Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 14, 1860
SUNDAY NO SABBATH
From the Sabbath Recorder.
SUNDAY NO SABBATH.
Anti-Sunday-Sabbatarian testimonies compiled from the writings of the most distinguished Protestant reformers and confessors of the 16th century.
If it be granted that the law of the fourth commandment is binding on Christians, then it follows necessarily that the seventh-day, or Saturday must be kept holy; that particular day being specified in the commandment, and no other day having ever been, by divine command, substituted in its place; wherefore Sunday is not the Sabbath; and the observance of the first day of the week as a day of rest, is no keeping of the fourth commandment. To the establishing of this plain proposition, it will be observed all the following testimonies tend:—
TESTIMONY OF MARTIN LUTHER.
Concerning the observance of the first day of the week as a day of rest and worship, Luther says: "There is no necessity for keeping it, but if we do, it ought not to be on account of Moses' commandment. . . . If anywhere any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation (i. e., upon the authority of the law given by Moses, the fourth commandment), I direct you to work on it, ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty."—Quoted in "Michelet's Life of Luther," Bk. iv, Cap. 2, and Coleridge's "Table Talk," May 19, 1834.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN CALVIN.
"The Lord's day is not observed by us upon the principles of Judaism (i. e., as a Sabbath, and as required by the law of Moses in the fourth commandment). For we celebrated it not with scrupulous rigor, as a ceremony which we conceive to be a figure of some spiritual mystery, but only use it as a remedy necessary to the preservation of order in the church. . . . And indeed we see what advantages have arisen from such a sentiment (viz., that the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh to the first day of the week). For those who adhere to it far exceed the Jews in a gross, carnal and superstitious observance of the Sabbath (or that which they call Sabbath), so that the reproofs of Isaiah i, 10–15; lviii, 3–7; lxv, 2–7, are equally applicable to them in the present age (i. e., the Papists who were then the most strict Sunday-keepers), as to those whom the prophet reproved in his time."—Calvin's Institutes, Lib. ii, Cap. 8, § 34.
TESTIMONY OF PHILIP MELANCTHON.
In the "Augsburg Confession," prepared by Melancthon, it is thus written, concerning festivals which, as he says, "it may be well to observe," but the neglect of which is in itself considered "not sinful." "Such are the observance of the Lord's day, the passover, the pentecost, and other similar feasts and rites. For those who judge that by the authority of the church the observance of the Lord's day has been substituted for that of the Sabbath, as if necessary, greatly err.
There yet exist prodigious disputes about the change of the law, of the Sabbath &c., which all sprung from the false persuasion that Christ committed to the Apostles and Bishops, the charge of inventing new ceremonies which should be essential to salvation. These errors crept into the church at a time (viz., "the dark ages"), when the righteousness of faith was not taught with sufficient clearness. Some maintained that the observance of the Lord's day was not divinely appointed, but as if it had been, they prescribed respecting holidays, how far it was lawful to work (i. e., what were cases of necessity and mercy). What are controversies of this sort but snares for consciences? For, however they may attempt to harmonize their traditions, truth can never be attained while the opinion of their necessity (or binding obligation) remains."—Confession, Wittenburg Edition, p. 28.
TESTIMONY OF THEODORE BEZA.
Concerning the manner in which the Lord's day was observed by the early Christian church, Beza says, that though it was made by them, "a day for assembling together," there was no cessation from all work required, as was observed among the Jews (on the seventh day and enjoined by the fourth commandment). This cessation (from labor on the first day of the week) was first brought in by Constantine (A. D. 321), and afterward confirmed with more and more restraints by the following emperors."—Beza on the Apocalypse, ch. i, verse 10. (Quoted in Heylin's History, p. 173).
TESTIMONY OF ULRIC ZUINGLE.
This great leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, in enumerating some ways in which the observance of the Lord's day as a day of Christian worship may be made a vain and empty ceremony, mentions this: "If we think the Lord's day so affixed unto any time that we conceive it an impiety to change it unto another (than that now celebrated, the first day of the week), . . . this would indeed make it become a ceremony. . . . It is lawful on the Lord's day, after the end of divine service, for any man to follow and pursue his ordinary labors, as commonly we do in time of harvest."—Ad Valentine Gent., Tom. i, p. 234.
TESTIMONY OF HENRY BULLINGER.
This eminent Swiss reformer, the friend and co-laborer of Zuingle, thus expresses himself in his commentaries respecting the appointment of the Lord's day: "In memorial of our Lord's resurrection, the churches set apart this day. . . . By their own authority, and of their own accord they made choice thereof, it being nowhere to be found that it was commanded."—Comment on Apocalypse, ch. i, v. 10.
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM TYNDALE.
The opinion of this zealous English reformer and martyr, respecting the mere human appointment of the Lord's day, coincides exactly with that of Beza, Zuingle, and Bullinger, and is thus expressed: "We be lords over it (the first-day festival), and may change it to Monday or any other day as we see need, or we may make two (such festivals) every week if it were expedient."—Tyndale's Works, Bk. i, ch. 25.
TESTIMONY OF MARTIN BUCER.
This distinguished reformer expresses himself very clearly and strongly against the Sunday superstition. In his Commentary, after declaring that the Lord's day was appointed "by the common consent of Christian people, and not by divine authority," he adds: "To hold that working on the Lord's day is, in itself, considered a sinful thing, is a superstition, an apostasy from Christ. . . . I do indeed well approve of the Lord's day meetings, if there be excluded from men's minds all opinion that the day is necessary to be observed; that it is holier, in itself, than other days; and that to work upon that day is, in itself, sinful."—Comment in Apocalypse, ch. i, v. 10.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN HOOPER.
Bishop Hooper, who was burned at Smithfield by queen Mary for his bold and persistent advocacy of Protestant doctrines, compares the day of Christ's crucifixion, Friday, with that of his resurrection, Sunday; and declares that we are under no more obligation to celebrate the latter than the former, and that "The one is no more holy than98the other;" nor as he plainly indicates, than any other day, Monday or Thursday.—Treatise on Decalogue, p. 193.
TESTIMONY OF THOMAS CARTRIGHT, AND THE FIRST PURITANS.
Neal, in his "History of the Puritans," sets down Thomas Cartwright as "the father of the Puritans," (Dugdale calls him "the standard bearer of the Puritans,") and says that he was "the great antagonist of Archbishop Whitgift, 'the persecutor of the Puritans,' and the author of the Second Admonition to Parliament in behalf of the Puritans." His testimony, together with that of John Field (author of the First Admonition), Edward Deering and others of "the chief Puritans about London," is given in the "Confession" of faith which they put forth to testify "against the uncharitable surmises of Dr. Whitgift, uttered in his answer to their Admonition." In this Confession they utterly deny the first day of the week to be "more holy than another."
. . . "We keep the Lord's day," they say, "as we are commanded (i. e., by the civil and ecclesiastical laws of England, which did not require it to be observed as Sabbath), but without all Jewish superstition (i. e., all notion of basing it on the fourth commandment), we think that those feast days of Christ, as of his birth (Christmas), resurrection, (easter and Lord's day), &c., may by Christian liberty be kept because they are only devoted to Christ, to whom all days and times belong; but days dedicated to saints, with fasts on their eves we utterly dislike," &c.—Neal, Vol. i, p. 122.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT BROWN, AND THE FIRST CONGREGATIONALISTS.
This earnest reformer, the first to advocate the principles of Independent or Congregational church government (and who, as Neal tells us, was thrown into thirty-two different prisons for his persistent efforts to expose the corruptions of the hierarchy), has left on record his testimony to the same effect with Thomas Cartwright and John Field, viz.: That Sunday is not the Sabbath, nor of divine appointment. It is given in his subscription with them to the confession put forth in reply to the aspersions of Dr. Whitgift, quoted before, where it is expressly avowed that "the Lord's day" is but a humanly appointed "holy-day," which, like Christmas and other festivals of our Lord, "may, by Christian liberty, be kept." Further testimony is found in his life and practice in Northamptonshire, which, as Fuller tells us (B. x, p. 263), was "far from that Sabbatarian (he means Sunday-Sabbatarian) strictness, that his followers aspired after."
It may be added that the ministers of the town of Northampton formed themselves into an "independent" association in 1571, and adopted "regulations" and a "confession of faith," in the latter of which they declared the distinguishing of the Lord's day and other festivals as holy, to be in common with distinction of meats and apparel, "a tyrannous yoke" imposed by the "Papistry;" "set up of their own invention;" "a devilish confusion" established, as it were, in spite of God and to the reproach of religion." This "well-minded" association, (as Mr. Strype calls it) and others of the same sort were suppressed by the queen in 1577, as "nurseries of Puritanism" and their members were "silenced," so that the following year there was not a single acting minister in the large and populous town of Northampton. The same views are entertained by Smith and Barrows, who, next to Brown, took the lead in establishing church independency.—Neal's Hist., Vol. i, pp. 118–122.
