p. 624 | OUR MESSAGE AND WORK by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 39.

OUR MESSAGE AND WORK.

By Editor

WE very frequently receive long communications from different persons in various parts of the country asking us to print articles of varied merit and theory against the seventh-day Sabbath, and generally in favor of Sunday. Sometimes, if it seems best to us for our readers, we print the entire communication, as we did that of Mr. Walker's, in No. 31 of this present volume; sometimes we print extracts; sometimes we reply by mail; and sometimes we pay no attention to the matter. In thus doing we aim to deal fairly and courteously with all. Yet because a more or less extended argument is not printed correspondents often complain that we do not treat them fairly because we have not printed their entire communication; that we are not willing that our readers should have both sides of the Sabbath question, etc., etc. Now the facts of the matter are simply these:—

1. "We have not followed cunningly devised fables" in making known to the world the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day. It is supported by the positive testimony of Scripture, in terms so clear and express that thousands have been constrained to break all former associations, dear as the apple of the eye, and turn to the observance of the Sabbath of the Lord.

2. We are few in number compared with the rest of Christendom, and our publications are altogether too few to proclaim the truth. We have not space or time to publish what we are assured from God's word is error. And even though we could afford the space, it would not be right to use the Lord's funds for that purpose.

3. The "other side" of the Sabbath question to us is the side of error. Surely our readers have heard and do hear that side continually. The thousands of pulpits in our land, the hundreds of religious periodicals, are nearly all enlisted against the seventh-day Sabbath and are endeavoring to convince in every known way that Sunday is the Sabbath of the Lord, from the golden silence of some all the way through the maze of mutually contradictory and destructive arguments to the bigot's appeal to law, the arrest, the fine, the jail, and the chain-gang. Certainly our readers have every opportunity to know "the other side." In fact thousands of those who now observe the seventh-day Sabbath have desired with all their hearts to have proved to them that Sunday was the Sabbath, and failed to find the proof. What to some may be considered new and wonderful "evidence" in behalf of Sunday and against the Sabbath is, in nearly all cases, hundreds of years old, and is evidence that invariably recoils upon the Sunday, while the rock of truth is not affected thereby. We are giving to the world the message of the Living God, the everlasting gospel.

We are not uncertain; God does not wish his servants to be. We do not say we know all the truth, for to know all the truth would be to know all of God; but we know that the word of truth authorizes, supports, and defends the Sabbath of the Lord, the memorial of creation and sign of redemption, the threefold pledge of God's wisdom, power, and love. And to that, to the blessings connected therewith, we invite all. "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel."