THE SABBATH THE WORLD OVER.
IT is still gravely asserted by some, and ministers too, that the Sabbath cannot be kept the world over; that, as time differs east and west, and that, as a person traveling around the world will gain or lose a day accordingly as he travels east or west, therefore it is impossible to keep the Sabbath on any particular day, but only on a seventh part of time. Such persons seem never to have come far enough from their native wilderness to learn that these objections are mere quibbles, and, as such, have often been dispelled into thin air; and they are still handing them out as insuperable objections to the seventh day. Before these ministers can make this line of argument work, there are some antecedent points which must first be proved by them: Perhaps God gave at the first a Sabbath day to mankind—a particular day and not merely a seventh part of time; and perhaps he designed it to be kept the world over. If this should prove to be the case, and ministers now rise up and say that a particular day cannot be kept the world over, what follows? It follows that a divine law has been given which cannot be obeyed, or else that these ministers have taken a very foolish and blasphemous position. Do they not see, therefore, that if they would avoid the liability of impeaching the divine wisdom, they must first show that the Sabbath is not confined to any particular day, or that it is limited in its application, and is binding only on a particular class of men. And this must be shown from the original design and intent of the law, not from any circumstances which men may afterwards imagine that they discover in reference to their power of keeping it. We have said that the objections urged on the ground of a difference of time east and west, and the loss and gain of time in going in different directions around the world, are mere quibbles. Granting the fact that time is thus gained and lost, is it any objection to the seventh day? Some three years are usually occupied in the circumnavigation of the globe; and we never heard of any who ever had any difficulty in correcting their reckoning so as to make it correspond with that on the land. The computation of time on the land where everything is stationary and regular must of course be taken as the standard, rather than that of a ship's crew upon the ocean, who are continually changing their position and their reckoning. If it should be our duty, for instance, to go around the globe, we should keep every seventh day as it came to us on the voyage, and when we arrived at home, having completed the circuit, and found that our reckoning did not agree with that of the place from which we started, and which had gone on regularly in our absence, we should immediately change our reckoning to correspond to that. We should consider it duty so to do; because the variation would have taken place in our reckoning, and not in that of the place we left; and this variation, which had been caused by our voyage around the world, could not reasonably or consistently be taken as a basis for future computation of time. The land reckoning must be the standard in all such cases, and not the changes resulting from being on the ocean. And yet while we were on the voyage, we should be justified in keeping the Sabbath according to our reckoning then; for it would be the very best that our circumstances would permit us to do (since by reason of our motion while on the water, we could not accurately mark the revolution of the earth), and that is all that is required. We should keep the seventh day as it came to us while thus situated; and so doing, we should be acting "according to the commandment." But how foolish is it for men to bring up the loss and gain of time resulting from circumnavigating the globe to affect the practice of us who are living on the land. We are not on the ocean, circumnavigating the globe, and do not expect ever to be. We are where the seventh day comes to us regularly with nothing to disturb our reckoning. God commands us to keep this seventh day as he weekly brings it to us. By his grace let us try so to do, rather than to excuse ourselves on the senseless ground that if we should go off upon the ocean there would be a variation in our reckoning of time.