WHY DON'T THEY SEE IT?
By A. O. Tait
THAT "truth always pursues a straight course," is self-evident. It cannot make two statements that are directly opposed to each other. No matter how much truth says upon a given subject, each statement is in exact harmony with every other statement that it has made. If we consider these facts till we fully grasp them, we may save ourselves from numerous deceptions that continually confront us. Let us apply this recognized rule to a case that comes to hand through the columns of the Christian Statesman. In a leading editorial of its issue of April 1, 1886, it gives a review of the Sabbath question, in which it notices the obstacles against, and the omens in favor of, their proposed scheme to legalize Sunday. In one paragraph it quotes and highly endorses the following from the Catholic Review: "The first day of the week Christ, the Son of God, rose from the dead, and on that day by their rest from labor the whole Christian world pays homage to him, to his glorious work, and to his eternal Father." In another paragraph of the same article the editor states: "Finally, we have the promise and covenant of the Lord of the Sabbath that he will yet plead his own cause, that he will write his law, including its great fourth precept, upon the hearts of all men, and will bring into subjection to it every custom and every institution of men." Applying our rule to the above statements, we detect an error at once. Truth always tells the same story. But here in the same article we read that the "first day of the week" is the Sabbath, and also that God will write his "great fourth precept [which declares the seventh day to be the Sabbath] upon the hearts of all men." Both of these positions cannot be true. One or the other is surely false. And since the "great fourth precept" of God's law expressly states that the seventh day is the Sabbath (Ex 20:10), and the Bible nowhere contradicts the statement by intimating that some other day has been set apart as sacred, we must conclude that the Bible is harmonious and tells the truth; and on the other hand that the editor of the Statesman is not only out of harmony with himself but is at variance with the Bible also. We cannot comprehend how it is possible for a person endowed with reasoning faculties to state with one breath that the first day of the week is the Sabbath, and with the next abolish his first-day theory by quoting the fourth commandment, and still imagine himself consistent. If any one thinks that the first day of the week is the Sabbath, he certainly should not be so stupid as to quote the fourth precept of the decalogue to enforce it. Truth cannot run and be glorified among the adherents of such inconsistencies.