STILL PUZZLED by Uriah Smith

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 20, 1887

STILL PUZZLED.

By Uriah Smith

THE opponents of the Sabbath profess a wonderful sight of perplexity over the fact that time varies at points east and west from each other; that a person traveling east or west gains upon the time as marked by his watch at the point of his departure, or loses from it, according to the direction in which he journeys; and that a person crossing the Pacific Ocean must add a day if going westward, and drop a day if coming eastward, to be in harmony, in matter of time, with the inhabitants on its western and eastern shores.

It is to be noticed that all the trouble and confusion seem to exist with those who oppose the Sabbath. They have persistently tried to throw this confusion into the ranks of Sabbath-keepers, but have not succeeded. We have never yet known a person who sincerely desired to keep the Sabbath, who yet felt that he was unable to do so because of this question of difference of time, and what is called the gaining or losing of a day; but we have met many who gave every evidence that they resorted to this as a mere pretext for not keeping the Sabbath. They claim to consider the conclusion invulnerable that they cannot keep the Sabbath, and that we cannot keep it, and that no one can keep it, under these circumstances.

That some are really confused on this subject is not to be denied; but, as remarked before, this confusion does not exist among Sabbath-keepers. Sabbath-keepers have crossed the Pacific Ocean so far as Australia, passing over, in so doing, what is called the day line, where the day changes. But they found the seventh day in Australia, and they and those who have adopted seventh-day observance there, are keeping the day as we are here, not the same identical hours, abstractly considered, but the same identical hours which constitute the seventh day both there and here.

As a sample of the confusion that still exists in some minds on this subject, we give the following item from a correspondent of the Flint (Mich.) Tribune, which, for lack of opportunity to notice it at the time, has been lying on our table for some months. He says:—

“Editor Tribune: As our Seventh-day Adventist brethren are making a little extra effort just now to induce the people to observe the seventh day, or Saturday, as the Sabbath, I would like to ask them, through your valuable journal, a few questions. I make these inquiries, not in a spirit of controversy and stubbornness, but in hope of obtaining a better understanding of this Sabbath question; and I hope they may be answered in the same spirit.

“Do your people when navigating the Pacific Ocean, change the reckoning as do our people, to conform to marine custom and law?

“If your answer is ‘yes,’ then I ask, first, Where is your Bible authority for so doing, and do you not violate the fourth commandment? for in going one way you keep the eighth day for the Sabbath, and in going the other way you keep the sixth day. And, second, Will not your authority for doing so change the reckoning on the land to conform to the custom and laws of Michigan?

“As there can never be an absolute seventh day, but only a relative one on our round globe (according as the reckoning is made by going east or west from Mt. Sinai), do you not garner the husks and dry bones by watching for the day, when all the virtue, so far as we can see, is in the keeping of the day holy?”

To the question asked in the second paragraph of the foregoing, we answer most decidedly, Yes. Then he asks, “Where is your Bible authority for so doing?” We reply, In the command which the Bible gives us to observe the seventh day; for in no other way could we keep the seventh day, or have any definite days, on a round world like ours, except by changing where the days, so to speak, abut together. Then he says: “In going one way you keep the eighth day for the Sabbath, and the other way the sixth.” We beg his pardon; but in this assertion he revealed the confusion of his own mind on this subject. There are but seven days in a week. There is no such thing as keeping the “eighth day,” that old forger called Barnabas to the contrary notwithstanding.

The day line runs through the Pacific Ocean from the north pole to the south pole. When the earth in its revolution brings the day line to the point of sunset, for the flash of an instant one day spans the entire globe; the beginning and end of the day come together. But immediately a new day begins to come on at the day line; and as the earth continues its motion, causing sunset apparently to move on westward, and the day line eastward, between the day line and sunset westward a new day is growing, or coming on, and between the day line and sunset eastward, the old day, or day before it, is going off. So if the day east of the day line, the old day, is Tuesday, the day west of it, the new day which is coming on, is Wednesday; and if we cross the day line westward we step from Tuesday into Wednesday. If we reverse the direction, we step from Wednesday into Tuesday. So if the days be the seventh and first days, we step from the seventh day into the first, or from the first into the seventh, according to the direction of motion.

We are always on a definite day; and we know just which one it is. And when the seventh day comes on, that is the one which the Lord has blessed; and it is to be observed till it has made the circuit of the earth and passed off, giving twenty-four hours of seventh day to all the inhabitants of the earth in all places. But there is no such thing as a sixth and eighth day coming together, so that in going one way we keep the eighth, and the other the sixth, as the above-quoted correspondent asserts. We design, just as soon as not prevented by other duties, to construct a working model by which this subject can be most clearly illustrated.—U. S., in Review and Herald.