p. 192 | To Correspondents by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 3, 1860

To Correspondents.

By Editor

L. B., of Va. : In regard to your query whether it is proper to lend tools to be used on the Sabbath, it looks to us that when the neighbors of a Sabbath-keeper, knowing his feelings and practice in regard to the Sabbath, come to him to borrow tools of him to be used on the Sabbath, they show a disrespect for his views and feelings which releases him from all obligation to accommodate them. As we would not act thus towards a Sunday-keeper, that is, would not seek to borrow of a strenuous observer of the first day, tools to be used on that day which he regards as the Sabbath, so we think they ought to have an equal respect for us, and if they do not, we see not how they can blame us for not accommodating them. In regard to the commencement of the day, we think that the Bible is explicit that it begins and ends at the setting of the sun.

E. I., of Mich. : The ten commandments are called in Ex. xxxiv, 28, the words of the covenant, that part of the covenant which the people were bound to perform. The covenant in full is brought to view in Ex. xix, as an agreement between God and the people; they agreeing to obey his voice, or keep the ten commandments, and he agreeing on these conditions to make them a peculiar treasure unto him above all people. When the people therefore broke the ten commandments, they broke the covenant, as they failed to fulfill their part of the stipulation; and as that covenant made no provision for the forgiveness of sin, or for the replacing of the transgressor, they forever forfeited all their claims under that covenant. Hence the necessity of a new covenant which would embrace in its provisions, the forgiveness of sin. But as the law was the basis of the old covenant, so also is it of the new.