GOD KNOWS IT ALL.
In the dim recess of thy spirit's chamber
Is there some hidden grief thou may'st not tell?
Let not thy heart forsake thee, but remember
His pitying eye, who sees and knows it well.
God knows it all.
And art thou tossed on billows of temptation,
And wouldst do good, but evil oft prevails?
Oh, think, amid the waves of tribulation,
When earthly hope, when earthly refuge falls—
God knows it all.
And dost thou sin, thy deed of shame concealing
In some dark spot no human eye can see?
Then walk in pride, without one sigh revealing
The deep remorse that should disquiet thee?
God knows it all.
Art thou oppressed, and poor, and heavy-hearted,
The heavens above thee in thick clouds arrayed,
And well-nigh crushed—no earthly strength imparted,
No friendly voice to say, "Be not afraid?"
God knows it all.
Art thou a mourner? are thy tear drops flowing
For one too early lost to earth and thee;
The depths of grief no human spirit knowing,
Which moan in secret, like the moaning sea?
God knows it all.
Dost thou look back upon a life of sinning?
Forward, and tremble for thy future lot?
There's One who sees the end from the beginning;
Thy tear of penitence is unforgot.
God knows it all.
Then go to God! pour out your heart before him!
There is no grief your Father cannot feel,
And let your grateful songs of praise adore him
Who saves, forgives, and every wound doth heal.
God knows it all, God knows it all.
From the Sabbath Recorder.
Christian and Angelic Perfection
By Fletcher
Do not confound angelic with Christian perfection. Uninterrupted transports of praise, and ceaseless raptures of joy, do not belong to Christian, but to angelic perfection. If God indulges you with ecstasies and extraordinary revelations, be thankful for them; be not exalted above measure by them, and remember that your Christian perfection does not consist so much in building a tabernacle upon mount Tabor, and enjoying rare sights there, as in resolutely taking up the cross, and following Christ to the palace of a proud Caiaphas—to the judgment hall of an unjust Pilate, and to the top of an ignominious Calvary.—Fletcher on Christian perfection.
IMMORTALITY AND THE SEVENTH-DAY BAPTISTS
By E. Lanphear
EDITOR OF REVIEW AND HERALD, DEAR BROTHER: Since you allowed my article to appear in your paper, I find that some of my brethren of the Seventh-day Baptist denomination (of which I am an unworthy member), seem to complain. Bro. A. M. West seems to think (as he expresses in his article in the Review of July 19th) that I have misrepresented the editor of the Sabbath Recorder, the publishing committee, and the Seventh-day Baptists generally, therefore sent an article to undeceive the readers of the Review, which I am greatly obliged to you for publishing. He says that it is not his purpose to debate the subject or answer my questions; for he does not think some of them were asked in Christian candor; as some seem to be asked in such a way as to try to cast contempt on the cause or people I wished to refute, or win over. I have no pleadings to make to Bro. West, as to my Christian candor. If I have failed to ask my questions in candor, I ask Bro. W. to forgive my unworthiness, and to answer my questions in that same spirit that he feels I have failed to manifest in asking them. I did not intend to "cast contempt on the cause, or the persons I wished to refute or win over," as he seemed to imagine; for I am well aware that such treatment would have a tendency rather to scatter or separate than to win over. And I can but think, had my brethren treated those adopting similar views with myself with Christian love and affection instead of with contempt, and hard names, many would have remained with us to this day; and instead of our churches being on the decrease, in many instances they might have been on the increase. But some of our ministering brethren have not failed to continue the cry of "atheist, infidel, Phariseeism," &c., until many worthy members have gone out from among us, really feeling that our churches were a part of Babylon, &c.,
Bro. W. says that I, as well as every one familiar with the Recorder for years past, knows that the subject of my letter has been presented almost or quite without control, by myself and others, until it had become stale and tiresome to most of the patrons. &c.
Well I think I do know that this subject has been considerably discussed through the columns of the Recorder. But I ask, Has it been the red or blue chicken that has enjoyed this privilege? Who commenced the discussion? Was it not Elders T. B. Brown, and V. Hull? Was any one permitted to reply to them through the columns of the Recorder? I think not. I remember that an article was written by one of my neighbors as a reply to Bro. Brown, and sent to the Recorder Office for publication; and what was the result? I think it was sent by the editor to Bro. Brown, and that was the end of it; and that was about the very all articles presented by the blue chickens were handled for a long time if I mistake not.
