Review and Herald, Vol. 42, No. 4. (7/8/1873)

Review and Herald

Jul 8, 1873

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 8, 1873

OBJECTIONS TO THE SABBATH ANSWERED.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS.

Objection. Why have so many learned men not seen it, if the Scriptures teach that the seventh day is the Sabbath?

Answer. This is an easy question to answer. Learned men are found on all sides of every question. Name one learned man who advocated immersion, and I will name another just as learned who advocated sprinkling. Are there not as learned men among the Methodists as among the Baptists? among the Episcopalians as among the Presbyterians? among the Catholics as among the Protestants? Yes; and yet each one is squarely opposed to the other. Does our Baptist friend object to the Sabbath because learned men have not taught it? Then he should give up his immersion, for the same learned men have opposed that! We have no objection to learning, nor to learned men; but we do object to making them our guide, instead of the inspired word of God. Jesus once said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” Matt. 11:25. To the same effect Paul says, “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent,” &c. 1 Cor. 1: 19. Much more to the same effect might be quoted, as every Bible reader knows. If we follow these wise and prudent ones instead of the plain word of God, are we not in danger of being put to confusion with them?

Every reformation has had this hackneyed objection arrayed against it. Luther’s case will illustrate the whole. When he began the great Reformation, Eck, a Catholic, opposed him in this language: “I am surprised at the humility and modesty with which the reverend doctor undertakes to oppose, alone, so many illustrious fathers, and pretends to know more than the sovereign pontiff, the councils, the doctors, and the universities! It would be surprising, no doubt, if God had hidden the truth from so many saints and martyrs until the advent of the reverend father!”—D’Aubigne’s Hist. Ref., vol. ii, p. 59.

There! Did not that silence Luther, and prove his doctrine false? We thank God it did not. Our opponents are simply serving up a re-hash of the same old dish presented to Luther by the Catholics. Learned men may err, but the Bible, never. They may not have had the light on these subjects which God has given you. God will judge you by the evidence you have, not by that which they had.

Objection. We must obey the law of the land.

Answer. Here our opponents think they find another argument against the Sabbath, for the law of the land forbids labor on Sunday, but allows it on the seventh day. To this we answer, That in many of the States the law makes provision for those who keep the seventh day, allowing them to work on the first day freely. Justice requires that this should be the law in every land. Where it is, we have as good a right to work on Sunday, as they have on the Sabbath. But suppose the law of the land does require us to keep Sunday and work on the Sabbath; if this is contrary to the law of God, should we obey it? No. On this subject the Bible is plain. When the rulers forbade the apostles to preach Jesus, they replied, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.” Acts 4:19. And again, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Acts 5:29. That is the way the apostles regarded the powers that be when they conflicted with the requirements of God. So when Nebuchadnezzar made it the law of the land that all should worship his golden image, the three Hebrews would not obey the law, but said to the king, “Be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” Dan. 3:18. Did they do right? Yes. The law of the land required them to break the second commandment. They would not obey it. If now the law requires us to break the fourth commandment, shall we not follow their example? Yes. Strange that a professed Christian should raise such an objection. What would you have done had you lived when idolatry was the law of the land, and it was death to be a Christian? If you held to the principle you now urge against the Sabbath, you would have been one of the first to renounce Christ, and worship idols! Listen to what was once the law of the land at Rome. The pagan Roman Emperor, Diocletian, in a law against the Christians, A. D. 296, said, “The immortal gods have, by their providence, ordained and established that which is true and good. Many wise and good men are united in the opinion that this must be maintained without alteration. These we dare not oppose, and no new religion ought to venture to blame the old; for it is an enormous crime to pull down that which our forefathers established and which has dominion in the state.”—Rose’s Neander, vol. i, p. 84.

None can fail to see the application of this to the present question.

Objection. It makes disturbance to keep the Sabbath.

