LETTERS AND ANSWERS

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 10, 1859

LETTERS AND ANSWERS.

From Eld. J. Ingerick.

DEAR SIR: Some person has had your paper sent to me, I suppose some old friend. I write you this to notify you to stop the paper as I do not believe some of the leading doctrines thereof. It is true I like the spirit of many of the writers, while others are too censorious.

I do not understand how you can accuse those who differ with you on the Sabbath question, of doing away the moral law. These accusations are of a wholesale and sweeping character. Now what christian believes the law is done away? The law is an eternal rule of right. There is no authority in earth or heaven can do it away. God himself would not do it; for it would be violating the principles of his own nature and government. How could it be right to entertain any other feeling but love and reverence toward our Creator? How could it be right to trifle with his holy name? The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Now, as much as ever, love is the fulfilling of the law. Paul, in Romans says, Do we then make void the law through faith? Nay, but we establish the law. As it regards the Sabbath, I believe in observing the first day of the week. To be short and avoid repetitions, I would say that my reasons are those usually adduced. I am a believer in the immortality of the soul. Paul in 2 Cor. v, 4, 6, 8, calls this body a tabernacle. "We that are in this tabernacle do groan," &c. "Therefore we are always confident, (mark that) knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. We are confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord." Now if there is any meaning in language, this does teach the conscious state of the dead in Christ between their decease and the resurrection.

Again in Phil. i, 23. "For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." Now according to your view of the subject, he would when dead have no realizing sense of being present with Christ. Although he here had his conflicts, his christian graces were in exercise to comfort him. These, and all his high hopes and exalted views of the heavenly state must all lie dormant in the grave. Now I seriously ask you, Would any of you, believing as you do, write in such a strain as the Apostle did? Would you not consider that it would be calculated to lead astray? Would you not think it necessary to stop often and explain yourself? I was surprised in reading in your paper, strictures on a sermon, I think by a Methodist. The writer stated that the preacher referred to the words of our Saviour to the thief on the cross, "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." The criticizer stated that if he went that day with our Lord to paradise, he went alive; for he did not die that day. Such assertions it will do to make to those who are wholly ignorant of the Bible. Mark says it was the third hour when he was crucified. Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us from the sixth to the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. At the ninth hour Jesus gave up the ghost. Now turn to John xix, 31-42, inclusive. If, according to this, our Saviour and those crucified with him did not die that day, I do not understand language.

I would write more but I have not time. Perhaps it would not be amiss to say that I am a regular Baptist, and love all who love our Lord Jesus Christ.

In haste yours, JACOB INGERICK. Charleston, Tioga Co., Pa.

REMARKS. We are pleased with our friend's remarks on the law of God. We are always glad to see a profound respect manifested for this law, and a firm faith in its perpetuity. If he will still maintain these principles during an investigation of the questions to which we are endeavoring to call the attention of the people, we shall think him "not far from the kingdom of God." We do not accuse those who differ with us merely on the day to be kept as the Sabbath, of doing away with the moral law. Nor do we believe that it is any mark of a "christian" to believe it to be done away. But if Eld. I. thinks there are no professing christians who take this position, we are prepared to enlighten him to a considerable extent in this direction. Two of his "regular Baptists" in this place, Elds. Fillio and Harrington, take their stand upon this ground, namely, that the

ten commandments have been abolished. They do it, we are constrained to believe, for the purpose of expunging the fourth precept from that code, that they may avoid the obligation of keeping the seventh day. And there are persons scattered over the land, whose proper designation would be "No-law men." They denounce the ten commandments as uttered from Sinai, as a "miserable, rickety, thunder-and-lightning old law, that is dead and buried and does not deserve a grave stone." Against this class of persons we do not hesitate to pronounce "sweeping accusations."

The Sabbath is by this view most effectually resisted. More confusion can be raised in the mind of the reader or hearer by this view, than by, perhaps, any other. According to this theory there is no Sabbath; and it is a demonstrated fact, as can be shown by a multitude of witnesses, that the "reasons usually adduced" for the observance of the first day of the week, are insufficient for the burden placed upon them. The ultimate issue, then, of the whole question is this: Is there a Sabbath or is there none? Those who adhere to the law, must admit that there is; and that that day is the Sabbath which the commandment designates.

Our friend quotes two texts, which, to him, are conclusive evidence of the conscious state of the dead. Let us quote a text which seems to stand upon the other side: "The dead know not anything. . . . their love, their hatred, and their envy is now perished. . . . There is no work nor device nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest." Eccl. ix, 5, 6, 10. "If there is any meaning in language, this does teach the unconscious state of the dead in Christ between their decease and the resurrection." Does our friend believe that there is a contradiction in the word of God?

How often does Paul speak of the dead as fallen asleep? How completely does he make our future existence hinge upon the resurrection! How emphatically does he declare that if Christ be not risen, then they which have fallen asleep in Christ are perished! It will be ten-fold more difficult for our friend to harmonize all these passages with the texts he has quoted, than to harmonize the texts he mentions, and all others of their kind, with these plain declarations.

In regard to the crucifixion of the Saviour, whatever a correspondent may have done, we base nothing upon the question whether or not he or they died on that day. But Christ said three days afterwards, that he had not yet ascended to his Father; or, in other words, that he had not yet been to paradise. This fact must wonderfully modify our understanding of the declaration, "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." And we are confident that a further examination of these questions will modify Eld. I.'s views from what he has above expressed.