Sunday-School Lessons and God’s Sabbath
By William A. Colcord
The above extracts are all written by the same people and from works most of which are published by the same house, the Christian Publishing Co., 913 Pine St., St. Louis, Mo. Is it not a little strange that when getting up Sunday-school lessons they can plainly see the distinction between the moral and ceremonial laws; that the ten are “summed up” in the two great commandments; that their being written by God on tables of stone indicated that they were designed for “permanence;” that these have “never been repealed,” but define, not simply the duty of the ancient Jew, but “our duties,” the duties of Christians—converted Gentiles; and that the “royal God,” by virtue of that same law, requires of men, down here in 1887 A. D., the “tribute of one day in seven,” which commemorates “God’s rest from the works of creation” and not deliverance from Egyptian bondage; but that when they make an attack on God’s Sabbath, these things all at once become so obscure, nay, even false? Is it not indeed strange? What explanation can be made for this diverse and twofold handling of the word of God? The only one that seems possible is that in one instance they are teaching the young what they believe to be good and right, and in the other they are seeking to avoid a plain duty, and to defend a practice based on Papal assumption and a commandment and doctrine of men, to do which they find it necessary to tear down that which they build up and find to be wholesome teaching in the Sunday-school. It needs no argument to show the inconsistency of such a course. A house divided against itself must fall. We presume that it is as difficult to be on both sides of the fence at once now as ever, and those who attempt it only show the dire extremity and desperate lengths to which their false theory drives them. We are reminded of the language of the psalmist: “The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made; in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.” Ps. 9:15. So it ever is. A wrong premise invariably leads to a wrong conclusion. One error demands others to support it. Truth never calls for such assistance, but rears a structure of polished stones quarried from the mine of truth, beautiful, symmetrical, and grand. Error seeks to hide its deformity; truth invites the closest scrutiny. "Truth crushed to earth will rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But error, mangled, writhes in pain,
And dies amid its worshipers."
—W. A. Colcord, in Review and Herald.