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STRANGE INCONSISTENCY

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Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, March 4, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 10

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STRANGE INCONSISTENCY.

By William Penniman

BY WILLIAM PENNIMAN.
TALMAGE, in a recent sermon on the words, “The Sabbath was made for man,” as published in the N. Y. Witness of Dec. 4, 1879, uses the following truthful and very forcible language:—
“There is the same reason for maintaining the binding force of the fourth commandment as of the seventh or eighth, and the Sabbath of the decalogue is no more a Jewish institution than chastity or honesty.”
He admits that the Sabbath is an institution. This is very true, but what kind of an institution is it? Is it an institution making the first day, a day, or any day, every day, or no day in particular, the Sabbath? If so, why does God say, Remember the seventh day? Why does he not say, Remember a seventh day, if any day will do? The truth is, the Sabbath and the day on which it is to be observed are found in the fourth commandment, and it is exceedingly hard work to get the right day out, and to put any other in. Therefore those who undertake to found their authority for Sunday-keeping upon the fourth commandment are very inconsistent in their reasoning. The word Sabbath signifies rest, and when God says, “Remember the Sabbath day,” it is the same as though he said, Remember the rest-day. The commandment says that the seventh day is the rest-day. It follows that the rest-day is the seventh day. Then by what process of reasoning can a person change the institution which makes the seventh day the rest-day to one which makes some other day the Sabbath? God blessed the seventh day, because that in it he had rested.
Mr. Talmage ought to see this; yet he gives the old, threadbare arguments for a change of day. Those are the most consistent who either hold to the true Sabbath or none at all. The latter was the position of Alex. Campbell, who said there could be no change, any more than creation could be gone through with again.