Answer. This objection is of the same nature as the preceding ones. It rests wholly upon the supposition that we must regard the interests and requirements of men before the requirements of God. Whatever disturbs society or interferes with worldly customs must be avoided. But, if this principle be correct, it would condemn every reformer God ever sent into the world. Elijah was denounced as a troubler of Israel. 1 Kings 18:17. Jeremiah was punished as a traitor. Jer. 37. Christ was accused of stirring up the people. Luke 23:5; and the apostles were denounced as turning the world upside down. Acts 17:6. Christ says, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I come not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Matt. 10:34–36.

No man ever made so much trouble in this world, ever did so much to break up society, as Christ and his religion. Yet how did he do it? Simply by teaching the truth. Some would love this truth and obey it; others would hate it; and this made division. It is the very nature of truth to divide. It separates the good from the bad, those who fear God from those who do not. But, says one, the trouble is, this Sabbath question divides Christians and churches. Yes, yes, that is just what they said of the apostles, of Luther, of Calvin, of Wesley, &c. Who ever disturbed a church as did Luther and Wesley? But that was a fallen church, you say. Indeed, and are you certain that there are not some other churches fallen in our day, which need stirring up as much as the churches in those days did? You think not, but we think that that is the case. Our Protestant churches need only to go back a very short time, to have this very objection fall upon their own heads. Peace, peace, has ever been the cry of the false prophets, and fallen, sleepy churches. Jer. 6:14; 1 Thess. 5:3.

Objection. We shall lose our influence if we keep the Sabbath.

Answer. This seems to be a very plausible objection. A person belongs to the church, is in good standing, has an influence with others, can attend the Sunday-school, Bible-class, and other meetings, and thus have an influence by staying with them. If he keeps the Sabbath, everybody will be down on him, he will be expelled from the church, and thus lose all his influence for good. Can he not do more good for Christ to remain in the church and disregard the Sabbath? This is a very plausible device of the devil to lull men to sleep. Had all Christians reasoned this way, there never had been any martyrs. All would have gone on smoothly so far as this world is concerned. This principle of action would condemn the more prominent men the world has ever seen; for many of them have had to go out from the church and stand alone in the truth; but at last, God greatly blessed them in doing it. He made them light-bearers to the world. What a deception for a man to think he can honor God more by disobeying him than he can by obeying him? No, my friend, do not deceive yourselves that way. When God speaks, it is your duty to obey, no matter what others do. God will take care of his honor and your influence. If you want to have influence for the right, practice that right yourself. Wherever the truth of God is spread, somebody must lead off first, and stand out alone, and separate many times, in opposition to everybody.

This plan of waiting till the doctrine becomes popular, and a majority embrace it, before we take hold in order to save our influence, is a doctrine that suits the carnal mind well, and one that will land millions in perdition. “Come out from among them,” is God’s command. Do this, and God will take care of your influence.

Objection. Only a small minority keep the seventh day, while a great majority keep Sunday; hence the seventh day cannot be right.

Answer. This objection is easily answered. God’s truth has always been in the minority. On which side was the majority in the days of Noah? One family against the world! Where was it in the days of Abraham? How about the time of Elijah, and who were right in the days of the apostles? The language of Christ is sufficient to settle this point: “Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.” Matt. 7:13.

The words of John Locke, the great Christian philosopher, are to the point on this question:—

“An error is not better for being common, nor the truth, for having lain neglected: and if it were put to the vote any where in the world, I doubt, as things are managed, whether truth would have the majority, at least whilst the authority of men, and not the examination of things, must be its measure.”—Essay on Human Understanding, book iv, chap. 3, sec. 6, note.

Suppose we should call the world together to-day and let the majority decide what religion was true, how would it stand? Out of thirteen hundred millions, nine hundred millions are pagans! More than two to one against the Bible! Will our opponents now be consistent, and turn pagans? Or if we call for a majority of the Christian world, we have one hundred and seventy millions Catholics against about eighty millions Protestants! Two to one in favor of Romanism! Why don’t our opponents join them? But this objection is not worthy of further notice.

With one more number on the no-Sabbath theory I will close these articles.

D. M. CANRIGHT.

Medford, Minn.

Christian Enthusiasm.

