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FRANK ADMISSIONS

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 24, 1879

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 54, No. 5.

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FRANK ADMISSIONS.

THE July number of the Sabbath Memorial published by Eld. Wm. M. Jones, London, Eng., contains the following interesting “Editorial notes”:—
THAT the seventh day is the only Scriptural Sabbath is now a growing admission among Christians; but the grace of obedience is lacking, and will be probably so long as the mind seeks refuge in present convenience, and in indifference to the law of God. The following admissions from various parties are significant:—
“I HAVE an appointment to preach on the Sabbath question before my people, but I can speak only of the necessity of a Sabbath. I cannot say that Sunday is the Sabbath.”
“IF I believed the Scriptures to be my only guide in matters of faith and practice, I should keep the seventh day.”
“WHEN I came down from the pulpit Mr. — said to me, ‘Your sermon on the Sabbath lacked one important point. You did not tell us which day is the Sabbath.’ I replied, ‘I know that as well as you.’”
IN a group of ministers not many years since, one remarked, “We hear that a Seventh-day Baptist minister has come from America to preach in London; hadn’t we better send him some books to set him right on that question, and convert him to Lord’s day observance?” Whereupon a Doctor of Divinity replied sharply, “Brethren! I, I think before you do that you had better read THE book yourselves!” The proposal was dropped, and the minister never received the books.
“I PRAY thee, have me excused,” said one of the invited guests to the royal supper.
As it is with this general invitation, so it is with the special claim of the Lord’s Sabbath (“the best of all the seven”), men are full of excuses. Here is one: “The freedom from legal yokes we enjoy in and through Christ, makes me regard the day as an immaterial matter.” But how does God regard the day? He has appointed to meet you on that day. Will you venture to postpone His appointment and risk His displeasure? Did it ever occur to you that you have all your life been a day too late in your weekly appointment with the Almighty? But what right has a man to call the Sabbath of the Lord his God a “legal yoke”? The objection seems to rest upon the fact that the Sabbath is commanded, and that the Jews kept and do still keep it. Well, the Bible was written by Jews. Our Saviour was a Jew, and the same God that made us made the Jews. Shall we renounce Him on that account?
To BELIEVE ON CHRIST, to be baptized, to celebrate the Lord’s supper, to do unto others as we would that others should do unto us, and to do anything that must be done as a law of necessity, or of love, or both; is not the doing of these as much a legal yoke as the keeping of the fourth commandment? Is loving obedience legality? Is there sin in such legality? If so, where? If I am to obey the seventh, the sixth, the fifth, and the third commandments, can any mortal man tell me why I should not obey the fourth?
But what about Sunday? We affirm that it is made a legal yoke with a vengeance, accompanied as its non-observance is with fines and imprisonment; and yet objector keeps it and calls it by sacred names, though without a shadow of authority from the Bible; and besides he doubtless does all he can by precept and example to support this legal yoke for a day that has no sacred character whatever given it by the Lord Jesus or his apostles. We beg the reader not to be entrapped with the false application of an idea used by the apostle for something entirely different from keeping the Sabbath.