“RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD.”
By Editor
UNDER the above head, “C. D. M.” in the Advance, September 9, calls another correspondent to account for supporting the practise of ‘tithing’ from the Old Testament. C. D. M. claims that since the Old Testament belonged to a different ‘dispensation,’ it is of neither value nor authority at the present time. But it is clear that it is not tithing, so much as the Sabbath, which this correspondent is anxious to destroy. The subject of tithing is the occasion which leads him to say the following:— Not to perceive this distinction pitches everything into confusion. And it is out of this confused vision that the Sabbath controversy has sprung. Failure to see a succession of dispensations, and at least two Testaments, must inevitably result in giving by far the longer end of the lever to the Sabbatarians. . . . The Jews lived under the Old Testament, which we call the law. To refer to what Christ did settles nothing for us, for Christ was a Jew, and he lived under the law. Furthermore, during the days when he was forging a New Testament, the New Testament dispensation, of course, had not begun, for, (Heb. 9 : 16) “Where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator; for a testament is of force after men are dead; otherwise, it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.” Ye are not under the law. If more unchristian and destructive no-lawism than the above has been uttered by a Congregationalist (as it is fair to suppose), we have not been pained by seeing it. It is also as inconsistent as it is painful. To push the analogy between the “will”—testament—of a man and the Old and New Testaments so far as to destroy the former, is far from being logical or exegetical. To ignore the fact that the New Testament is the product of the Old; that the Old infolds the New, and the New unfolds the Old, is equally unscholarly and unjust. But the depth of unchristian non-loyalty is reached when the stigma of Judaism is fastened on Christ, under the assertion: “To refer to what Christ did settles nothing for us, for Christ was a Jew, and he lived under the law.” Startling as this new form of unbelief may be, it has one element of consistency in that it throws away the Jewish Christ with the Jewish Scriptures; but it leaves the world a little lonely with only a “Jewish Saviour,” whose example is nothing to those who pretend to hope in him for salvation. Is this the latest liberal orthodoxy of reckless no-lawism? And all to get rid of the Sabbath?—Sabbath Recorder.