Brother W. says that he is not opposed to free discussion when properly conducted. Well that seems rather liberal; but who is to be the judge? If he is willing to allow others the same chance with himself, then he is fair and honorable. If not, he is the reverse. I infer from the past, that one side wishes to be sole umpire on the question of proper discussion. I am frank to say that I do not like this kind of democracy. It is too much like the fable of the boys and the frogs: it may be fun for them, but death to us.
Bro. W. says he dislikes to hear or read the same thing over and over by the same or other persons. That is natural when the things said conflict with a person's former education. This however, does not lessen the obligation upon us to hand out "line upon line, precept upon precept." "If men won't hear, let them forbear." I am reminded by this of the following anecdote: I once heard of a minister that went into a certain neighborhood and commenced a series of meetings. He took for his first text the following: "Why do ye also transgress the commandments of God by your traditions? Repent and turn to God." He had preached three sermons from this text, when one of the good brethren came to him with a complaint that the people were getting tired of that sermon; and for his part, he did not like to hear one thing over and over quite so much. "Can't you change the subject?" "Yes," said the preacher, "just as soon as you change your wicked customs and habits, and turn to God and his truth, then I am ready to change for a new subject, and not until then."
Bro. W. seems to take exceptions to what I said about coming under priest rule, &c., and thinks what I said "would lead those not acquainted with the Seventh-day Baptists, to suppose they were like the Roman Catholics, under priest government, &c." This is an application of his own.
Allow me now to explain what I did mean by priest-rule in my former article, and leave the readers to draw their own inference. I claim to be a Seventh-day Baptist from the fact that I keep the seventh day, and believe it to be the privilege and duty of every believer in Christ to be baptized; and I further believe it the duty of every Christian to take the Bible for the rule of his faith and practice, regardless of what priests or kings may say. But within the last year some of our ministering brethren have taken the liberty to set forth (through the Recorder) "what a person must believe, and what a person must not believe in order to be a Seventh-day Baptist." This looked to me a little like priest-rule, providing the people consent to be thus restricted and ruled. Further, when our ministers say they will not go to hear the subject above referred to, or the subject of the second coming of Christ, discussed, or lectured upon, and will do all in their power to prevent their members and congregation from doing the same, it looks a little in my judgment, like an attempt at priest rule. This has been done to my certain knowledge.
In conclusion, If any of the readers of the Review conceive that I have misrepresented any one, I will receive proper reproof in all kindness.
Yours for the truth. E. LANPHEAR.
Nile, N. Y.
DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.
I HAVE come to the conclusion that it is best to be decided, as far as the denunciation of this subject is concerned.
I cannot believe that it is a frequent occurrence that one is truly converted at the close of life, for the following reasons:—
1. It is contrary to all the plans of God's providence in life. The design of God is to try men for eternity in this life, and that they may mature a character for eternity. Now if a man who has been tried, and has matured a wrong character, by a death-bed repentance can slip off his character so very easily and enter heaven, it is clear that it contravenes the law of God's usual providence. Now God does not often break his own laws; and hence it is clear that men cannot often thus repent, for they are beyond it when about to go to that world for which their character is already decided.99
The Bible tells us of thousands of conversions, and only one or two who were saved when about to die. And these (that one or two) were not those who had often heard the gospel, but those, who, when about to die, heard and embraced it at once. So I cannot conclude that the repentance of those who have often heard the gospel is worth a straw; while I may hope that he who never heard a word about repentance and faith in Christ, until on his death bed, may repent. Now the latter case I may never meet, so it is not probable I shall ever witness, or ever have seen a genuine death-bed repentance.
2. Most of the supposed cases of death-bed repentance will not bear scrutiny, for they are not built on Christ. I have seen what is called sorrow, and forsaking of sin, and resignation; but in all these cases it was the forced admission and the compelled quietude which deceived. So of all reference to Christ, it was apparently because they could not deny his name and be saved, and not the leaping of a pious heart to one loved in and of himself. So that from this time forth I must deem them all false; while I deny not the power and truth of a few, very few cases indeed, on the whole globe since the Christian Era.
I might add the influence of pain and derangement, lassitude and medicine, want of reflection, and all the other concomitants, as well as the fact that the Bible has no promise, except by implication, to the eleventh hour of sickness, did I need further confirmation.—The Old parsonage.
