Discernment of Prejudice.
By Roswell F. Cottrell
PREJUDICE against a truth has power to blind the mind against the plainest and most positive testimony. On the other hand it renders the perceptive faculties so acute that evidence in favor of what we would choose to have true can be discerned where there is none. As an illustration of this take the following from the Evangelical Messenger:— “‘One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth [observeth] the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day to the Lord, he doeth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.’ Rom. 14:5, 6. In our judgment the apostle is here speaking of the controversy about which of the two days was to be observed, and leaves the matter to be decided by each man’s conscience, as he does the matter about the Jewish rule about meats. We understand the utterance thus: One man esteemeth one of these two days above the other; another esteemeth them alike sacred. He that regardeth, or observeth, the seventh, regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that observeth it not, does it conscientiously, worshiping God on the first.” This is drawing large conclusions from very small material in the text. It is like pressing cider out of a sack of cotton—you must put it in, before you press it out. No reader of the text, having no foregone conclusion to sustain, would ever have inferred from these words of the apostle that there was any controversy in his days concerning which of two days was to be observed. The weekly Sabbath is not mentioned in the chapter, and there is no reason to believe that it is alluded to. The apostle evidently alludes to the observance of those days upon which the Jews were restricted in their eating; certain kinds of food, as unleavened bread and bitter herbs, being prescribed. As it was in the time of the change of dispensations, the church making a new departure in the right direction, and as some pious minds are slow to leave customs which they know were instituted of God, the apostle decided that all should be left free to regard these things, or disregard them. These were subjects of a ceremonial, and not of a moral nature; therefore some latitude could be allowed. But to suppose that people could be allowed to keep or transgress the Sabbath commandment of the moral law at pleasure, is preposterous. There is no mention, nor the slightest allusion in the New Testament, of any controversy existing in those days respecting the observance of two different days as the Sabbath of the Lord. This is the next thing to positive assertion that no such controversy existed. And the fact that no such controversy existed, makes it certain that no new day was being introduced. The Jews accused Jesus and his disciples of breaking the Sabbath; but he vindicated himself and then, claiming that what they did was “lawful,” that is, according to the Sabbath law. But in all the persecutions of the disciples by the Jews, after the death and resurrection of Christ, no complaint was ever made of their violation or subversion of the Sabbath. This is unaccountable on the supposition that the church were introducing the observance of the first day instead of the seventh, the day that they held, and do yet hold, that the commandment requires to be kept holy. It was left to the acuteness of the discoverers of the nineteenth century to speak of the controversy in apostolic times “about which of the two days was to be observed.”