It has passed into a maxim that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with a will. No one was ever thoroughly successful in any important work of life, who had not something like a passion for his calling, whether farmer, mechanic, artist, man of science, or letters, a teacher, or one devoted to any of the learned professions, a statesman, or a sovereign, he who does not magnify his office by throwing himself into it with a genuine ardor, will reach but moderate results, though he occupy himself with his particular vocation through even a long life. The men who keep the whole world from stagnation; who strike out new paths, rouse others into activity, and inaugurate new eras of progress; who, in spite of difficulties, achieve great things, and triumphantly leave the monuments of their energy and genius standing admired through ages, are men who are wide awake and full of earnestness—an earnestness in which intellect and heart are both enlisted. It is this sort of earnestness in which far-seeing wisdom is combined with the vitalizing glow of ardent feeling, which should be recognized as the true enthusiasm. It is to be carefully distinguished from the frenzy of sudden and great excitements, and from the impulsive recklessness that is often energetic in proportion as it is blind.

Christian enthusiasm, then, is that earnestness in the Christian life and work in which right purpose is instinct with Christian feeling. It is the intelligent zeal of one who loves Christ and longs to do his will. Jesus himself, calm and self-poised as he always was, exhibited it in his whole public ministry, and expressed it when he said, “My meat and my drink is to do the will of him that sent me.” Paul described it when he wrote, “It is good to be zealously affected always in a good

thing.” He illustrated it most signally in that wonderful apostolic career in which he out-labored his fellow apostles, and went unflinchingly through all manner of hardships to martyrdom itself. There must be a glorious record in the book of God of the names of vast numbers, down through the ages, who kept the vestal fire of an intense and self-devoted love habitually burning on the altar of their hearts. It has been mainly by the lives and labors of such that Christianity has been made an effective force in the world, and has steadily advanced. It is by the aggressive activities of such that she stands erect and extends her influence on every side to-day. In all the evangelical churches there are doubtless some who are truly fervent in spirit and fruitful in well-doing.

But yet, taking the great body of professed disciples together, what a painful lack of Christian enthusiasm do we see! The opposite to Christian enthusiasm is Christian conventionalism—that bondage to custom and prescribed methods which begets content with ordinary measures of success and the ordinary rate of movement, and discourages Christian aspiration and enterprise. How many churches and individual Christians are held, by means of this, as if in fetters, grinding contentedly in the mill of a cold and almost mechanical formalism, when they ought to be inwardly stirred with holy impulses and putting forth free and diversified activities! Birds may be kept so long caged as to lose both the will and the power to fly. So it would seem as if many disciples, long used to a fixed routine, have lost the appetite for spontaneous Christian effort, and no longer feel themselves able to go forth and bear their part in the great melee of life as champions for the right. Order and propriety are certainly excellent things as means; but, when they are changed to ends, and become walls within which to shut up active Christian energy so as to keep it from doing anything effectively, they are utterly perverted from their legitimate use, and set in false relations. The true Christian spirit is by no means a spirit of recklessness and anarchy; but neither is it so fastidious about methods as to be content to do nothing at all, for fear it may not work precisely according to the most exquisite ideals. It will rather seize a drowning man by the hair of his head than to let him drown because it hesitates to outrage the conventional proprieties.

The truth is, that but very few things in the great, complicated business of Christian living can be so arranged as to move on in a fixed routine. All the circumstances, activities, and drift of society—the tastes, habits, follies, weaknesses, perils, sins of those who compose it—are subject to perpetual change. The devil does not marshal his forces according to a stereotyped book of tactics, and put them under martinets charged to see that they always work by the same rules and do nothing on the battle-field that would be unbecoming on a dress parade. Because he is in dead earnest, he exhibits his intellectual power, his versatility, his manifold resources, in new movements and combinations, new stratagems and wiles, in changing his points of attack, his weapons, and his battle-cries, from hour to hour, if need be. In such circumstances, and with such an adversary, the ministry, the local church, the Christian man and woman individually, ought not to expect to do much toward making the world better, if they insist on the statu quo—on working always in the one conventional way. New plans and agencies, new lines of effort, new means of awakening and holding attention, fresh stimulants to thought and fresh motive to exertion, are perpetually needed. The work of to-day is not the work of yesterday. It is not the work that to-morrow will impose.