RULES OF HOLY LIVING.
1. Let your words be few and serious.
2. Let your temper be mild, and all your actions kind.
3. Let your deportment exhibit cheerfulness, modesty, and devotion.
4. Begin every day with prayer; spend it watchfully and dutifully, and end it with praise to God.
OBJECT IN SEEKING HOLINESS.—That all my propensities that stand opposed to the will of God may be destroyed; that I may be set free from the law of sin and death; that I may be prepared cordially and cheerfully to bear my crosses, and perform my duties, and be fitted to give up my final account with joy.
The cheerful coincidence of the will with that of God is satisfactory and valuable evidence of a heart purified by grace.
JOYS OF THE HOLY GHOST.—Never expect much of the joy of the Holy Ghost if your heart and mind be occupied in the enjoyment of sense. The joy of the Spirit is a delicate, sacred deposit and must be kept in a pure casket. An unholy breath will dim its lustre and fade its freshness.
The joys of sense, even the most lawful of them, are agitating, tumultuous and unsatisfactory. The joy of the Spirit is calming, modest, strengthening, elevating and satisfying.
The joys of sense, at the best, enervate, lower and impoverish the soul. The joys of the Spirit ennoble and enrich it.—Cecil.
Knowing Oneself Through Action
GOETHE says: No one ought to enjoy what is too good for him, but he should make himself worthy of it by rising up to it.
He asks, How am I to know myself? Not by contemplation, but by action. Only do your duty and you will know your value.
HOW TO BEAR LITTLE TROUBLES.
By H. W. Beecher
THERE is a kind of narrowness into which, in our every day experience, we are apt to fall, and against which we should most carefully guard.—When a man who is in perfect health has a wound inflicted upon him,—a wound in his foot, a cut in his finger, a pain in his hand—he is almost always sure to feel, even though it be only a small part that is suffering, and the suffering itself be unworthy of the name, that the perfect soundness of all the rest of the body counts as nothing; and a little annoyance is magnified into a universal pain. Only a single point may be hurt, and yet he feels himself clothed with uneasiness, or with a garment of torture. So God may send ten thousand mercies upon us, but if there happen to be only one discomfort among them, one little worry or fret, or bicker, all the mercies and all the comforts are forgotten, and count as nothing! One little trouble is enough to set them all aside! There may be an innumerable train of mercies which, if they are stopped one by one, and questioned, would seem like angels bearing God's gifts in their hands! But we forget them all in the remembrance of the most trivial inconvenience! A man may go about all the day long—discontented, fretting, out of humor—who as evening on asking himself the question, "What has ailed me to day?" may be filled with shame on being unable to tell. The annoyance is so small and slight that he cannot recognize it; yet its power over him is almost incredible. He is equally ashamed with the cause and the result.
We may fall into such a state merely through indifference, and remain there simply because we have fallen into it, and make no effort to get out. When a man starts wrong early in the morning, unless he is careful to set himself right before he has gone far, he will hardly be able to straighten out his crookedness until noon or afternoon—if happily then; for a man is like a large ship—he cannot turn around in a small space, and must make his sweep in a large curve. If we wake up with a heavenly mind we are apt to carry it with us throughout the day; but if we wake up with a fretful, peevish, discontented disposition, we are apt to carry that all day, and all the next day too. I have comforted myself, and risen out of this state of mind, by saying to myself,
"Well you are in trouble; something has come upon you which is painful; but will you let it clasp its arms around you and shut you in its embrace from the sight and touch of all the many other things that are accounted joys? Will you suffer yourself to be saddled and ridden by it? It is well to remember that there is a way of overcoming present troubles by a remembrance of present mercies. The Apostle Paul knew this, and so exhorted us to "look unto Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame." All that Christ had to bear, he bore patiently,—he carried his sorrow above with him as a very little thing. Why? Because of the "joy that was set before him." O let us apply the exhortation faithfully to ourselves; and when we are worried and tempted to give way to vexation, let us seek a sweet relief in the thought of the blessedness that is set before us to be an inheritance forever.—H. W. Beecher.
SPURGEON ON HELL.
