WHICH IS THE SEVENTH DAY?
By R. F. Cottrell
THERE are many persons who are free to admit that the seventh day is the only weekly Sabbath of the Bible, and who say they ought to keep it, if they could know which day of the week is truly the seventh. Such persons are deceived in regard to themselves. If they will only set to work in earnest to find the true seventh day, they will discover that the difficulty is not so great to find the seventh day, as it is to find it in their hearts to keep it. But for the benefit of those who desire to know the true Sabbath of the Lord, that they may keep it, I will endeavor in a brief way to make it plain. God's providence is over all the world. His providence and his requirements must be in harmony. If therefore his commandment requires us to keep the seventh day in the order of the creation week, his providence will certainly put it in our power to find the day. Did you ever think that this excuse was an impeachment of the wisdom and justice of the Almighty? It is a serious thing, in order to excuse ourselves from doing what he has commanded, to say that his providence has put it out of our power. This is not his character. As long as his law requires us to keep the seventh day, so long we can find that day, if we will. When the Son of God was on earth, he recognized and observed the day that the Jews were then keeping, as the true Sabbath. He knew. Since that time both Jews and Christians have been agreed in the numbering of the days of the week. The Jews, the world over are agreed that Saturday is the true seventh day, and Christians agree with them in this; for the mass of them keep Sunday as the first day, because it is the day of the resurrection of Christ. The few Christians who profess to keep the seventh day are agreed with both. While so many have been, from week to week, keeping one of the seven days as a Sabbath, it is utterly impossible that all should lose the reckoning and still all be agreed from first to last, unless God should work a miracle to make it so. If he has done so, he has not only not cared to preserve a knowledge of the day he requires us to keep, but has wrought a miracle to mislead us, while he still commands us to keep the seventh day holy. Is this the character of the God you worship? Such is not our God.