CALLING IT SO DON'T MAKE IT SO.
IN the popular discussion of the Sabbath question, no other position is more generally taken than that the command requires the observance of one of the seven days in each week, but that it is a matter of small consequence which day is observed. The facility with which men satisfy themselves of the soundness of this position is little short of the marvelous. For example, it is proposed, in apparent seriousness and candor, to admit that the commandment requires the observance of the "seventh day of the week." What then? Why, it is simple enough. Say these philosophers, "Just begin numbering the days on Monday, calling it the first, Tuesday the second, and so on, until you come to Sunday, when, lo, it is the seventh day of the week!" How easy! There is but one fallacy in the plan, and that is the fallacy of supposing that the calling of one thing something else, makes it something else. We may call Monday the first day of the week if we choose; it is still the second day for all that. A little boy was talking to his father in the garden, when he said, "Father, I wish you would give me this tree for my very own." "You may call it yours," the father said somewhat absent-mindedly. "But does calling it mine make it mine?" the child persisted. "Well, not exactly." "Then I won't call it mine, unless it is mine," said the boy with decision. There is a good lesson for our easy-going philosopher who proposes to make the law of God approve of his disobedience, by taking one thing and calling it something else, and then insisting that since he has called it something else, it is something else.—Sabbath Recorder.