Holy Time, or the Sabbath.
“In a small work entitled, “The Missionary’s Daughter; a Memoir of Lucy Goodall Thurston, of the American Tract Society, we find the following on page 159: “We have concluded to observe to-morrow as the Sabbath with the Tahitians, as they are one day in advance of us. “As an explanation of the fact here alluded to, some may need to be informed, that in consequence of the missionaries at these two different groups of Islands having passed to their respective stations in opposite directions, the one company by Cape of Good Hope, and the other by Cape Horn, they necessarily differ one day in their computation of time. Hence the Sabbath at the Society Islands occurs one day earlier than at the Sandwich Islands. “Will those who contend for a specific day of holy time, tell us which of the above days is the Sabbath?” The above we clip from the Voice of the West. As those who contend for a specific day of holy time, are called upon to tell which of the days referred to constitutes the Sabbath, a word may be expected from us on the point. We are well aware of the effects that such paragraphs are calculated to have, that is to unsettle the mind of the reader as to the question whether there is any specific day to be regarded as the Sabbath. They are given to the public dressed up as objections to the seventh-day Sabbath, and observers of the seventh day are expected to explain the difficulty, or give up their position as inconsistent. But let us examine a moment and see who are the ones involved in this difficulty, if there is any difficulty in the matter. What day did the missionaries above referred to keep as the Sabbath? The first day of the week. Those who keep the first day believe that there is some reason for keeping that day; and that that definite day should be kept and no other. If those missionaries, were, as reported, one day apart in their reckoning, they could not both have been keeping the first day of the week. Now will those who believe that the first day is the Sabbath, as those missionaries did, tell us which one of those days was the right one? When they will do this, we will tell them how the seventh day could be kept under similar circumstances. If not, let them not object to our theory on ground which equally affects their own. This is a question for Sunday-keepers to settle, not Sabbath-keepers. In fact we have never yet heard of any who kept the seventh day getting into any such difficulty. Suppose one of the missionaries in one party had a twin brother in the other party. They are one day apart in their reckoning. Now will any one tell us which of them was the oldest? If a person could not keep the Sabbath under such circumstances, he could not keep the reckoning of his own birth day. But there is another question lying back of this, namely, has not God commanded a specific day to be kept as the Sabbath? And until it is decided that he has not, no Christian has any moral right to raise the objection here introduced. It is playing into the hands of infidels, and giving occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme his institutions.