THE CAUSE IN SOUTH TROY, VT.
By A. S. Hutchins
Sabbath and first-day, June 21, 22, I was at this place. Bro. C. W. Stone closed his labors here a short time previous, leaving some fifteen or more keeping the Sabbath. In various ways opposition manifested itself while he was here. The Methodist minister, Eld. J. Leavitt, did not seem satisfied with the efforts of his predecessor to prove the Sunday Sabbath, therefore, about the time Bro. Stone left here, he appointed to preach on the subject of the Lord’s day, some two weeks in the future, and Bro. Stone appointed to hear and review him; but as he must leave the tent if he did so, it was arranged otherwise. In the afternoon of June 22, Eld. L. came before the people in vindication of the first-day Sabbath. He said: “The Lord’s day is the outgrowth of the Seventh-day Sabbath; it is the seventh-day Sabbath. We have not dispensed with the fourth commandment. The Lord’s day is the Sabbath; it is the fourth commandment.” The fathers were brought forth to speak for this change, the change which he affirmed had been made by Christ and the apostles. He said: “What makes the ten commandments sacred is what God has said of them. The Sabbath was not abolished with the ordinances of the Jews.” A slight effort was made to prove from the New Testament the change of the Sabbath, and in conclusion we were told that he had not given us his “most weighty, conclusive, and clinching arguments.” I reviewed his sermon in the evening, before an attentive audience, after which he arose and said, “I have more to say on this point;” and he accordingly appointed to preach again on the subject in two weeks from that evening, promising then to give us “a more scriptural and rational discourse.” Last Sunday evening brought the time, and the promised effort. In this he made no reference to the scriptures brought against him in the review, nor did he attempt to unsettle but one point that I made. He made a vigorous effort for help from the fathers. One would almost suppose he had read, and believed the following to be true: “Yes, my brother, the fathers are your stronghold; they are Heaven’s best gift to the man who has a cause that can’t be sustained in any other way.” This point passed, and Eld. L. seemed to turn into another man. Aided by a no-Sabbath book, which I would sooner think a Methodist minister, if he respected the teachings of the discipline of his people on the law of God, would have wrapped in a napkin and hidden in the earth, he said that the ten commandments were the first covenant, and that they were nailed to the cross, abolished, and taken out of the way. All that was moral in the commandments was now binding, as they had been reconstructed. But he failed to tell us, or even to mention a text of Scripture in proof of, the time when, place where, or by whose orders, or by whom this reconstructing took place. In conclusion he remarked: I do not see any sin in keeping both the seventh and first day, if one can afford it. This being so, we cannot understand the harm in keeping only one, provided that be the one commanded of God. The following evening this effort was reviewed, more people being present than could have been expected on Monday evening. The brethren and sisters rejoice in the truth.