p. 178 | AN ARGUMENT CLINCHED by A. SMITH

The Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · December 4, 1879

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 54, No. 23

AN ARGUMENT CLINCHED.

By A. SMITH

The argument in confirmation of the perpetual sanctity of the seventh-day, or Bible Sabbath, is clear, concise, and pointed, and its advocates stand as a unit in its support. It is an argument that a child might easily learn and use to the discomfiture of opponents.

Not so with the array of arguments and propositions in behalf of first-day or Sunday sanctity, which are legion, many of them having as little assimilation for each other as oil and water. I had come to think that the list was about complete, until, recently, calling at a blacksmith’s shop to solicit subscribers to the Stimme der Wahrheit, I learned that I had been mistaken. It was on Sunday. The smith, who was a Lutheran in faith, was ironing a wagon for himself, an ex-Catholic German neighbor, smoking a meerschaum, and the writer, being present.

Between the clinks of the anvil, while the iron was heating, I elicited the following statements and facts in broken English, to which the smoker responded by nods or satisfactory puffs, while the strokes of the hammer rang out on the Sunday air: Christ disregarded the old Bible Sabbath, going through the cornfields on that day with his disciples and plucking the ears of corn; he had to give his followers another day for rest and worship, as the Jews would not permit them to worship on the seventh day; and the day he gave them as the Sabbath was Sunday.

Verily, there’s nothing like example for clinching an argument. A. SMITH.