WHO WILL ANSWER?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 2, 1879

About a month since, a controversy sprung up in Quincy, Mich., over the right or wrong of running a pleasure steamboat on Sunday. Three ministers of the place are reported to have forbidden the captain to run the boat. Whereupon a non-professor closes up an article in the Quincy Times on the subject with the following tough questions for the Sunday-keepers:—

1. On what authority do they rely, who assert Sunday to be a day more holy unto the Lord than the day he blessed and sanctified, or any of the secular days of the week?

2. How came the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath—the day God blessed and sanctified, to be supplanted in its character as a “holy” day, by the first day of the week, Sunday?

3. Point us to the record where God ever appointed or recognized any other than the seventh day—the Sabbath, as a day of rest, to be kept holy, etc.?

I ask these questions in the strong hope that some one, learned in historic lore, will withdraw the veil and enlighten us by a truthful exposition of the above questions.

We venture to say that our friend’s questions have not been answered yet; and they can only be answered truthfully by saying that, 1. There is no authority for saying that Sunday is more holy to the Lord than his own sanctified day; or that it is holy at all in any other sense than the other secular days are. 2. It is not by divine authority that the seventh day has been supplanted by the first day of the week. This work has been wrought by the “man of sin,” coming in gradually through the working of the mystery of iniquity. 3. There is no record that God ever appointed or recognized any other day than the seventh as a day of rest to be kept holy. The questions admit of no other answers. This is a great practical subject. Now will our friend as candidly consider what the Lord of the Sabbath requires of him in this matter.