ASTONISHING IGNORANCE by Charles P. Bollman

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 23, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 34.

ASTONISHING IGNORANCE.

By Charles P. Bollman

SOMETIME since the Youth's Companion contained the following short article relative to a lamentable but far too common ignorance of the truths of the Word of God:—

Ignorant of Its Truth.

A teacher of elocution in an American college for women told the following incident to some friends the other day as a fact: I was listening lately to a class of young ladies who were reading aloud, when one came to the expression, "The patience of Job." She pronounced the name as if it were spelled jobb, and then, pausing, said:—

"I don't understand this. Who was Job?"

"Have you never read the book of Job?" I asked in amazement. "Does the name suggest nothing to you?"

"Nothing, whatever," she replied, "except that I somehow associate it with printing. Was he a publisher?"

Other teachers who were present gave other instances of the ignorance among American girls and boys of the Bible.

"I once asked a graduating class of young men in college," said one, "why the Jews kept Saturday as the Sabbath, while Christians observe Sunday. Not one could tell me, and yet the majority of them undoubtedly belonged to church-going families."

Another teacher said: "Ignorance of the Bible is not confined to the girls and boys. I was seated at a lecture lately beside a young matron, a leader of society, especially devoted to music. The lecturer quoted from the twenty-third psalm, adding, 'As the sweet singer of Israel tells us.'"

"My neighbor looked puzzled a moment, and then, nodding cheerfully, whispered, 'He means Mendelssohn, of course.'"

It is an unwelcome fact that while the practical truths of Christianity are now taught in Christian homes, the Bible is not read or studied or committed to memory by the children as it was in past generations, not only in devout families, but in many of those where the parents were not members of Christian churches.

How can any soul travel through life by the aid of a map which it does not know?

These examples of ignorance of the Bible are all bad enough, but most remarkable of all is the ignorance of the writer of the article himself, and that of the teacher, who cited inability to tell "why the Jews keep Saturday as the Sabbath, while Christians observe Sunday," as an astonishing example of ignorance in college graduates. The fact is that while it is easy enough to tell "why the Jews keep Saturday as the Sabbath," the wisest man in all the world can give no satisfactory Bible reason why "Christians observe Sunday," and this for the simple reason that there is no such reason.

It is not the universal practise of Christians to "observe Sunday." Seventh-day Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists both "keep Saturday as the Sabbath," or, to speak more accurately, both these denominations observe the seventh day in harmony with the explicit command of the Decalogue, which says: "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." Moreover, literature upon this subject has been extensively circulated, and the question has been discussed so widely in both the religious and secular press that it seems strange that every one has not heard of it, and that all do not know how impossible it is to give any satisfactory answer to the question, "Why do Christians observe the first day of the week?" Reader,

"Search the Book, and thou shalt know There's no scripture tells them so." C. P. BOLLMAN.