By Editor
AND what say the wicked? "We do not care for metaphorical fire." But they are real, sir—yes, as real as yourself. There is a real fire in hell, as truly as you have now a real body—a fire exactly like that which we have on earth in everything except this, it will not consume, though it will torture you. You have seen the asbestos lying in the fire red hot, but when you take it out it is unconsumed. So your body will be prepared by God in such a way that it will burn forever without being consumed; it will lie, not as you consider, in metaphorical fire, but in actual flame. Did our Saviour mean fictions when he said he would cast body and soul into hell? What should there be a pit for if there were not bodies? Why fire, why chains, if there were to be no bodies? Can fire touch the soul? Can pits shut in spirits? Can chains fetter souls? No; pits, and fire, and chains are for bodies, and bodies shall be there. Thou wilt sleep in the dust a little while. When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone—that will be hell for it—but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul and then thou wilt have twin hells; body and soul shall be together, brimful of pain, thy soul sweating in its inmost pore drops of blood, and thy body from head to foot, suffused with agony; conscience, judgment, memory, all torture; but more, thy head tormented with racking pains, thine eyes starting from their sockets with sights of blood and woe, thine ears tormented with
"Sullen moans, and hollow groans, And shrieks of tortured ghosts."
Thine heart beating high with fever, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, thy limbs cracking like the martyrs in the fire, and yet unburnt; thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained, yet coming out undestroyed; all thy veins becoming a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on; every nerve a string on which the Devil shall ever play his diabolical tune of hell's unutterable torment; thy soul forever and ever aching, and thy body palpitating in union with thy soul.
Fictions, sir? Again I say, they are no fictions, and as God liveth, but solid, stern truth. If God be true, what I have said is the truth, and you will find it one day to be so.
But hear me while I again affirm God's truth.
I tell thee sinner, that those eyes that now look on lust, shall look on miseries that shall vex and torment thee. Those ears which now thou lendest to hear the song of blasphemy, shall hear moans and groans and horrid sounds such as only the damned know. That very throat down which thou dost drink shall be filled with fire. Those very lips and arms of thine shall be tortured all at once. Why, if thou hast a headache thou wilt run to thy physician; but what wilt thou do when thy head, and heart and hands, and feet ache all at once? If thou hast but a pain in thy veins, thou wilt search out medicine to heal thee; but what wilt thou do when gout, and rheum, and vertigo, and all else that is vile attack thy body at once? How wilt thou bear thyself when thou shalt be loathsome with every kind of disease, leprous, palsied, black, rotten, thy bones aching, thy marrow quivering, every limb thou hast filled with pain; thy body a temple of demons, and a channel of miseries? And will you march blindly on? *
You listen to me now unmoved; it will be harder work when death gets hold of you, and you lie roasting in the fire.
REMARKS. Even heathens repudiate such doctrine as the foregoing. Bad as they are in other respects, they have not so far done violence to the light of nature as to incorporate into their religious belief the idea of eternal torture for the wicked. The Siamese tell us we may keep to ourselves our American God who torments men forever; for their god is so far superior that he torments men only a thousand years. The doctrine of never-ending misery is thus left to find its adherents among Catholics and Protestants. Catholics teach and defend it, as Luther said, "to make the Pope's pot boil;" and their deluded victims believe it, because in their ignorance and superstition they know no better. But Protestants, enlightened and educated Protestants, with whom the Bible has become as household words—what shall we say of them? Here would we charitably suspend sentence till we invite them once more to compare carefully and thoroughly this doctrine with that sacred word, to see if they can find it taught therein. When they will do this, we trust to be relieved from the necessity of passing upon them any decision prejudicial to their honesty, or to their professed willingness to take "the Bible, and the Bible alone, as their rule of faith and practice."—Ed.
Time and Eternity
Time and Eternity.—We step on the earth; we look abroad over it, and it seems immense—so does the sea. What ages had men lived, and knew but a portion? They circumnavigate it now with a speed under which its vast bulk shrinks. But let the astronomer lift up his glass, and he learns to believe in a total mass of matter, compared with which this globe itself becomes an imponderable grain of dust. And so to each of us walking along the road of life, a year, a day, an hour, shall seem long. As we grow older, the time shortens; but when we lift up our eyes to look beyond this earth, our seventy years, and the few thousands of years which have rolled over the human race, vanish into a point; for then we are measuring time against eternity.
Nothing Mine But God
By Editor
"NOTHING MINE BUT GOD."—In recently looking through the memoir of Mrs. Savage, the sister of Matthew Henry, the commentator, we notice this entry in her diary: "Resolved to call nothing mine but God." This reminded us of the Saviour's requirement: "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple;" and also of the Apostle's representation of the Christian possessions: "All things are yours." Truly, if this be so, "he that loseth his life shall find it."