HOW I FOUND THE SABBATH.
By Helen A. Steinhauer
At a health institution in the far East I lay, a nearly helpless invalid, broken down by excessive mental strain and overwork. A new "half nurse," a tidy little body from the Green Mountain State, had recently been assigned me. Her strong, sensible face, with its uniformly cheerful expression, and her quiet ways, won upon me from the first, while her plain dress and her good judgment in matters of hygiene led me to repose considerable confidence in her, notwithstanding the fact that she had barely a common-school education. For nearly a week she had been ministering to me most faithfully, when one morning, after the usual duties—the routine of necessary service had been rendered—she returned to my room, Bible in hand, and dressed in her "Sunday best." "What can it mean?" I said to myself, "unless I have unaccountably lost time. This is Saturday, the busiest day of all the week." My perplexity was increased by her request for permission to "sit in my room and read, as her own had no fire, and the helpers' common sitting room was so noisy that she could not sense what she read." "Certainly," I replied cordially; "I like to have you with me. You may come here as often and stay as long as you please"—but added the mental comment, "Can it be that she is a Jewess? She surely does not look like one." After a little she glanced up from her book, and said pleasantly, "Would you like to have me read aloud awhile?" "By all means," I courteously replied, though with an inward dread of what I might be forced to hear, as I was far more fastidious then than now. She began with the fifty-seventh of Isaiah, at the fifteenth verse, and read through that chapter and the next before stopping. There was, as I had expected, no elocutionary training manifest in her reading; but I was agreeably disappointed in finding her words very correctly and distinctly pronounced, and with such an evident appreciation of the subject matter as made listening a treat; for, young friends, let me tell you no one can read well who does not, at least to some extent, understand what they read, and enter into the spirit of the author. I also noticed that her voice lingered tenderly on the two last verses of the fifty-eighth chapter, as though they contained a thought that she loved. At the close there was a restful silence, which I at length broke with the query:— "Miss B., you do not keep the old Jewish Sabbath, surely?" "No," she replied gently, and with a soft light in her eyes, which I now understand, "I keep the Sabbath of the fourth commandment." "What an answer!" I inly commented. "What does she mean by it, I wonder? We all do that." But I made no reply, but lay with closed eyes, thinking, thinking, till she left the room to get my noonday meal, as I pondered, puzzling over the fact that the fourth commandment actually did speak plainly of the seventh day, instead of the first. "But we all know that it has been changed," I continued to soliloquize. "Queer that I cannot put my finger on the chapter and verse in which the change is spoken of—and I a Bible student all my days! Well, I must hunt till I find it; I really must, for her sake, poor, dear little woman, to think that in her simplicity she should keep that obsolete old day! It must be exceedingly inconvenient, and she earning her daily bread. Yes, I will find it for her and show her how silly it is to cling to the seventh day in this age and dispensation." And that was the beginning of such a study of the Scriptures as I never before had dreamed of. I searched and I prayed, prayed and searched; but the week passed and the Sabbath again came round and I had not got any nearer permission for first-day observance than she had. About this time the Bible lay constantly under my pillow, where I could instantly pull it out and read as soon as left alone; at night, also, whenever sleepless, I would raise the taper of gas at my bed head, and read God's word by the hour. Whether Miss B. suspected this or not, I never knew, for she was wise enough to appear to notice nothing. Finally, there came a Sabbath morning when, with a slight embarrassment in my manner, I announced:— "Miss B., don't think too much of it—I mean don't fancy that there is more in it than there really is—but I have for several weeks been trying to find the scriptural reason for the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, and, so far, I have not yet been able to find it. Of course," I continued hurriedly, for I imagined I detected a faint shade of exultation in my little nurse's air—"of course I know that it is there, and, sooner or later, I shall find it; but meanwhile I will join you in observing the seventh day, for," I added with a smile, "I confess I find so much said about the Sabbath, and so little about Sunday ('the Lord's day')"—this was my way of distinguishing the days—"that I cannot think I shall be doing wrong in keeping it until I can find chapter and verse for the change; and," I continued, "it will be much pleasanter for us both to observe the same day while we are together." "Yes," she replied very demurely, "I don't think it can be wrong; and it will be much pleasanter." So keep it I did until we parted; and then I continued to keep it, although, as far as I knew, not another soul in Philadelphia did. In Chicago I joined the University Place Baptist Church, and kept it there, with the stipulation on their side that I would rest on Sunday, and be sure to let them know before I began should circumstances ever compel my working on that day, and on both sides the distinct understanding that I rested on Sunday merely and solely to avoid offending my brethren and sisters, and not at all because I considered that day in the least sacred. When asked whether I was "open to conviction," I answered:— "Yes, indeed; I started the hunt to help a poor friend who I thought must find the seventh a very inconvenient day to keep." That was twenty years ago, and I am keeping the dear seventh day yet, because—lean closer, though it's an open secret—because I have never found God's permission to do otherwise, for HE NEVER GAVE IT! It is always safe to go to the Book of books for information, though we may sometimes find what we do not expect to see there.