QUESTIONS: SABBATH
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
Some of the readers of this paper are Seventh Day Keepers, and two or three of these brethren have written to me, not exactly asking questions, but rather lecturing me on this point, and taking it for granted that I believe certain things in regard to this and other questions, which they have no means of knowing whether I believe or not, and which, as a matter of fact, I do not believe. I will simply state my position briefly, and thus answer these brethren. There are three principle views upon this question. Some designate a particular day of the week as the Sabbath, either the first or the seventh. Some say there is no Sabbath at all in this dispensation. Some take the view that all the time is a Sabbath of rest,- the rest of faith now; until we experience the "rest that remaineth" by and by. (Heb. IV. 3-10). The latter view is the one I sympathize with. I readily concede to our seventh-day brethren that there is not the slightest authority for calling the first day, the Sabbath, or keeping it as such, excepting that of the church of Rome. I think that if there is any particular day of the week that we should keep especially holy, that day is the seventh, and not the first; but I recognize no such special obligation. What is wrong for me to do, or say, or think Saturday or Sunday, is wrong Monday, and what is right and proper Monday is equally right and proper any other day in the week. I would refrain from doing certain things on Sunday that I would do other days, simply out of consideration for the feelings of others; and if I was living in a community of seventh-day Adventist or Jews, I would show the same respect for Saturday. I meet with those who love the truth for religious exercises on Sunday because that day is most convenient under existing circumstances; not because it has any claim to special sanctity; and so far as I am personally concerned I would just as leave it would be any other day in the week, as the first day. "One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind" (Rom. XIV. 5). I'm of the number who esteem every day alike, every one of them a rest day (Psa. XXXVII. 7). The apostle says, "we are not under the law but under grace;" that he includes the ten commandments under the general term law as he uses it in his epistle to the Romans is positively evident from VII. 7, where he quotes one of those commandments as a sample of the teachings of the law that he was talking about. The distinction that seventh-day believers make between the "Ceremonial," and the "Moral" law, is convenient enough for purposes of reference, etc., but the Bible makes no such distinction but includes the whole law, ceremonial and moral, under the one general name of law. Paul declares, that the law, which was "written and engraven in stones," i.e. the ten commandments, was the "Ministration of Death," and was to be "done away," to give place to the "Ministration of Righteousness," "which remaineth." (2 Cor. III. 7-11). What is the "ministration of righteousness?" Not the law, "for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." (Gal. II. 21). Righteousness comes by faith, and "the law is not of faith." (Gal. III. 12). "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth" (Rom. X. 3-13). But I will not pursue this subject further now. I intend to consider it more at length soon in an article on "the purpose of the law." Meantime let us endeavor to "fulfill all the law in this one word,"-- Love (Gal. v. 14; Rom. XIII. 8, 10).