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Review and Herald, Vol. 44, No. 25.

Morality of the Sabbath and Its Importance

Review and Herald

Dec 15, 1874

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 15, 1874

Morality of the Sabbath and Its Importance

By Dudley Marvin Canright

MORALITY OF THE SABBATH AND ITS IMPORTANCE. No. 2.

IV. Man’s moral duty to love and obey God rests chiefly upon the fact that the Lord created all things, which fact the Sabbath was given to commemorate.

God made me and all the blessings which surround me, hence it is my moral duty to love and serve him as the author and giver of them all. Those who do not believe that God created the world feel under no obligation to obey him, even if they believe that there is a God at all, which they seldom do. Hence it becomes of the greatest importance, morally, that the facts of creation be ever kept fresh in the memory of men. If these facts be disbelieved or forgotten, the Creator himself will also be forgotten.
Man is constantly prone to forget his Creator and to deny his existence. To have, to preserve, and to teach the knowledge of the true God is the very highest of all moral duties. Indeed, without this we could not serve God at all. How morally important, then, that God should give men something which would be a frequent and constant reminder of the Creator and of our obligation to him. For just this purpose God did give the Sabbath to man in the very beginning. Thus we read, “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; [why?] because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Gen. 2: 3. A rest implies a work performed. God had just finished the wonderful work of creation for which the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Job. 38: 7. As a monument or memorial of this great work, God there set apart the seventh day to a sacred rest. From that time on through all ages, the observance of the Creator’s rest-day was to be a weekly reminder, or memorial, of God’s work of creation ating the heavens and the earth. Every time a person intelligently keeps the Sabbath day it reminds him of God’s work of creating the earth at the beginning in six days and resting upon the seventh day. Thus it is an appropriate memorial of creation.
When the Lord gives the reason for the observance of the Sabbath, he always points back to the facts of creation. Thus, when he gave the decalogue from Mount Sinai, the Lord said, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, [why? for what reason?] * for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” Ex. 20: 7–11. Why was the Sabbath hallowed? Because God had rested upon it after his six days of labor at creation.
A sign and a memorial are the same thing. The 4th chapter of Joshua proves this, while at the same time it gives us a beautiful illustration of the use of a memorial or sign. When the children of Israel crossed over Jordan, the waters of the river were cut off and dried up. Then the Lord directed them to take twelve stones out of the bottom of Jordan and make a heap of them upon the bank of the river, “that this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then shall ye answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off, and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever.” Josh. 4: 6, 7. The Lord says that these stones shall be a sign among you; and then he says they shall be a memorial, showing that sign and memorial are synonymous.
When the Lord explains the object of the sign, or memorial, he says that when their children in days to come ask their fathers what these stones mean, then the fathers shall tell them the story about how the waters of Jordan were cut off, &c., when their fathers passed over Jordan. Thus in all coming generations, whenever men looked upon this pile of stones it would constantly remind them of that wonderful miracle which God wrought for his people, and thus keep it fresh in their memory. So God declares that the Sabbath is a sign of creation. “Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever; [how? and why?] for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” Ex. 31: 16, 17. Here the Lord directly says that the Sabbath is a sign. We have already shown that sign and memorial are synonymous. But why is it a sign? The reason is plainly stated. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested.” Thus the Sabbath is declared to be a divinely appointed memorial of God’s great work of creation. Its importance cannot be overestimated. God instituted it for a great moral purpose, namely, to preserve in the memory of men a knowledge of God’s work of creation.
Had the human family carefully observed this sacred memorial, they never would have forgotten the living God and have become atheists or the worshipers of false gods.
“Had all men properly kept the Sabbath, all would have known Jehovah and worshiped him from the creation of the world to the present time, and idolatry never would have been practiced on the earth.”—Justin Edwards.
The Sabbath, therefore, does have for its object the greatest of all moral principles, namely, the preservation in the earth of the knowledge of the true and living God, the Creator of the earth. The reader cannot fail to observe that, if this be so, the farther we come from creation the more important becomes the careful observance of the Sabbath. For the first few generations the facts of creation might have been handed down from father to son without any memorial. But now when all such traditional knowledge has been lost, and men are becoming skeptical with regard to God’s existence and the miraculous work of creation, how morally important becomes the preservation of the ancient and divinely instituted memorial of creation, God’s holy rest-day?

V. God has a moral right to claim a certain part of our time as sacred to his worship. The Sabbath commandment is based upon this moral principle, which shows it to be a moral precept.

