CONSISTENCY! CONSISTENCY! CONSISTENCY!
By Editor
WE shall insist that our opponents on the Sabbath question be consistent in the positions which they occupy. When they are strenuous for certain principles which are essential to other portions of their belief, and then ignore those same principles when they come to an investigation of the Sabbath, we say that they are inconsistent; we might say more; for dishonesty is evidently involved in such a course. If they will allow certain principles, the validity of which they acknowledge on most points, to have their full bearing on all questions in which they are involved, we have no fears for the Sabbath. The following extracts from religious papers of the day will illustrate. “It is a principle of law that “when a statute limits a thing to be done in a particular form, it includes in itself a negative, viz., that it shall not be done otherwise.” The soundness of this principle cannot be disputed. The command to a child to do a particular thing is a prohibition to do some other thing. This principle is the justification of Baptists. The thing commanded, as the visible act, in making a religious profession, is baptism. Baptism therefore is the act to be performed, under the precise conditions, and by the precise mode of the original institution. Substitutes, modifications are forbidden. The one original baptism was the immersion of believers. That was the baptism required, and the inference of the prohibition of every other is conclusive. The same may be said of the order of observing Christian ordinances—first baptism—then communion. This was “the pattern in the Mount,” and therefore the law of Christian churches.” It is not to call in question the “soundness of this principle,” that we have introduced this extract, but to show that it has a wider application than to the one subject of baptism. “When a statute limits a thing to be done in a particular form, it includes in itself a negative, viz., that it shall not be done otherwise.” Very well. There is a statute incorporated into the law of Jehovah, which limits us to a particular action; it is that we shall keep the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath of the Lord. Does this include in itself a negative? It does; namely, that we shall not act otherwise. “The command to do a particular thing is a prohibition to do some other thing.” We accept the principle. See if it is not good in the following proposition: the command to keep the seventh day is a prohibition to keep any other day. This prohibition is expressly contained again in the commandment when it says that six days we shall labor. According to this principle then, the fourth commandment commands us to labor, and prohibits us from resting on the first day of the week. According to the quotation, “this principle is the justification of Baptists.” Give it an untrammeled application, and it becomes the justification of the Sabbath-keeper also. This is all we claim. “Substitutes, modifications are forbidden.” How true must this be as applied to the Sabbath; and it cannot be shown that Sunday-keeping is anything else. Pursuing the argument we reason as follows: that as “the one original baptism was the immersion of believers,” so the one original Sabbath was the seventh day of the week; and as that is the Sabbath required to be kept, “the inference of the prohibition of every other is conclusive.” This was the “example” at creation, and therefore the law for every child of God from that time onward. But yet the mass of the Baptist denomination, and doubtless the writer of the above also, live in a barefaced violation of this principle from week to week. We will not, reader, detain you longer on this point, but invite your attention to the following: “RESERVED FROM THE CREATION.
“Rev. Theo. L. Cuyler writes in the Christian Intelligencer—During the present exciting agitation of the “Sunday rail-car question,” it is well to bear in mind these two words—God’s day. It is not man’s day. It never was; it never will be. Man did not institute it. Man does not own it. When man attempts to take it away from God, and use it for his own ends of selfish pleasure or profit, he is a thief. God never gave him any right to the Sabbath, except to “keep it holy” to the Lord. In social and public worship, in reading and meditation, in getting good and doing good, the sacred hours are to be spent; but never in whipping poor overworked brutes along, before cars overloaded with idlers, excursionists, and Sabbath-breakers.” A perusal of these lines leaves us strongly impressed with one of two things; either the “Rev. T. L. Cuyler” is intensely and totally blinded himself, or he presumes on the total blindness of his readers. It was the “Sunday rail-car question” which called forth his remarks; it is the Sunday, therefore, of which he speaks. Now take Sunday, and “these two words—God’s day,” and put them together, and what do you have? You have two objects that are entirely distinct from each other, two that bear no relation to each other, have no connection with each other, no dependence upon each other, and neither of which would remind us of the other. For Sunday is not “God’s day.” It never was; it never will be; that is, while we understand by the expression, the day which God set apart and sanctified as his Sabbath at the creation of the world. Did God rest upon Sunday? Did he set apart the first day of the week? Has that been “reserved from the creation?” Then how is it that we meet with such a tissue of contradictions as is contained in the above, publicly given to the world? A series of utter misapplications which render their author liable to the charge of being a knave or an ignoramus. Out of the declarations made, six, if applied to Sunday, are totally false; and the others cannot be applied to Sunday in any way whatever; yet the Rev. gentleman gives them to the public as vitally affecting the “Sunday rail-car question.” We call your attention to one extract more, and close. It is from the American Messenger and reads as follows: “WHEN IS THE GREAT WORK DONE?
“In the past months, God has poured his Spirit in various parts of the land. Many are now in the spring of their love to Christ and Christ’s work. They are gathered into the church, and a feeling of conscious and yet trembling security fills their bosoms. Once they were in the “slippery paths” of sin—now, are they not standing on the Rock of ages, safe? “But the fact that they are numbered among the people of God, and their names inscribed on the church records, does not secure their safety. No doubt many indulge erroneous impressions on this point, feeling that they have come into the church, not so much to grace, and to be useful, as to be safe. They have been converted, they hope, and think the great work is done. Oh, what low and imperfect views. The great work is but begun. They have only got upon the right track. They have only taken a position to start from.” The correctness of this position, so far as carried out in this extract, we presume no one can doubt; that is, that when a person is just converted, and has joined himself with the people of God, the great work for him is but begun. But there is another great work closely connected with this (perhaps we might almost call it a part of it) concerning which we presume these same individuals would not be willing to make this admission. Taken on another point, it suits their purpose better to call the work finished, and so they call it finished. We need not mention that we refer to Sunday-keeping as a memorial of redemption. The work of redemption, they tell us, was completed when Christ arose from the dead on the first day of the week. This is their first assertion. Their next is, that for this reason it is “more appropriate” to observe the first day of the week for the Sabbath. The first is evidently false in toto, and even if the first were true, the second is rank presumption. Redemption, the great work of redemption, completed when Christ rose from the dead! No! Well might we retort upon them, “Oh, what low and imperfect views.” His work of mediation was then but just begun. Ever since then he has been acting as high priest “in the presence of God for us;” and who can assert that the work of redemption is completed before the last subject of redemption is forever redeemed! Then and not till then will it be accomplished. But we can have a memorial only of a work that is finished; and when, therefore, the ground is taken that the observance of Sunday is a memorial of redemption, it must of necessity be claimed that the work of redemption is completed. But what a view is this! Would it ever have been adopted, were it not to subserve a purpose! We do not wish to be harsh or unjust. We appeal to the reader therefore, if we have not judged rightly in all this. If he decides fairly and candidly that we have, he will doubtless be willing to second our demand for consistency on the part of our opponents, and may then occupy his mind with some further reflections which it is not necessary for us to mention.