The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution: A discussion between W. H. Littlejohn, Seventh-day Adventist, and the editor of the Christian StatesmanLittlejohn, Wolcott H.
Religion
The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution: A discussion between W. H. Littlejohn, Seventh-day Adventist, and the editor of the Christian Statesman
Littlejohn, Wolcott H.
Sabbath; Seventh-Day Adventists -- Doctrinal and controversial works; Sunday; Sunday legislation -- United States
Acknowledging that the law, as originally given, will not answer the
purpose, and that its amendment cannot be made out with sufficient
clearness to warrant the taking of a stand upon it, we turn, for the
last time, to examine a position quite generally advanced; namely, that
of Sunday observance inaugurated, justified, and enforced, by the
resurrection and example of Christ. Is it true, then, that such is the
fact? Have we, at last, found relief from all our difficulties in the
life and career of no less a personage than the divine Son of God? Let
us see.
The point of the argument is briefly this:—
Our Lord—by rising from the dead, and by his practice of meeting with
his disciples on that day—both introduced, and made obligatory upon his
followers, the necessity of distinguishing between the first and the
remaining days of the week, as we would between the sacred and the
profane. Now, if this be a case which can be clearly made out, then we
are immediately relieved in one particular; that is, we have found
authority for the observance of the Sunday. But how is it as it regards
the seventh day? This, we have seen, was commanded by God the Father.
The obligation of that command is still recognized. Now, consequently,
if Christ the Son has, upon his own authority, introduced another day
immediately following the seventh, and clothed it with divine honors, is
it a necessary inference that the former is therefore set aside? To our
mind, it is far from being such. If God has a law for the observance of
a given day, and Christ has furnished us with an example for that of
another also, then the necessary conclusion is, that the first must be
kept out of respect for God the Father, and the last through reverence
to Christ the Son. Three facts, therefore, must be clearly made out, or
our situation is indeed one of perplexity.
First, it must be shown, authoritatively, that the resurrection effected
the change which is urged, and that the practice of Christ was what it
is claimed to have been.
Second, that that practice was designed to be exemplary; in other words,
that what he did in these particulars was of a nature such that we are
required to imitate it.
Third, it must also be shown that he not only sanctified the first, but,
also, that he secularized the seventh day of the week.
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