Why the Change? by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 28, 1878

Why the Change?

By John Norton Loughborough

I HAVE watched with some interest the tactics of the opponents of Seventh-day Adventists upon this coast, since 1868, the time we first commenced to introduce these truths here.

The editor of the Advocate, the organ of the M. E. church on the Pacific slope, after a visit to Healdsburg, in an editorial in his issue of June 24, 1869, speaking of our tent-meeting there, said of us and our work, "No one fears that such teachers will ever effect any permanent organization."

We have lived to see the permanent organization of twenty-two churches of our faith on this coast, a well organized State Conference, a State Missionary Society which is doing effective work in various parts of the world, and the best equipped publishing house of any denomination on the coast.

When these opponents to our faith commenced their attacks, we think some of their utterances were nearer the truth than those latterly made. Knowing that the Sabbath was a vital point of our faith they aimed many blows at that. In the Advocate of September 23, 1869, is a report of a committee appointed by the Methodist Conference to draft a resolution on the Sabbath question. The editor, H. C. Benson, was chairman of that committee. In the report of that committee are some very wholesome things said on the Sabbath question as follows:—

"The decalogue contains the moral law; and though first given in a permanent form, through Moses at Sinai, it is safe to assume that the law as set forth in the ten commandments, was made known to our first parents in their Eden home. The moral law was intended for the race and for all time."

That is good doctrine, Methodist doctrine. It agrees with the sermons of the good old Wesleys, with the Methodist discipline. It is good Seventh-day Adventist doctrine, too. Believing that the moral law of ten commandments was intended for the race, and that the men and women of the nineteenth century are a part of the race, we teach that they are under moral obligations to observe all ten of the commandments, not excepting the fourth. The next paragraph of the report reads:—

"The fourth commandment relates to the Sabbath, is positive in its injunction, and obligatory upon all men. In the Old Testament scriptures the requirement is rigorous, and no example or precept will excuse an individual from its literal observance. In the New Testament the sanctity of the Sabbath is taught with equal force and authority, with this modification, works of necessity are permitted on the Lord's day. It is recorded with peculiar emphasis that, 'The Sabbath was made for man.' Its provisions and its design were merciful. Physical soundness, intellectual vigor and moral purity require the faithful observance of the day of rest. Our bodies and souls imperatively demand the refreshment which the Sabbath affords. Whoever endeavors to prosecute secular business three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, will suffer the penalty for the violation of the laws of his being, in its three-fold character. The body, the intellect and the soul must have the rest of the Sabbath-day, or endure the terrible consequences."

Keeping the Sabbath "literally," as expressed in the fourth commandment, is Seventh-day Adventist doctrine exactly. It seems that the editor of the Advocate has discovered this, and in his late issue gives utterance to language of a very different character, as noticed by Brother Healey in his reply in last week's Signs. There you find the Methodist editor advocating no Sabbath until Sinai. In the gospel dispensation "the letter or outward husk" of the commandments has fallen off, and Christ and his apostles did not teach Sabbath-keeping, nor denounce Sabbath-breaking, etc. I can only conclude that this change of tactics is for the reason that the former teaching leads to seventh-day keeping, and the latter is now taken to avoid the inevitable conclusion of seventh-day-keeping, which would be the result of a literal observance of the fourth commandment, every time.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.