakened a general interest among the people. His friends had also said that we were afraid, and unable to meet Eld. Thurman, and that was the reason why we were indifferent to his challenge. We immediately accepted his challenge, discussing eight consecutive evenings before a large and attentive audience. Of all the debates I ever engaged in, I think this one the clearest victory. I never saw such a complete change in the feelings and opinions of the people as was produced by this discussion. Eld. Thurman’s arguments were the old threadbare theories of “no-lawism,” which have been so often refuted through the Review that a repetition of them would be tedious. The Sabbath truth never looked clearer or seemed stronger than during this discussion; and I am confident that much good has resulted to the Sabbath cause. But to cap the climax, the following challenge for the world, from Mr. Thurman, appears in the Rockingham Register:— “If, when God spoke, his voice shook the earth with those words which, like rolling thunder, said, ‘Keep the Sabbath day, . . . as the Lord thy God commanded thee,’ should not men tremble at his word, and all true Christians learn to speak the same thing, as to God’s holy Sabbath? Then in order to do this, I now propose to meet the most learned man in all the world, in defense of the true Sabbath of God, under the new covenant dispensation, with the question framed thus:—”
“Resolved, That under the new covenant dispensation, there is no law for the seventh-day Sabbath.
“William C. Thurman affirms, the most learned man of your choice denies. The discussion to be held in Boston, Mass., that we may have access to the largest libraries, and the advantage of the best Hebrew59and Greek scholars. All the papers in the world please copy.”
Having a chance to know something about Mr. Thurman’s knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, I am prepared to say that it is very superficial, and that this world-wide challenge is entitled to no attention. Dayton, Rockingham Co., Va.