WHAT SHALL BE DONE? by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 15, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 36.

WHAT SHALL BE DONE?

By Editor

P. A. F. asks: "What is a woman who is a Seventh-day Adventist, and whose husband is an infidel, to do if he requests her to buy or sell on the Sabbath day? Will not sin be imputed to her if she complies? Also her young children desire to keep the Sabbath, but the father will not let them do it. What shall she do? If she should resolve to live apart, she would lose the children entirely."

We do not know everything, and cannot undertake to tell people what their duty is in special cases; but so far as we have any light, the woman's course seems plain, although not necessarily easy. 1. She should keep the Sabbath. Her husband is not in the place of God to the woman; God's plain command far outweighs her husband's request or even command. There is no human obligation which can set aside one's obligation to God. 2. Sin would most certainly be imputed to the woman, as well as to anybody else, if she violated the Sabbath. 3. She should do with her children the best she can, by precept and example. If the father will not allow them to keep the Sabbath as they wish, she cannot help the matter. If she should leave, her influence over them would be at an end. Moreover, she has no scriptural warrant for leaving, and to do so would be unjustifiable, and would bring reproach on the cause. A woman may not leave her husband simply because he is not a Christian. Possibly she herself cannot keep the Sabbath as well as she would if she were alone, but by her quiet, godly life, she may save her children, and possibly her husband too.

One thing ought always to be remembered: very often fierce lions appear in the path just ahead of us, making it seem impossible to advance; but when we push straight ahead, we find that they are chained. People are lost because of trials and dangers which they saw but were afraid to meet, rather than by those which they pass through. All of which is summed up in the words of the apostle Paul: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." 1 Cor. 10:13.