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A COLLOQUY

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 12, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 11.

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A COLLOQUY.

By A. L. A.

A rather refined and sanctimonious-looking gentleman, on a late Sabbath afternoon, alighted from his “wheel” while I was sitting on my front porch. As he approached, I discovered that, for the time being at least, he was an agent; for he carried a recently invented lamp. Accosting me in the most affable manner, he proceeded to canvass me. I of course told him that I could not purchase the article at that time; but he, agent-like, paid no attention to that; for I had not yet given him the principal reason why I could not consider his proposition, namely, that it was the Sabbath day. He talked on until he began to see that he was wasting time and breath; then he handed me a slip of paper of visiting-card size, on one side of which was his name and address, while on the other side were printed passages of Scripture. Looking for a moment at these, I said, “You are a preacher, I presume, or at least a missionary.”
“Yes,” he replied; “I am generally engaged in the Lord’s work. Just now I have a wife and young child, and I have to do secular work; but as soon as the child is old enough, I expect to take up the Lord’s work again.”
One of the scriptures printed on the slip was, “Be ye also ready;” so I asked him if he was familiar with Adventist literature.
“Yes, somewhat,” he replied; “but—well, it doesn’t do one any harm, I guess; but I have very little use for it. I sometimes tell people I am a Seven-days Adventist; I keep every day.”
In the foregoing and following I give the conversation substantially as it occurred. As my friend seemed to be of the “Holiness” persuasion, I shall designate his part by H and mine by A.
A. But God has made a plain distinction; He has called the seventh day holy—His holy day.
H. The law—Sabbath and all—was made for the carnal man. A spiritual man has no use for it. God didn’t rest because He needed to; neither does the spiritual man need the Sabbath. As God rested from His works, or ceased from them, so we who have entered into God’s rest cease from our own works.
A. But when a man ceases from his own works, must he begin to disobey God? Paul says, “The law is spiritual;” that “it is holy, and just, and good.” Don’t you think that a spiritual, holy law is good enough for a spiritual man? It seems to me we would have use for such a law, if we were really spiritual. Paul says, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.”
H. Yes; but I follow Christ. You never read that He ever regarded the Sabbath after His thirty years of carnal (?) life.
A. Yes, sir. We have, besides His own declarations on the subject, at least one instance of His plainly regarding it; you remember how, after returning to Jerusalem from one of His missionary journeys, He rested over the Sabbath at the home of Mary and Martha, at Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem; and then, on Sunday morning, He made His triumphal entry into the city—a thing He would not do on the Sabbath. And what does He say prophetically in the fortieth psalm?—“Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within My heart.” You see both Paul and Jesus had the law within their hearts, and hence it was their delight to keep it, and they were certainly spiritual.
H. Well, I must be going; if I get to talking religion, I shall never sell any lamps.
A. When you are engaged in the Lord’s work, what do you teach?
H. O, I take my discourses from the teachings of Christ—chiefly from the Sermon on the Mount.
A. Yes? then do you remember one statement made by Christ in that sermon: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil”?
H. That is true; He came to fulfil, or to fill full, and so the Christian is free from the law.
A. But to fulfil, does not mean to abrogate. James says, “If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, . . . ye do well.” My fulfilling, or obeying, it certainly does not release my neighbor, neither does Christ’s obedience release any of us.
H. Well, we can not keep the Sabbath anyway. To keep the Sabbath you could not gather any sticks for your fire on that day.
A. You don’t find any such restriction in the Decalogue; that is the ceremonial law.
H. What is the difference? they are all one law.
A. One difference is that the Decalogue was placed inside the ark, while the other was placed outside; and there are at least nineteen other Scriptural distinctions.
H. Well, if you keep the Sabbath, you can not even hitch up your horse to go to church; for doesn’t the fourth commandment say that your servants, your cattle, etc., must keep it as well as yourself? And I haven’t seen an Adventist yet that wouldn’t hitch up his horse to go to church.
A. But is going to church “thy work” or the Lord’s? I think it is plainly the Lord’s work, whether you go by team or on foot.
H. Well, I must go [starting off]. Whenever you need a good lamp, call on me.
A. “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet.”
H. (Smiling) Well, good day.
A. (Smiling) Good day.
And I suppose my preacher-agent friend departed pitying me for my carnality, as I might pity him for his blindness. A. L. A.