Man was not created simply to please himself and study his own convenience; but the great object of his creation was to please and glorify his Creator. Thus the Revelator says: “Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” Rev. 4: 11. And Paul says, “Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Cor. 6: 19, 20. The chief object of man’s creation, then, is to serve God and glorify him. God has a perfect moral right to require us to give all our time wholly to his service. None will deny this.
But man must have food and raiment, houses and other necessaries of life; hence God has given him six days out of every seven in which to provide for all these wants of his nature; but the seventh day God has reserved to himself. This he has never given to man to be used in secular, worldly affairs, but it is to be used wholly in religious services and the worship of our Creator. Who will say that this is unreasonable?
We affirm that God never made a requirement of men which was more reasonable, just, and morally right than the Sabbath commandment. Reason itself would teach us to expect that God would make just such a requirement. Man is naturally prone to forget his God, and his obligation to his Creator, and to become wholly absorbed in his worldly affairs. As he engages in his necessary business for a subsistence, the cares of life are apt to press upon him till there is great danger that he will give his time up wholly to this, and forget his duty to God. Hence the Lord has wisely interposed the Sabbath day to break up this tide of worldliness, and to remind man of his duty to his Creator.
Men are allowed to engage in their worldly pursuits for six days continuously. Then the Lord says, “Now stop, lay this all aside, shut up your shop, close your store, put up your tools, let your fields rest, lay aside your books, and take one day to meditate upon the works of God; to study his word, to go to the house of God, to offer praise and worship before the Lord.” If there is a living God to whom we owe all things and whom it is our duty to remember and worship, then of all moral precepts the Sabbath is pre-eminently the most reasonable and morally important. We must bear in mind constantly that the first duty of man, his highest moral obligation, is to love God with all his heart. Nothing is designed to promote this so directly as the proper observance of the Sabbath.
D. M. Canright.

Mr. Stephens’ Pericardium.

