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OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 7, 1879

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 54, No. 7.

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OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED.

By C. W. Stone

It is a bad cause that has to summon to its support a false argument. Numerous opponents of the Sabbath make a miserable attempt to associate the name of Jesus with themselves in their contempt for the fourth commandment. They say that Jesus broke the Sabbath. Of whom do they learn this? Of those who sought to kill Jesus. The Jews accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. Now, if this accusation is true, it will appear in the record that Jesus had done something upon the Sabbath that was contrary to the fourth commandment, the law for the Sabbath. What had he done? He had healed the sick.
On one Sabbath when he was teaching in one of the synagogues, he healed a woman who had been a cripple for eighteen years. Luke 13: 10–17. The minister, who was present at the time, was very indignant; and he told his people that there were “six days in which men ought to work,” thus accusing Jesus of working unlawfully upon the Sabbath. Then this minister with much “bogus sanctification” applied the “stay away” argument to his people, directing them not to come to Christ to be healed on the Sabbath day. “The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed.”
The minister, among the rest, was ashamed. He had made a very foolish attack upon the truth; and when Jesus in his cutting reply had shown him that he had done no more than the Jews themselves considered lawful, unless they placed themselves in the ridiculous light of regarding an ox or an ass as better than a woman, he was ashamed. He ought to have been ashamed.
What, then, shall be said of the latter day hypocrite, who reiterates the cry of that ancient hypocrite, and upon the same grounds says that Christ broke the Sabbath? If he can make the statement and read the Lord’s answer, and feel no shame, then he must be set down as being among those who the apostle says are past feeling, and as having less sense than those blind Jews who opposed Christ. He ought to be ashamed. C. W. STONE.