Discovering the Seventh-Day Sabbath
By Sally Yuker
DEAR BRO. WHITE :—I wish to let those who are pilgrims and strangers here know that I am on the road to Mt. Zion, trying to keep the commandments of God, that I may have right to the tree of life. I have been trying for twenty-two years to live a Christian, and verily thought that I had respect to all the commandments; but when I came to look at them with a single eye, I could see that I had been breaking the Sabbath-day which God had commanded us to keep holy. I was led to think seriously of the subject last Winter when a friend suggested to me that the seventh day was the Sabbath, and that it was my duty to keep it holy. I thought of it some and then made up my mind that there was no need for me to be wiser than all the generations that had lived since Christ, and so I broke another holy day. The next seventh day I was reading what God said to his chosen people about the Sabbath: it is a sign between me and you forever. It is an everlasting covenant. I began to consider upon the sign by which God distinguished his people, and covenant by which he held such, and they were owned and blessed in keeping the Sabbath holy. I could find no command from the Bible which told me to keep the first day of the week, and I made up my mind that as God had taken pains to write the commandments with his own finger on tables of stone, and showed himself with such mighty signs and wonders that the people could not mistake his glory and power, if he wished his people to keep the first day as the Sabbath he would have manifested it by some definite command. I had been praying for three weeks that the Lord would teach me, and when he showed me his covenant I fell down before him, promising to keep the Sabbath day holy. I was unspeakably blest. I felt much as I did when I first found the Saviour precious to my soul. Indeed the truth had made me free. I was happy as long as I hallowed the Sabbath with my whole heart. The Lord is gracious to me. I sometimes long for that eternal rest which shall never be interrupted. I want not only to keep the Sabbath, but to keep myself unspotted from the world. I want on the whole armor, for I am looking for that day when the marriage supper of the Lamb will come. I want to be there; for all that are there will share in the glorious inheritance prepared for those that love God. Yours in the bonds of Christian union.
SALLY YUKER.
Pennfield, N. Y., June, 1854.