“Now I am going to tell you just what my husband said to me this morning, doctor, word for word,” said the invalid, Mrs. Stephens, lying back on the sofa pillow, the very picture of misery. The family physician, who was called on an average, to the Stephens mansion, three hundred and sixty times a year, drew a chair close to the couch, and waited quietly for his patient to open her book of complaints.
“Last night, you see, doctor, I had an ill turn, and he wanted to come for you; but when I got so he dared to leave me, he concluded then we’d better let you sleep.”
“Much obliged to him,” said the doctor, with sarcastic emphasis on the personal pronoun. “Last night was the first undisturbed night’s rest I enjoyed for a week.”
Mrs. Stephens continued:—
“This spell is the same as I had the last time you were sent for, doctor—”
“A slight nervous attack,” broke in the physician; “nothing more.”
“Well it don’t make any difference what you call it, it was mighty hard to bear; but let me tell you what my husband said first, doctor, before we go into symptoms. When he was going down to breakfast, he says to me, ‘Kate, what shall I send you up?’”
“Says I, ‘I don’t want anything in the world but a good, strong cup of tea. Tell Bridget to send it up in the little teapot.’ I saw, doctor, that he didn’t move, after I said this, so I turned and looked up at him, and such a picture of rage and disgust I never saw in my life. Finally, says he, ‘Tea! tea! tea! it’s nothing but tea from morning till night, Kate,’ says he; ‘you are the color of a Chinaman now. Why don’t you order a good piece of beefsteak, and a slice of brown bread and a cup of chocolate? That would be a sensible breakfast.’”
“‘But, John,’ says I, ‘you forget that I am sick and have no appetite.’ I was all ready to cry, but I was determined that he shouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing the tears fall.”
“‘Forget,’ says he, ‘forget!’ I wish to heaven I could forget, it’s nothing but grunt and groan from one year’s end to the other. I have lost all patience with you,’ says he. ‘When we lived in a part of a house, and you did your own housework, we were as well and happy as anybody, and no man ever had a pleasanter little home than John Stephens; but what have I now to leave or come back to?’ And this, doctor, is what he ended up with:—
“‘Kate,’ says he, ‘you are nothing more nor less than a drunkard, and in the sight of God, more culpable than most of the men who stagger through the streets, because the majority of those poor devils have some sort of excuse for their conduct, and you haven’t the slightest. You have a luxurious home, a husband doing his level best to make you happy—everything under the light of the sun to please you, and yet you will persist in “swilling” tea. Yes, doctor, swilling was the word he used—boo! hoo! hoo! O dear me! to think I should ever have lived to have heard such dreadful language out of my own husband’s mouth: and then he says, “and making me as miserable a wretch as walks the earth.”’”
“Pretty plain talk,” interrupted the doctor, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.
“Oh, yes,” sobbed the victim, “and so awfully coarse and unkind. If I had a spell and died before his very face, I don’t believe he would have cared a snap of his finger. I tell you, Dr. Ellis, there is such a thing as a man’s getting hardened.”
“Evidently,” replied the physician, with a laconicism absolutely painful.
“But my husband has nothing in the world to trouble him but just my poor health; and I am sure I can’t help that.”
This remark was more in answer to her companion’s tone and manner than the one single word that had escaped his lips, and this the doctor felt.
“Anybody would think by the way he goes on,” continued the irate woman, “that I enjoyed myself with spasms and cramps and fainting fits. Anybody would think it was a pleasure to me to feel every time I see a funeral procession as if the hearse was going to stop at our door next. Oh, yes, such a life is very enviable, very, indeed.”
Dr. Ellis took no notice of these last words; the man’s eyes grew luminous, and his whole face declared that he considered himself master of the situation; and if Mrs. Stephens had not been so entirely taken up with her own ailments, mental and physical, that honest countenance would have betrayed him.
“You say,” he began, settling himself in the large easy chair, and assuming a strictly professional air, “that your husband has nothing to trouble him but your health; how do you know that, Mrs. Stephens?”
“How? Why, how do you know anything? By the evidence of my senses. Don’t I know that John Stephens has a splendid business that looks after itself, a magnificent income, and money enough to live on the bare interest, as well as a family need to live, if he never entered his office again while he has breath?”
“But money isn’t everything, Mrs. Stephens,” proceeded the physician with a calmness that was almost Mephistophelian. “How about health, madam?”
“Health?” repeated the lady with a smile she intended to be sarcastic, to the last degree. “Health! Dr. Ellis! Why there is not a healthier or sounder man than my husband in the United States. He eats more in one meal than I do in three months.”
“There is nothing the matter with your husband’s stomach, Mrs. Stephens.” Dr. Ellis shaded his face with his hand and waited further developments. Mrs. Stephens mistook this attempt at forced concealment for emotion, and immediately assumed a sitting posture, brushed her eyes, and looked piercingly into her companion’s face.
“Why do you accent the word ‘stomach’ so strongly, Dr. Ellis?” she inquired in anxious tones. Mrs. Stephens was forgetting herself, and this the doctor hailed as an excellent omen.
“Only that I might make you understand that a man’s digestion could be the most unexceptionable, and yet be far from sound in other directions.”
“Then you mean to tell me that my husband is sick.”
“I do.”
“Perhaps you will go still further and say dangerously.”
“If you desire it.”
“Oh, Dr. Ellis, how cold and unfeeling you are! I should think you ought to know by this time,” and just there Mrs. Stephens broke down entirely and sobbed as if her heart would break.
“Ought to know what, Mrs. Stephens?” inquired the doctor, with uncalled for deliberation.
“You ought to know—to know—that my—my husband’s health and life are of a good deal more consequence to me than my own.”
“Ah, indeed,” interrupted the physician, with an elevation of the bushy eyebrows immensely suggestive of a contrary opinion, as well as several very excellent reasons for said opinion.
“Dr. Ellis, will you be kind enough to tell me what’s the matter with my husband?”
Mrs. Stephens was now on her feet—tears all wiped away, eyes flashing with resentful spirit, and only the little quiver of her lip to show how deep a wound the kind heart in her bosom had sustained. There she stood, reproachful, determined, womanly.
“Mrs. Stephens,” said he, “you have no cause to be alarmed. If I can only get your co-operation in this business, I feel certain I shall be able to make a well man of your husband in a few months at the longest; but as true as I sit here before you I cannot do this alone.”
“Why have I not been informed of this before?” broke in Mrs. Stephens imperiously.
“Who was there to inform you, madam? Your husband does not know his condition, and I should really like to be told when you have been sufficiently calm to hear all that was necessary for you to know.”
“But, Dr. Ellis, I should think you ought to understand that my own health and comfort are nothing, compared to my husband’s.”
Mrs. Stephens was weeping again. “There is no sacrifice that I would not make for him.”
“Curious creatures!” muttered the doctor; “delightful bundles of contradiction. How the mischief should I know, Mrs. Stephens, how much you care for your husband? I am sure you have spent the last hour complaining about him. Is that the way women generally testify their regard for their husbands?”
“Oh, don’t, Dr. Ellis, please don’t,” pleaded the terrified woman. “I will never complain again—never—if you will only let me know what I can do for him. Do you know, doctor, I had begun to think lately that something must be amiss with him, he was growing so irritable. Poor dear, how wicked and thoughtless I have been.”
“This, then, is the trouble. I shall take it for granted, madam, that you know something about physiology, and can follow me without difficulty?”
“O—yes, for mercy’s sake, go on.”
“Very well; I find that the pericardium—”
“The pericardium?” repeated Mrs. Stephens.
“You know what that is I suppose?”
Evidently Mrs. Stephens’ anatomical knowledge was limited. She shook her head in despair. “Something about the heart, is it not?” she asked at last.
“Yes, the pericardium is the membranous sac that holds the heart. Well, sometimes the sac—it is no matter about particulars, Mrs. Stephens,” and Dr. Ellis suddenly came to a standstill.
“It is enough, though, for me to say that we are both possibly anxious that his heart should remain where it belongs. Mr. Stephens must be amused. He wants the lecture, the social circle, entertaining books—a happy home—music. You play and sing, do you not, Mrs. Stephens?”
“Oh, yes—I used to,” and Mrs. Stephens’ tones were so pitiful now that big Dr. Ellis really and truly was obliged to wipe both his eyes and his nose. Before he was aware, the lachrymal duct had gotten the upper hand.
“Well, try it again; get a teacher and go to practicing.”
“But how am I going to manage my spasms?” sobbed the lady.
“Well, perhaps, between us both—you using your will power, and thinking of your husband, and going out with him, and taking care of him, and I doing my way—we may be able to subdue them; but you must remember this, madam—do not let Mr. Stephens have the faintest suspicion that you think anything is the matter with him; and above all, do not treat him like an invalid. Just amuse him, and all that, you know, just as you used to when you were first married.”
Another series of sobs from Mrs. Stephens. The doctor arose to go. His patient had entirely forgotten that he had left no prescription.
“About tea, doctor?” she asked, as he prepared to leave. “Do you think it very hurtful?”
“As an occasional tonic, I have no objection to tea; but as a daily beverage, madam, it is an invention of the devil. Good morning.”
John Stephens sought his home that evening with a heavy heart. His wife he believed a confirmed invalid, or hypochondriac—it mattered little which; one was as bad as the other. His remonstrances were of no avail, he was doubtful even whether his wife loved him. He opened the door softly with his latchkey. This had become habitual; seldom did the gentleman show himself to his beloved wife until after the dining-bell had summoned the family to the dining-room.
A strain of music met and transfixed him on the very threshold. Ah! a beautiful song was being rendered, and his wife was the musician. He was just in time to hear:
“The eyes that cannot weep, Are the saddest eyes of all.”
For full a year that charming voice had been as silent as the grave.
“Company, perhaps,” he muttered. Curiosity overcame him. He opened the parlor door and peeped in. There was Mrs. John Stephens, becomingly attired, all alone, as enthusiastic over the fine rendition of a piece of music as he had ever seen her.
“What does this mean, Kate?” he asked with outstretched arms.
“That I have given up tea and am going to try hard to be well. I guess my voice will all come back, John.”
“I guess so,” he replied, folding her tight to his heart.
Three months after this the cure was so radical that Dr. Ellis made a clean breast of the whole thing; and there is no word or set of words that can provoke so hearty a laugh in the happy home of the Stephens as this physiologically scientific one—Pericardium.