He only, therefore, can be a successful Christian worker who is able to comprehend the present exigency, and to do promptly what it demands. Right purpose alone and moving along the beaten path may fail to do this. Right purpose, all aglow with healthful Christian feeling, a genuine Christian enthusiasm, in other words, is much more likely to accomplish it. This quickens every faculty, and greatly intensifies the power of attention and decision. It is broad in its views, fertile in expedients, and determined in its efforts. It supplies the steady impulse necessary to Christian enterprise, and does not soon die, like a mere occasional excitement. A person in conventional bondage is like a wheel in a groove, that may easily be blocked. One who is warmed with an intelligent Christian enthusiasm is more like an eagle, that, free and unhampered, soars when and where he will. Could the thousands of well-instructed Christians in the churches, could the great body of sound and able ministers who are the leaders of the sacramental hosts, rise to a glow of enthusiasm in the work of Christ in some good degree proportioned to the grandeur of the issues it involves, it cannot be doubted that the Christian cause would be seen advancing with vastly augmented speed.

Is such a thing to be reasonably anticipated? Yes. It must not only be anticipated, but realized, before the kingdom of God can come with power. To become painfully sensible how much we need a warmer, deeper, holier earnestness—this is the first thing.

To place our souls more fully under the legitimate impression of the glorious person and the redeeming work of Christ—our hearts in closer contact with the throbbings of his heart in its deep sympathy with a suffering world—this is the thing next in order. To ask more and expect more of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, so that, like primitive saints, we may live in the Spirit and not after the flesh—may be full of the Holy Ghost and of faith—this is the third thing; all of which amounts simply to saying that, we must attain to be more thoroughly Christlike, and to exemplify in ourselves that devotion to him on which the whole New Testament insists. Christian enthusiasm can only be produced and sustained by a living contact with God and the open vision of divine and eternal realities. It will come only with a flood-tide of heavenly influences setting in on the hearts of ministers and churches, and bringing them up to a nobler type of piety. It must be looked for, therefore, in answers to prayer, in the far-reaching revival of religion through rich outpourings of the Spirit, and in more hearty and resolute personal self-sacrifice and self-devotion. Christian reader, rest not till your own heart glows as if with seraphic fire.—Independent.

THE SPIRIT I COVET.

By Amelia Calver

Praying spirit of my Saviour, In my heart, O, find a place; Help me when the night is darkest, When upon the desert waste. When the day seems drear and cloudy, And sweet hope her powers resign, Blessed Saviour, be thou near me; Prayerful spirit, be thou mine.

Peaceful spirit of my Saviour, Canst thou find a place with me? Give me power to calm the tempest, While upon time’s billowy sea. I would have my words and actions Bend subservient to thy will; That, should wrath my bosom enter, I can whisper, “Peace, be still.”

Steadfast spirit of my Saviour, Let me feel thy scepter’s sway, Then, like thee, I’ll tread with firmness Life’s path in trial’s day. Like thee, I will stand unyielding To the lurking charms of ease; Over self will reign triumphant, Seeking God alone to please.

Forgiving spirit of my Saviour, Take possession of my heart; When offenses grieve my spirit, Wilt thou then thy balm impart? Aid me to recall thy sorrows On the crucifixion day, When in sweet and tender accents, “Forgive them, Father,” thou did’st pray.

Loving spirit of my Saviour, Let me in thy fountains bathe, Ready to renounce all pleasure Which a selfish heart would crave. With thy influence for my guardian, I can for all others care; Joy with them when joy aboundeth, Likewise of their sorrows share.

Healing spirit of my Saviour, O could I possess thy power, Gladly every pain I’d banish, Frail humanity restore. Though I fail to heal the body, May I not the spirit soothe? Touch the wounded, broken spirit, Healing with the tones of love?

Blessed Saviour, thy example E’er shall be my “Polar star,” Guiding, though ’mid trackless waters, Pointing on to realms afar. Prayerful, Peaceful, Steadfast, Healing, Loving and Forgiving ever, Blessed spirit of my Saviour, O, I pray thee, leave me never. —Amelia Calver.

Continue reading: DISCUSSION ON THE SABBATH QUESTION