Coming to the Front by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 17, 1878

Coming to the Front.

By Editor

In the October number of the Sabbath Memorial is an article with the above caption from which we extract the following:—

“The Sabbath is one of the questions that must soon come to the front.” Thus speak many candid minds who, casting about for divine authority for the sanctity of the first day, find neither jot or tittle in the Scriptures to warrant it. What they do find is in favor of the seventh day and no other. Human law which contravenes the divine always proves a miserable failure, as may be instanced by the Sunday law. The various societies which seek to protect the popular day, under the misapplied names of “Sabbath” and the “Lord’s day,” must see, if they have eyes, that many people are not content with the mere assertions of the pulpit, the consecrating voice of prayer and song, that Sunday is thereby any holier than Monday or Tuesday. The secular press, more independent than the religious, now and then tells the public that the seventh day is the Sabbath and not the first day. Here and there are those who come to the knowledge of the fourth commandment—that plainest of the ten—and embrace it, wholly through the reading of the Bible. Others are induced to search that sure and only true guide by means of our Sabbath publications, and thus the number of Sabbath-keepers increases. . . . We feel that the time is opportune to put forward the claims of God’s Sabbath. However some good ministers may say, “You can never change public opinion and practice; it is folly to think that people will ever leave Sunday for Saturday,” we shall try; for we know that the good work goes bravely forward. Though Sanballat voices may cry out, “ ‘a fox’ will ‘break down’ your expectations,” our answer shall be, that we are trying to turn men from the weekly transgression of their lives to the obedience of the fourth commandment. “The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore, we his servants will rise and build.”