THE INSTITUTION OF THE SABBATH
By Editor
Our readers will bear with us for occupying this week so much space on a subject which is to most of them so familiar. Yet it is well to review often the reasons of a belief which causes us to differ so widely in practice from those around us. The longer we live and examine the efforts which are made to sustain, or rather to apologize for, Sunday-keeping, the more we become convinced that all has been said on that side of the question that can be said. If there is anything new or further to be advanced we earnestly hope it may be searched up; but we cannot consider the matter in any way improved till the arguments for Sunday shall be freed from at least half a score of positive contradictions. As the matter now stands we labor at something of a disadvantage. There are some things so plain that they are hard to prove. For instance, it would be hard to enter into any connected chain of reasoning to show that the waters of a river flow down stream, or that the wind blows, or that the sun shines. It is said that taken upon an absolute level with the axis of the earth for a basin, the mouth of the Mississippi river is three miles higher than its source. Well then, some may say, it is "reasonable to infer," that the water would flow down from its mouth to its source. And if any one should contend for this, we should deem it sufficient to lay before his mind the fact that the waters of the Mississippi do flow all the way down from lake Itasca in Minnesota to the gulf of Mexico. We look upon the Sabbath question in a similar light. People come on with their assumptions and inferences, some that the Sabbath was not instituted at creation, others that it was designed for only a portion of the human race; some that it is a memorial of the resurrection of Christ; others that it commemorates Israel's deliverance from Egypt; some that it has been changed, others that it has been abolished; some that we are to keep one day in seven, no matter which, others that we are to be fully persuaded in our own mind whether to keep any day or not. In all these cases, it seems to us, it ought to be sufficient to present the facts in the case, as they are recorded in the sacred Book. There are the plain declarations of the Lord, and with those who profess to believe them, this ought to suffice, without the necessity of our entering into any special argument to prove them true.