“ONLY WAIT!”

By M. D. Britts

When the spirit, worn and weary With its daily load of care, Finds the pathway long and dreary And the burden hard to bear: Tired with hoping, faint with fearing, Sighs to reach the “golden gate,” Then in accents soft and cheering, Patience whispers, “Only wait!” For a brighter day is dawning, Sunshine beams at early morning In the beauty of the morning, Only wait!
O sad hearts, whose soundless sorrow Dares not let one murmur fall, Only wait until the morrow, God’s great love is o’er us all, Only wait, O wounded spirit, By life’s heavy cross weighed down,— Thou shalt surely Heaven inherit, Bear the cross, and win the crown. Win and wear it at the dawning Of the everlasting morning, In the glory of the morning! Only wait!
Only wait! The cloud suspended— Future ways of light between— With the gold of heaven is blended, Veils the glowing sun unseen. Only wait! These measured losses God’s great mercies shall restore, Only points these wayside crosses To the fruitful lands before. Wait and watch, the day is dawning Over yonder breaks the morning, Lovely light of heavenly morning! Only wait.
—M. D. BRITTS, in The Companion.

Prayer and the Christian Life of Holiness

He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays. He that can live in sin, and abide in the ordinary duties of prayer, never prays as he ought. A truly gracious praying frame is utterly inconsistent with the love of, or reserve of, any sin.
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