IMPOTENT OPPOSITION

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 4, 1878

IMPOTENT OPPOSITION.

There are some men whose opposition the Sabbath cause can endure much better than it could bear their friendship—men, who, until they become converted and acquire some of that meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price, and a little of that good sense and candor, which is also commendable in the sight of men, can best serve a good cause by proclaiming themselves its rabid enemies.

Such an one is the editor of The Stumbling Stone, published in Ohio. He opens his mouth and forthwith issue froth and fury—stuff with which he seems to be filled well-nigh to bursting.

He wants to say something upon the Sabbath question, and this is the way he opens:—

“A very dear brother in Iowa has been drawn under the deceitful power of Judaism, and anti-christ, by the subtlety of seventh day idolaters. I feel obliged to state briefly the gospel on this, to guard pilgrims against this trap of Satan. The popular ignorance on this subject, and the superficial faith of modern Christianity gives the Advents great advantage to deceive the simple.”

After such a crushing introduction, in view of which it is not to be presumed that any “Advent” will dare lift up his head again, he tries his hand at argument to “guard the simple.” On this line, with a great flourish, he produces the following:—

“THE STUBBORN FACT

“Which exposes the folly of Sabbatarians to all reasonable persons is this, that no command of God tells us which way to reckon time, whether from the West or from the East. Our Saturday is reckoned from the East. It would come on Friday if reckoned from the West. Now which is the Jewish seventh day? Who can give us a ‘thus saith the Lord?’ It is a fact that the Millions of China and the Pacific ocean [we capitalize according to the extract] and California are divided, calling the same day Saturday or Sunday just as they reckon from the East or West.”

There, brethren, your “folly” is “exposed.” The Lord hasn’t given us any command which tells us whether we shall reckon sunrise from the west or east, no command to tell us whether we shall say that water runs down hill or up, no command to say whether we shall look down or up to see the sun at midday. Therefore, like the Arabs, “fold up your tents and silently steal away;” sell out the publishing houses; close the school; disband the Conferences; call in the missionaries; give away your meeting-houses; bow with as good grace as possible to the “simple” ones you have deceived, and retire in confusion.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding which exists very unnecessarily upon the subject of the reckoning of time east and west. But we have never heard of a person who seemed to be more completely stranded over it than this writer. When God made man, we believe he endowed him with a modicum of common sense and designed that he should preserve it. But some men have proved fearfully recreant to their trust.

Is not the day a definite space of time which has a beginning and end? Yes. Does not each day begin at some particular line of longitude? Yes. Does not the earth revolve so as to cause the sun to appear to move from east to west? Yes. And is not the day carried with it around the earth in this direction from east to west? Yes. And when it reaches the point of beginning what is done? There a new day begins. There the day line divides between the old day and the new. Where is this day line? In the Pacific Ocean. Geographical convenience has fixed it upon the 180th meridian from Greenwich, but actually it runs through Behring’s Straits, which separate the western continent from the eastern. Thus a man may start from the most eastern part of the eastern continent and come westward, and whether he travel fast or slow, his reckoning will agree with that of the inhabitants all along his route. So, if he reverses his course, traveling from the western coast of America eastward to the eastern coast of Asia, he will find the same agreement. But when a person crosses the Pacific, if going west he must add a day to his reckoning, and if coming east must drop a day, as he passes the day line in either direction. Nature has established this day line, and Providence has so ordered that the earth has been peopled in the direction of the sun’s motion from east to west. And no one has any right to carry the reckoning east of the day line to the west of it, nor take the reckoning west of it and bring it east, any more than a man has a right to rise up in Detroit or Chicago, and affirm that Tuesday is Monday, or that Wednesday is Thursday. This matter is settled, and has been understood for centuries. And now for a person to tell another that he does not know and cannot determine the day of the week, is simply to tell him that he is as ignorant and stupid as himself.

The “fact” which our friend affirms is no fact at all. The millions of China are not divided on their days, neither are the inhabitants of California; and the islands of the Pacific keep California or China time, according as they lie east or west of the day line.

His biblical argument resolves itself into these statements:—

1. The New Testament is entirely silent in regard to the duty of keeping any sacred day; and Paul declares that all distinction of days is abolished.

2. “The child of God carries the Sabbath within. Christ is his Sabbath. He has no other. All time is sanctified time, a perpetual Sabbath.”

3. “While it is true that no day is sacred of itself, yet the use of one day or more in seven, for worship and spiritual duties, is as eternally obligatory as the law against theft or murder.”

Can more palpable contradictions be expressed in fewer words? Thus, Paul declares all distinction of days abolished; there is no Sabbath; every day is a Sabbath; Christ is the only Sabbath; no day is sanctified, yet one day or more (!) in seven, distinguished as a day of worship, is eternally obligatory! A photograph, if it could be taken, of the “chaos and old night” that reigns in such a mind, would be a curiosity indeed.

If Sunday-keeping is so clear and scriptural a doctrine, why is not some uniform line of defense apparent in its support, as in the case of the seventh day? Why, in its advocacy, is every man’s hand found to be against his brother, and at various intervals against himself, so that they come out at last simply a heap of logical and theological suicides? If the seventh day furnished even the opportunity for such vagaries to be invented in its support, we would abandon it from sheer disgust at its crookedness. How long before men will learn that in all the counsels for Sunday-keeping “there reigns the darkness of Egypt and the confusion of Babel”?